2022 MLB Projected Standings & Preseason Ratings
Our preseason MLB baseball predictions for 2022 include team rankings, final AL, NL, and division standings, playoff and World Series odds.
March 31, 2022 - by Jason Lisk
Aaron Judge and the Yankees hope to end the World Series drought. (David Kirouac/Icon Sportswire)
The 2022 MLB season was pushed back a week due to the lockout, but is now set to begin on April 7, 2022. Each team is still scheduled to play the full 162-game schedule, with the original first week of games being made up throughout the season.
This article lays out all of our preseason MLB team ratings and projections for 2022, including our MLB projected standings, MLB postseason seed projections and various projection details such as final win-loss records, playoff chances, and World Series win odds.
From now on, all these projections will update every morning to reflect the latest game results and our most up-to-date MLB power ratings.
How We Create The Preseason Ratings
For football and basketball, we use our own data and models to come up with independent estimates of team quality. We then compare our numbers to the betting markets and to other leading projections, and make final adjustments.
We treat baseball a bit differently, though. So far at least, our methods for projecting MLB aren’t as cutting edge, relative to other sports and other leading analytics sites that focus exclusively on baseball.
So rather than creating our own preseason ratings, we instead base our initial MLB projected standings on a weighted average of betting market info and projected standings from other well-respected sources. (Yes, this is a bit of a cop-out, but there are also benefits of combining top third-party systems in a model-of-models approach.)
Essentially, we first combine projected season win totals from various sources into a consensus win total projection for every team. Then we figure out what preseason team ratings would lead to those exact projections.
We still publish these inferred team ratings, so that TeamRankings users know what preseason rating we used in our projection system for every team. But we also haven’t done the same level of research on MLB preseason ratings as we’ve done for other sports, so we can’t be very confident in the utility of these projections for making preseason bets.
A Seemingly Narrow Win Distribution
You may look at the projections below and think that they aren’t extreme enough. Only two teams are projected with at least 92 wins, for example, and no team is projected for more than 100 losses (one team is close, at 99.9 losses on average in our projected standings).
In a way you’d be right. When the dust settles at the end of the season, there will likely be several division winners, and maybe a few wild card teams, that have won more than 92 games.
Besides the heaviest favorites, though, if a team wins that many games, it’s going to be because things have gone better for them than any logical person would have reasonably expected. And picking which teams will wildly exceed expectations is rather tricky.
On average, these more conservative predictions may end up being quite wrong for some teams, but the overall accuracy of the system will be better than if we made a bunch of bold calls regarding which teams would be far better or far worse than the consensus opinion of several smart predictors.
More Team Projection Details
If you’d like to see our more aggressive best case and worst case scenarios for each team, check out their team projections page. Here are the LA Dodgers projections and the Colorado Rockies projections as examples.
Click through to find a chart showing the projected odds of the Dodgers or Rockies winning any specific number of games. From the details in the Rockies’ chart, you can determine that as of the preseason, we project about a 13% chance for Colorado to win fewer than 60 games in 2022.
The projections detail page also includes a list of each team’s toughest and easiest games, and a table showing how their chances of winning the World Series change depending on what seed they get in the playoffs.
2022 MLB Projected Standings Highlights
The Los Angeles Dodgers came up short in the NLCS last year against the Atlanta Braves. They didn’t win the NL West either a year ago (though they did finish with 106 wins).
But as the franchise that has had 106 wins each of the last two full seasons played, and finished with the highest win percentage and won the World Series in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Los Angeles is the safest bet to finish atop to the MLB standings this year. The Dodgers are our No. 1 ranked MLB team in 2022.
Some other highlights:
- Our next four highest rated teams after the Dodgers are in the American League (New York, Toronto, Houston, Chicago).
- Defending champion Atlanta is the next-highest rated National League team after the Dodgers.
- Every MLB division this year has at least one team in our top 10 preseason power ratings, and at least one team in the bottom 10.
- San Francisco, which led all of baseball with 107 wins a year ago, is projected for a dip in 2022. The Giants are outside the top six teams in the National League, and come in at No. 16 overall in our preseason power ratings.
- Boston reached the ALCS last year after making the postseason as a Wild Card, but the tough AL East has so many teams near the top of our ratings that the Red Sox are projected as only the seventh-most likely team to make the playoffs in the American League this year.
2022 MLB Projected Playoff Results
Just for kicks, here is how the 2022 MLB postseason would play out, if our preseason projections are spot on and no upsets happened. (The numbers below refer to the team’s playoff seed within their league.)
Remember that the MLB playoffs have been expanded this year to add a sixth team in each league, and the top two division winners get a bye past the Wild Card Round.
Wild Card Round:
- No. 3 Houston Astros over No. 6 Los Angeles Angels
- No. 4 Toronto Blue Jays over No. 5 Tampa Bay Rays
- No. 3 Milwaukee Brewers over No. 6 Philadelphia Phillies
- No. 4 New York Mets over No. 5 San Diego Padres
Division Round:
- No. 1 New York Yankees over No. 4 Toronto Blue Jays
- No. 3 Houston Astros over No. 2 Chicago White Sox
- No. 1 Los Angeles Dodgers over No. 4 New York Mets
- No. 2 Atlanta Braves over No. 3 Milwaukee Brewers
League Championship Series:
- No. 1 New York Yankees over No. 3 Houston Astros
- No. 1 Los Angeles Dodgers over No. 2 Atlanta Braves
World Series:
- No. 1 Los Angeles Dodgers over No. 1 New York Yankees
Full Preseason 2022 MLB Projected Standings
Finally, here is a summary of our 2022 preseason projections for all AL teams:
| American League | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL East | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Division | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| NY Yankees | 93.2 | 68.8 | 2 | 83.0% | 40.2% | 23.9% | 10.6% |
| Toronto | 91.8 | 70.2 | 3 | 78.0% | 32.1% | 18.5% | 8.6% |
| Tampa Bay | 87.6 | 74.4 | 8 | 60.5% | 17.0% | 8.9% | 4.5% |
| Boston | 85.1 | 76.9 | 11 | 48.8% | 10.6% | 4.8% | 3.0% |
| Baltimore | 62.1 | 99.9 | 29 | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| AL Central | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Division | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Chi White Sox | 91.1 | 70.9 | 5 | 78.4% | 65.7% | 16.4% | 7.7% |
| Minnesota | 82.3 | 79.7 | 15 | 36.5% | 18.9% | 2.3% | 1.7% |
| Cleveland | 76.1 | 85.9 | 19 | 14.5% | 6.3% | 0.5% | 0.4% |
| Detroit | 75.3 | 86.7 | 20 | 12.3% | 5.1% | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| Kansas City | 74.1 | 87.9 | 21 | 9.5% | 4.0% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| AL West | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Division | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Houston | 90.9 | 71.1 | 4 | 75.9% | 53.9% | 15.4% | 7.7% |
| LA Angels | 84.9 | 77.1 | 12 | 49.4% | 23.8% | 4.6% | 3.1% |
| Seattle | 84.0 | 78.0 | 14 | 43.5% | 19.4% | 3.9% | 2.5% |
| Texas | 72.7 | 89.3 | 22 | 7.0% | 2.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Oakland | 68.5 | 93.5 | 26 | 2.4% | 0.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
And for all NL teams:
| National League | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL East | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Division | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Atlanta | 91.1 | 70.9 | 6 | 79.2% | 41.1% | 13.0% | 7.5% |
| NY Mets | 90.5 | 71.5 | 7 | 76.8% | 36.9% | 11.5% | 7.0% |
| Philadelphia | 86.0 | 76.0 | 13 | 57.2% | 18.3% | 4.5% | 3.3% |
| Miami | 76.3 | 85.7 | 18 | 15.9% | 3.0% | 0.4% | 0.4% |
| Washington | 71.2 | 90.8 | 25 | 5.1% | 0.8% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| NL Central | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Division | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Milwaukee | 90.4 | 71.6 | 9 | 78.8% | 65.2% | 11.5% | 5.9% |
| St. Louis | 83.3 | 78.7 | 17 | 45.5% | 23.7% | 2.4% | 1.7% |
| Chicago Cubs | 74.9 | 87.1 | 23 | 12.9% | 5.5% | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| Cincinnati | 74.5 | 87.5 | 24 | 12.2% | 5.0% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Pittsburgh | 65.4 | 96.6 | 30 | 1.5% | 0.6% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| AL West | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Division | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| LA Dodgers | 98.6 | 63.4 | 1 | 95.0% | 73.2% | 44.8% | 16.9% |
| San Diego | 89.1 | 72.9 | 10 | 72.0% | 19.7% | 9.1% | 4.7% |
| San Francisco | 82.9 | 79.1 | 16 | 42.4% | 6.8% | 2.4% | 1.6% |
| Colorado | 68.5 | 93.5 | 27 | 3.2% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Arizona | 67.7 | 94.3 | 28 | 2.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% |