“I said that all four teams should have the edge in the first round of the division series which they won.  And, now they are moving into the second round, the league championship series,” he said.  The Yankees and Rangers won in the American League and the Giants and Phillies won in the National League.

So what’s next? “My preliminary projections for the coming series are that the Rangers have a 59 percent chance of defeating the Yankees, while the Phillies have a 56 percent chance of defeating the Giants, making the most likely outcome a Texas Rangers vs. Philadelphia Phillies World Series.”

The League Championship Series begin Friday. Stay tuned for more.

The blog, Baseball PhD, recently named Bukiet its 2010 Predictions Champ based upon Bukiet’s predictions of Major League Baseball wins. 

This is Bukiet’s 10th year using his model to determine whether it is worthwhile to wager on games each day during the baseball season. His picks (posted on www.egrandslam.com) have led to (slightly) positive results for 7 of the 10 years (counting 2010’s positive results). He has also used the model to predict how teams should perform during a baseball season and these results have compared favorably with so-called baseball experts over the years, including 2010.

The model, originally developed by Bukiet and others, was published in Operations Research. More recent improvements were published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sports. Bukiet’s model computes the probability of a team winning a game by considering specific hitters, bench, starting pitcher, lineup, relievers and home-field advantage. “Winning the first game in a short series can change a team's fortunes markedly,” Bukiet noted.