It's a bit late to make predictions about how the baseball season, now in its second week, will turn out. Rob Neyer made his predictions over a week and a half ago, for example.

But I was more or less in Vietnam when the season started, and anyway my predictions have less to do with crunching players' batting and pitching numbers than, as per this post last autumn, looking at payrolls. And I needed to wait long enough to make sure the payroll numbers were set.

So, based on payroll, here are your winners in the American League, along with overall payroll ranking within the league:

East: New York Yankees (1)
Central: Detroit Tigers (3)
West: Los Angeles Angels (5)
Wild Card: Boston Red Sox (2)

Based on past performance since 1995, the AL team with the highest payroll has an 80% chance of making the post-season; no.s 2 and 3, a 60% chance.

And here's the National League:

East: Philadelphia Phillies (2)
Central: Chicago Cubs (1)
West: San Francisco Giants (4)
Wild Card: New York Mets (3)

I know: Cubs and Mets. But the correlation between payroll and playoffs isn't as strong in the NL. Based on past performance since 1995, the NL team with the highest payroll has a 46% chance of making the post-season; no.s 2 and 3, a 53% chance.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how close I get, without trying, compared to those who spent hours and days and weeks crunching the numbers.

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