MLB Regression Report: Yankees Roll, Twins Fade, Astros Make Move

Stop me if you've heard this before but the New York Yankees had quite the week. The best team in the American League is fresh off a 6-0 week and outscoring the Twins and White Sox, 31-6.

We've mentioned the Yankees across several weeks of this report, even hinting at the possibility of 100 wins, but maybe that still underestimates the Bombers, though pitching to a 0.83 ERA as they did last week won't continue.

New York also hit .299, slugged .540 with 11 home runs and recorded a 150 wRC+ last week, so the performance was complete .

For all those reasons the Yankees take home the "Living the High Life" team of the week and White Sox or not those wins count.

Guardians Stay Hot, Top AL Central

The Cleveland Guardians weren't too far behind, going 5-1, while dominating the Texas Rangers and Twins to the tune of 33-16.

The Guardians enter this week a game and a half ahead of the Royals in the American League Central, but more than that at 30-17 their peripheral numbers hint that they are "for real", at least through the first 47 games, earning Cleveland the "They Are What They're Record Says They Are" team of the week.

Astros Lurk as AL West Darkhorse

The Astros have been in the 2024 news cycle for all the wrong reasons, but Joe Espada's team finally put together a solid week of baseball, going 6-1 against the Athletics and Brewers in Houston.

Yes, the Astros are still 5 games below .500, but they're only 4 games out of first, are getting healthier and no one has run away with the American League West.

If the Astros were in the Central, they'd be 9 games behind the Guardians and in the East they'd be 12.5 games behind they Yankees.

That's important because Houston is currently in eighth place in the Wild Card Standings, meaning the odds are they will need to win the Division to make the playoffs.

I doubted Houston's ability to hit their win total, but the way the West is trending, they may not need to in order to win the division and for those reasons, the Astros win our ""It's Not Over Till It's Over" award this week.

The regression report suggests there's still some upside to the Astros, too, as they're close to a full game below expectations.

What is the MLB Regression Report?

The MLB Regression Report uses a modified Pythagorean Theorem for Baseball formula that includes a team's record in calculating expected wins.

The numbers in "Wins over Expected" column are small at this early stage, but will increase or decrement over the season as appropriate.

It is designed to assist in identifying teams that are either over or underperforming in win-loss records based on run differential and actual wins and losses on the field.