The Hunt For October: Sizing Up The 11 Teams Locked In A Dead Heat For MLB's Last 5 Playoff Spots

With the MLB season at its halfway point its worth taking a good long look at the current landscape and assessing what we should expect going forward.

Since baseball added a second wild card team to each league this season plenty of teams that would've already given up on the season will continue with their playoff pushes between now and October. In past seasons they probably would have begun unloading big contracts by now.

So who's going to the postseason in 2012?

In order to answer this question we've looked at Cool Standings, a site that simulates the rest of the season one million times taking into account things like strength of schedule, the number of home versus away games, and run differential to come up with a percent chance a given team has of getting to October. (Here's how the formula is calculated.)

Looking at those percentages we're going to assume that teams that have a greater than 70 percent chance of making the playoffs are locks. That includes the New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals, and Pittsburgh Pirates (yes, those Pirates).

Essentially that leaves us searching for what teams will win the National League West, and the four combined wild card spots between the two leagues.

In order to keep things simple we've taken the remaining teams that have a greater than 25 percent chance of making the playoffs and assessed their odds at getting in. (FYI: One of the year's biggest surprises, Baltimore Orioles, didn't make the cut.)

Tampa Bay Rays

Playoff chance: 26.8%

Strengths: Pitching. Top to bottom, the Rays starters and relievers are among the most consistent in the majors

Weaknesses: Hitting is abysmal and they really struggle on the road

Can they make significant improvements via trades before the July 31 trade deadline? Probably not. Tampa Bay has never been very aggressive at the trade deadline. Their best hopes are in getting Evan Longoria back healthy and the rest of the lineup following his lead

Boston Red Sox

Playoff chance: 32.7%

Strengths: This is still one of the absolute best lineups in all of baseball and the bullpen has been better than expected

Weaknesses: Starting pitching

Can they make significant improvements via trades before the July 31 trade deadline? They can and they will. If there's someone to be had at the deadline you better believe Boston will inquire

Detroit Tigers

Playoff chance: 31.5%

Strengths: Powerful lineup

Weaknesses: Detroit's pitching has merely been average. Luckily, they've been steadily improving as the season has gone along, so there aren't any glaring weaknesses

Can they make significant improvements via trades before the July 31 trade deadline? This team is trying to win now, so they'll easily trade some of their top prospects or up-and-coming youngsters for a shot at the World Series

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