Will the Red Sox win the AL East?

I’m playing around with a playoff odds calculator that I’ve created in excel — all will be divulged in an upcoming article. Anyway, to test drive my calculator I thought I’d take a quick look at the AL East. As of yesterday the standings were:

American League East        Pwins  Diff
NYA     72  43 .626    0.0   67     5    
BOS     65  49 .570    6.5   65     0    
TB      61  53 .535   10.5   64    -3    
TOR     54  59 .478   17.0   61    -7    
BAL     47  67 .412   24.5   49    -2  

Despite the Bombers being a cool 6.5 games ahead, in terms of Pythagorean wins they are only a couple of games better. Interestingly in THT’s Season Preview we have the Yankees winning 100 games and the divsion (the Sox were second on 98 wins). At the time we calculated the Yankees’ odds of making the playoffs were 56%. Props to David Gassko — if the Yankees play to their current win record they’ll notch their 101st victory on the last day of the season.

Based on current standings and our expectation of true talent at the start of the season, what are the odds of Red Sox trumping the Yankees? Have a look:

NYA   82.3%
BOS   14.4%

Hmmm — as expected the fat lady is warming up her voice.