Just in time for free week over at Baseball Prospectus, Clay Davenport’s Postseason Odds report has been updated, based on each MLB team’s expected win percentage for the remainder of the year. How do the divisional odds pan out, and how good or bad do they make the Generals’ preseason predictions look?

(at left–Cubs at Tropicana Field: the 2008 World Series?)

First off, if you’re curious how Davenport derives these odds, he uses, as he says, a compilation of “a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season,” run one million times. He starts with a calculation of each team’s expected win-loss record, and then calculates matchups between teams using the log5 method (if you’re really curious, you can read more about the log5 method at Diamond Mind, and about the Pythagenport model, which Davenport uses here to calculate the expected win-loss records, in BP’s archives).

On with the odds. Davenport’s calculations give each team an average win-loss record, and a measure of their odds to make the playoffs (i.e. how often they emerged as the division winner or the wild-card winner in the million iterations of the simulation). I’m simplifying quite a bit when I reproduce the top three teams in each division here:

AL EAST           W     L     Division   Wild Card
Rays              94.2  67.8  49.15%     34.86%
Red Sox           93.9  68.1  45.41%     37.36%
Yankees           86.6  75.4  5.09%      13.38%

AL CENTRAL        W     L     Division   Wild Card
White Sox         89.4  72.6  65.36%     2.32%
Twins             85.6  76.4  25.77%     3.46%
Tigers            81.9  80.1  8.33%      1.15%

AL WEST           W     L     Division   Wild Card
Angels            91.2  70.8  80.88%     1.58%
Athletics         84.2  77.8  13.68%     3.34%
Rangers           81.1  80.9  5.44%      1.03%

(Average wins for the AL Wild Card: 92.4)

NL EAST           W     L     Division   Wild Card
Mets              88.9  73.1  53.22%     6.17%
Phillies          87.4  74.6  36.75%     7.26%
Marlins           81.3  80.7  6.17%      1.65%

NL CENTRAL        W     L     Division   Wild Card
Cubs              94.4  67.6  63.49%     22.51%
Brewers           90.8  71.2  26.25%     37.03%
Cardinals         87.8  74.2  10.15%     23.01%

NL WEST           W     L     Division   Wild Card
Dodgers           82.9  79.1  49.66%     0.25%
Diamondbacks      82.5  79.5  45.36%     0.26%
Rockies           74.7  87.3  4.06%      0.01%

(Average wins for the NL Wild Card: 91.3)

As we can see, the Cubs and the Rays have a good chance to hold the best records in baseball at the end of the season, with the Cubs over twice as likely to win their division than the next-best Brewers. The Rays, meanwhile, are almost even with the Red Sox as far as chances to win the division go, but each team is over 80% likely to make the playoffs some way or other. Likewise, if the Brewers don’t take the NL Central, they at least are favored to win the wild card that was denied them last year by a strong 2007 NL West.

Speaking of the NL West, this is as good a depiction as any I’ve seen how much worse the division is this year compared to last–the 2008 Dodgers and Diamondbacks’ expected .505 win percentage would barely be good enough for third place in last year’s NL West, when the Diamondbacks took the title with 90 wins, and the Rockies took the wild card with 90, too.

Among the Generals’ preseason picks, the AL has proved somewhat confounding to the crew, as no one picked the White Sox or Twins to be atop the Central division, and as the Tigers, a common favorite, look to have about a one-in-ten chance of making the playoffs (the Indians, another popular pick, show a less than one percent chance of making it). In the East, only Brandon had the Rays to win the title, though Patrick had them as a wild card, and many others chose the Red Sox. The Yankees, meanwhile, a popular pick for either the division or the wild card, are looking about as likely to make the playoffs as the Athletics.

In the NL, the preseason favorite Mets look set to take their division, about in line with what about half the Generals expected. In the Central, most of us expected either the Brewers or the Cubs (or both) to make the playoffs somehow, as each looks equally likely to do so. And in the West, about half around here had the Angels picked, though the Mariners were just about as favored by the other half. The Mariners, you may be curious to know, are looking about 0.001% likely to make the playoffs this year–a little worse than the Pirates’ 0.008% chance, though much better than the Nationals’ 0.0005%.