2017 MLB Preseason Power Rankings: Can the Cubs Repeat?
It's time to get your geek on, y'all. Preseason projections are up on numberFire.
Sure, we're still seven months from the playoffs beginning, and the real games don't get cracking for a few weeks yet, but who cares? We've been starving for action ever since the Chicago Cubs sealed the World Series, and this is a justifiable cause for jubilation.
If you want to peep the individual projections, you can do so for both hitters and pitchers under the yearly projections above. Here, we'll be looking at things from a team perspective with the opening power rankings.
The power rankings are all based on numberFire's nERD metric. This number shows the expected run differential between each team and a league-average opponent at a neutral-site park. This means that if the Washington Nationals have a nERD of 0.75, they'd be expected to beat a league-average team by 0.75 runs.
Each team technically has equal odds at going all the way this year, but we know that's not true in practice. As such, let's count these down 10 teams at a time to see what numberFire's algorithms see as the best clubs in the league for 2017. We'll start with the bottom 10 and work our way to glory from there.
