Replacement Level Yankees Blog took the CHONE, THT, Marcel, PECOTA, ZiPS, and CAIRO projections, plugged them into Diamond Mind Baseball. From there, SG simulates the season 1,000 times each. He's taken the liberty of combing all 6,000 simulations into a handy post for the world to see, and well, the results are interesting.
| AL East | W | L | RF | RA | Div | WC |
| NYA | 95.9 | 66.1 | 853 | 711 | 2908.8 | 1776.2 |
| BOS | 94.3 | 67.7 | 837 | 703 | 2157.3 | 2053.4 |
| TAM | 90.1 | 71.9 | 795 | 695 | 916.3 | 1591.2 |
| TOR | 75.6 | 86.4 | 691 | 742 | 9.4 | 80.3 |
| BAL | 74.5 | 87.5 | 781 | 844 | 8.3 | 46.3 |
The Rays are projected to win 90 games while scoring about 800 runs and allowing less than 700. That means above average run production and prevention, which is expected. In these 6,000 simulations the Rays win the A.L. East 916 times and the Wild Card 1,591 times. That means they make the playoffs 42% of the time.
| StD W | Std RF | Std RA | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | APW | Std APW |
| 90 - 102 | 813 - 894 | 673 - 749 | 3058 | 1897 | 963 | 74 | 8 | 100 | 95 - 104 |
| 88 - 101 | 796 - 879 | 667 - 739 | 2295 | 2205 | 1351 | 130 | 19 | 94 | 90 - 98 |
| 84 - 96 | 756 - 834 | 659 - 732 | 1009 | 1735 | 2753 | 431 | 72 | 88 | 83 - 92 |
| 69 - 82 | 654 - 728 | 705 - 780 | 14 | 100 | 410 | 2979 | 2497 | 78 | 74 - 83 |
| 68 - 81 | 742 - 820 | 803 - 885 | 10 | 63 | 320 | 2457 | 3150 | 71 | 66 - 76 |
Moving to the right of those columns you see "StD x" which represents the standard deviation either way for each of the categories. The Rays ranged within 84-96 wins, 756-834 runs scored, 659-732 allowed, etc. From there you see five numbers. These represent the final standings place. So in 1,009 simulations the Rays finish first, but these aren't always counted as "division wins" because in the event of a tie SG simply splits the division title both ways (0.5 assigned to each). The Rays finish fourth or below a little over 500 times.
APW is the average amount of wins tied to each standing place and Std APW is the standard deviation again. That means the Rays may have to win 95-104 games for first, 90-98 for second, and so on.
Per projection system:
PECOTA 92 wins, third.
CHONE 88 wins, third.
THT 92 wins, third.
Marcel 89 wins, third.
ZiPS 90 wins, third.
CAIRO 91 wins, third.
The group of death has nothing on this division. Whichever team finishes third is most likely going to be the third best team in the league. There's a good chance we win the division, there's a good chance we win the WC, there's a good chance we finish third. There's also an extremely good chance we do not win 97 games while having a better roster and individual performances.
I guess what I'm saying is, this team and this year's record is going to have a special circumstance surrounding it. That circumstance is playing alongside two additional monster teams and two teams that are not exactly chopped meat in Toronto and Baltimore. Even so, the Rays have a legitimate chance to win the damn thing, and that is all you can ask for.