MLB Projected Standings, Week 2:

The season is still young, but a little less young. This season suggests that, at least in 2016, you cannot win a division in April but you can lose it. That's bad news for teams that couldn't figure out how to win at home this past week - yes, that's me staring my own team right in the face, those TRUE TO THE BLUE Mariners. Plenty of season remains though, and thankfully for them the rest of the AL West looks mediocre at best.

You can read about the model here, or keep on reading for the updated standings (change in win total from last week in parentheses).

MLB Projected Standings, Week 2:

AL West	AL Central	AL East
Astros, 82-80 (-2), 0 GB	Indians, 85-77 (0), 0 GB	Red Sox, 83-79 (-1), 0 GB
Angels, 81-81 (+1), 1 GB	White Sox, 84-78 (+2), 1 GB	Yankees, 83-79 (0), 0 GB
Mariners, 79-83 (-2), 3 GB	Tigers, 83-79 (+2), 2 GB	Orioles, 83-79 (+2), 0 GB
Rangers, 78-84 (+1), 4 GB	Royals, 82-80 (+3), 3 GB	Blue Jays, 82-80 (0), 1 GB
Athletics, 78-84 (0), 4 GB	Twins, 75-87 (-3), 10 GB	Rays, 79-83 (-1), 4 GB
.
NL West	NL Central	NL East
Dodgers, 89-73 (-1), 0 GB	Cubs, 91-71 (+1), 0 GB	Nationals, 88-74 (+2), 0 GB
Giants, 85-77 (-1), 4 GB	Cardinals, 84-78 (+2) 7 GB	Mets, 87-75 (-2), 1 GB
Rockies, 78-84 (+1), 11 GB	Pirates, 84-78 (-1), 7 GB	Marlins, 80-82 (0), 8 GB
Diamondbacks, 76-86 (-1), 13 GB	Reds, 78-84 (-1), 13 GB	Phillies, 74-88 (+3), 14 GB
Padres, 75-87 (0), 14 GB	Brewers, 75-87 (0), 16 GB	Braves, 69-93 (-4), 19 GB

Wild card play-in games: Yankees at White Sox, Giants at Mets

ALDS match-ups: play-in vs. Indians, Astros vs. Red Sox

NLDS match-ups: play-in vs. Cubs, Nationals vs. Dodgers

Some musings:

• The Braves and Twins are both winless and that seems to show rather loudly in the standings. The Braves in particular are on their way to a special kind of awful if they can "keep up" the losing. I wonder how extreme rises and drops can be with this model, and losing four games over the course of one week might prove shockingly large. Meanwhile, the Twins look like the first AL team to fall out of playoff contention, thanks in large part to their winless start.
• The Orioles hot start has garnered buzz, but I had them projected as a slightly worse than .500 team. They are exceeding expectations in my system too, but color me a bit less surprised by their start.
• Also, since I am on the topic of the Orioles, the projection method actually gives decimal victories and I round them to the nearest whole win. This is how I break ties, which is why the Yankees make the playoffs over the Orioles in this week's projections. The Yankees have 83.0 projected victories, the Orioles 82.9, and the Tigers 82.6.
• I mused last week that the Cardinals took a critical blow last week when they got swept by the Pirates. The damaged lasted a whole week. I stand corrected.
• The Cubs hot start has garnered more than its fair share of attention, but so far the hype is not out of proportion. They are the best team in baseball until further notice.
• The Royals are beating my projection system so far, fueling my own speculation that WAR-based systems miss something that the Royals do exceedingly well. They continue to beat WAR projections of how good they should be by significant margins, and the sample size continues to grow.