After having analyzed each MLB season has completed since 1998 to note what statistical DNA that most champions of the World Series had in common halfway through the year, some trends have emerged – and five current teams correspond to the profile.
Baseball has always challenged predictability, which is mainly worth for the end result of each season: the cardinals of St. Louis 83 winners won everything in 2006, for example, while the Seattle 116 Win Mariners did not even do the World Series in 2001. Compared to other sports, the October of MLB has a better season on paper.
But even if the qualifying series themselves could be the assumption of someone, the road to October success always leaves a path, even halfway from the regular season. So I returned and I retraced it, analyzing each full season since MLB extended to 30 teams in 1998 to see where possible winners of the World Series have generally ranked in certain key categories by the end of June.
By examining the historical sample of data, the objective was to develop a set of rules which helped to distinguish the real suitors of the contenders and to refine the least real champions as possible while eliminating as many aspirants simultaneously.
The following is a list of statistical cuts that practically all possible champions had found themselves halfway throughout the season. It is not a perfect system, obviously: the exact thresholds are installed (and probably too adjusted) with past data to include as many champions as possible, which covers the risk of excluding future champions on the edges. But it captures 92% of previous champions while correctly filtering 85% of non-vain. It is a fun and useful exercise to do, if not simply to know what forces can feed a team in a championship, while looking at which weaknesses tend to eliminate a team out of driving.
* All data is from Saturday June 14
Factor 1: classification among the first 13 in 2 of these 3 categories
- Victory percentage
- Differential
- Wins above the replacement
Fields that followed it: 25 of 26
Exception: 2003 Florida Marlins (sixth at war, 17th as a percentage of victories, 18th in racing differential)
2025 teams eliminated: Diamondbacks, Athletics, Braves, Orioles, Red Sox, White Sox, Reds, Guardians, Rockies, Royals, Angels, Marlins, Pirates, Mariners, Cardinals, Rangers, Nationals
It is not very surprising that future champions should already rank among the best teams in the league in the middle of the calendar. Even the cardinals of 06 ranked seventh as a percentage of victories and 13th in the race differential until June. (They were 18th at war.) The counterexample of Lone Oddball was a team of the Marlins of the Jokers who hired a 72-year-old manager in mid-season, was hot behind a few stars (Ivan Rodriguez, Josh Beckett, Dontrelle Willis) and benefited from a historic fusion of the Cubs to reach the classic of autumn. Unless this kind of racing this year’s harvest race, we can already eliminate more than half of the league – including a shortage of teams that awaited much more than 2025.
Factor 2: classification among the first 17 of the OBP or the Top 11 of Slugging
Fields that followed it: 25 of 26
2025 teams eliminated: Giants, shelves, brewers
The old champions also tended to be on average (or better) to climb on the basis, and they particularly tended to hit the ball with authority. Only four remaining champions since 1998 have not ranked at least 16th at the same time at the OPP and Slugging, and three of them came from the strange years of the Giants of San Francisco. The other was the White Sox 2005 – a team that concerned the dominant and lasting pitch as much as its strike, anyway.
This year, a trio falls with this rule; It is a hard elimination for the Rays (18th at the OPP, 16th in SLG), but less for the Giants and the Brewers, which both rank outside the Top 20 in slugging.
Factor 3: classification among the top 11 of the average of the opponent’s striker or the top 16 of the whip
Fields that followed it: 25 of 26
2025 teams eliminated: Dodgers, phillies
This step will surely be controversial at all … (pleasant). Let us strip why the dodgers – as well as the wild point phillies – are rebounded at this phase of the procedure. When you test pitch measures for what tended to separate the winners from the world series of non-vacuums in historical data, the opposite average and whip have proved to be surprisingly solid differentiation factors: 58% of the champions were among the first 5 in the lowest authorized average, and 46% were the first five in Whip. By way of comparison, only 31% were the first five at ERA or FIP.
Out of our 25 remaining champions, 18 top 10 or higher classified in the two authorized AVGs and whisk in mid-season. Only three – the Braves 2021, the Red Sox 2013 and the Cardinals 2011 – classified 16th or worse in both, as Dodgers and Phillies do it today. This is why these rules consider that it is unlikely – if not exactly impossible – for a team to overcome poor pitching.
Factor 4: classification among the first 13 in quality starting or less mergers
Fields that followed it: 24 of 26
Exception: Cardinals of St. Louis 2011 (23rd in QS, 30th in Meltdowns)
2025 teams eliminated: Puts, twins
It was another pair of categories perhaps interesting and surprising for inclusion, but again, it seemed to be common to all the winners of the World Series in the last three decades to have a high-level starting rotation or a strong enclosure in mid-season. Some champions made both – The 2022 Astros, 1998 Yankees, 1999 Yankees, 2018 Red Sox, 2001 D -Backs, 2024 Dodgers and the aforementioned White SOX 2005 were all the first five in the two quality members and the fewer mergers. Only the Cardinals of 2011, which ranked near the League in the two categories by the end of June and have started to stabilize their enclosure until the end of the year, managed to win the World Series.
In the case of this year’s dishes and twins, the two are at best TOP-20 teams at the limit in the two categories, which calls into question if each staff can really perform a championship race.
Factor 5: check at least four of these five
- Top 11 in the lowest authorized babip
- Top 20 in the shot clutch
- Top 20 in the least HR / 9 authorized
- Top 25 of the lowest stick withdrawal rate
- Top 25 in speed score
Fields that followed it: 24
2025 teams eliminated: Blue Jays
The last step involves a series of attributes which seem to have importance on the fringes once all the categories of more important images (overall, the more the striker and the pitch) are already manipulated. The Grand is the defense – authorized Babip (the opposite of defensive efficiency) was a more important separator of the non -championeurs champions than the other measures of the implementation, and is therefore delivered with a higher bar to erase here.
The rest essentially asks the teams not to be too terrible in categories such as clutch, strikes it, avoidance of Home Run on mound, contact and speed. Each historic champion was at least vaguely competent in most of these areas, while the teams that have done so far but who have not won have been retained by their weaknesses.
This year, only Blue Jays are disqualified on the basis of a slow list (29th in the metric of the speed of the fangraphe) and abandoning too many circuits (25th highest of HR / 9 authorized).
Who’s stay?
By elimination process, this leaves only five teams that have checked all the boxes – or otherwise eluminated long enough to get so far away:
- Astros
- Cubs
- Parents
- Tigers
- Yankees
It is probably not very fish that these teams are also five of the nine best clubs, and four of the six best clubs in my World Series forecasts based in Elo. The others in the first nine are the dodgers, food, giants and rays. Of the five who cut the cut, the Yankees, the Tigers and the Cubs have the best statistical dimensions, establishing themselves among a clear group of favorites who began to merge at the top of the ranking in the middle of the season.
In terms of term ratings, the Yankees are currently at +550 to win everything in Betmgm, followed by tigers (+750), Cubs (+1300), Astros (+1600) and Padres (+2500).
There is still room for bizarre teams like the 2011 Cardinals or the Braves 2021 to make unlikely title offers, of course. I would count the dodgers at my risk, the control list is damned. As we have seen in this exercise, however, the rankings raised in mid -season are more than stuffed animals – they are a surprisingly significant reference for the potential of October.
Of course, the playoffs could always be a crashoot once the games at the start. But when we look back, a strange predictability measurement emerges with hindsight: almost all future champions had already thrown a kind of work for a title when the calendar turned in July.
Neil Paine is an independent writer whose work also appears regularly on Espn.com, Nascar.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sherwood News and his eponymous subjection. He is the former Fivethirtyeight Sports Editor and was also an analysis consultant for the Hawks of Atlanta de la NBA.
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(Photo of Aaron Judge: Jay Biggerstaff / Getty Images)
