Before any MLB playoff games were played, things were looking so good for Canada’s World Series hopes. (The country’s title drought in hockey gets all the attention, but no baseball champ has hailed from north of the border since 1993, either.) With odds of 19 percent, the Toronto Blue Jays had the best chance of winning the World Series of any team, according to our pre-playoffs MLB Elo ratings.
Now? Not so much. The Blue Jays have lost the two first games to the Texas Rangers in their best-of-five American League Division Series. That’s changed their chance of winning it all — as well as everyone else’s.
According to the latest Elo simulation of the rest of the playoffs — which includes the Rangers’ victory over Toronto on Friday afternoon but no subsequent results — the Blue Jays’ probability of breaking Canada’s winless streak is now just 5 percent:
| CHANCE THAT A TEAM WILL … | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | ELO | MAKE LDS | MAKE LCS | MAKE WS | WIN WS |
| Texas Rangers | 1535 | 100% | 85% | 43% | 22% |
| Houston Astros | 1528 | 100 | 67 | 31 | 15 |
| Chicago Cubs | 1558 | 100 | 50 | 27 | 14 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 1549 | 100 | 50 | 28 | 14 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 1535 | 100 | 52 | 24 | 11 |
| New York Mets | 1523 | 100 | 48 | 21 | 10 |
| Kansas City Royals | 1538 | 100 | 33 | 18 | 10 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 1564 | 100 | 15 | 8 | 5 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 1554 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| New York Yankees | 1516 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Because they’re up 2-0 in their series versus Toronto, the Texas Rangers are now your World Series favorites, though that can and will change depending on what happens the rest of Friday.