[alnorth]

baseball prospectus regularly runs a simulation of "the rest of the season" to determine postseason odds. They do this mostly a couple different ways, playing out the season 1 million times each way to get the odds.

One way is to throw out preseason PECOTA projections and only use this season's data. This obviously leads to weird skewed results early in the year, but gradually becomes more useful than PECOTA in the last month or so.

Under that method, the Royals are (obviously) very likely to go to the playoffs, behind only the Dodgers and Blue Jays (LOL).

Royals (43% division, 10% wild card, 53% playoffs)
Tigers (29% division, 10% wild card, 39% playoffs)
Indians (12% division, 6% wild card, 17% playoffs)
Twins (9% division, 4% wild card, 14% playoffs)
White Sox (7% division, 4% wild card, 10% playoffs)

The second method is to run the rest of the season with the PECOTA projections, which is more useful in the beginning of the year when teams are getting off to a good or bad start but would probably regress or improve.

Under that method, the Royals still have a decent shot, since we are 5 over .500 and PECOTA didnt think we'd be a bad team.

Tigers (41% division, 2% wild card, 44% playoffs)
Royals (22% division, 2% wild card, 25% playoffs)
Indians (17% division, 2% wild card, 19% playoffs)
Twins (11% division, 1% wild card, 12% playoffs)
White Sox (8% division, 1% wild card, 9% playoffs)