The other Division races are even less exciting with John McDonald leading Behind the Bag by 9, the Windy City Potato Pocketers winning by 10.5, and the Belleveu Freakin Franchise by an almost unbelievable 19 games.
Our focus today will be on the Wild Card races. But first, a few notes on how I went about the calculation - ATB regulars can skip the next two paragraphs as nothing written hasn't been said at least twice already throughout our previous campaigns.
Bill James once derived a formula to predict the outcome of a game between two teams, based solely on their winning percentage. I took this a bit further, incorrectly in all honesty, and applied it to winning percentages of a team versus the collective winning percentages of all opponents left on the schedule. Even further, I use Pythagorean Winning Percentage instead of straight winning percentage.
Step through the charts below in a left to right fashion:
- Teams Actual Record
- Pythagorean Winning Percentage of that Team to Date
- Remaining Opponents Pythagorean Winning Percentage
- Expected Outcome of those games expressed in winning percentage terms. For instance, JMF is playing .640 ball, has to face teams with a collective .485 Wpct the rest of the way, and we should therefore expect them to win .654 % of their contests.
- Quick and Dirty Home/Away modifier, meant to adjust the Wpct up or down based upon the number of Home/Away games.
- Games Left
- Projected W-L record of those remaining Games
- Projected Win Total
- Projected Games Back
Vin Scully League
Today, 10 of the 12 teams in this league have a legitimate shot at contending for a playoff spot. In terms of the Wild Card, the 10th team is just 5.5 games out of the last slot and 6 teams are within 3 games.
Strength of schedule shows this isn't going to last:
- The top teams remain where they stand with John McDonald and Helena winning their divisions by 7 and 5 games respectively.
- The Rochester Beau Brummels project to finish as the second best team in the league, a full 9 games up in the Wild Card
- If play ended today, the Black Stones would narrowly edge the DC Chips for the last playoff spot thanks to a .522 vs .521 winning percentage. However, the Home/Away schedule for DC gives them the edge closing out the year. Both teams have nearly identical expected winning percentages but DC has 27 home and 18 road games remaining, while White Meadow Lake has 23 home and 26 road. This difference results in a predicted 2 game advantage for the reigning champs. These two teams still have 4 head to head games remaining with the Black Stones winning 5 of 8 so far this year.
- Bucky Dent's Middle Name, currently a half game back of White Meadow Lake, looks to be in the thick of the race as well, projecting to fall short by just two games. With an expected winning percentage of .510 but more road games than home games, they look to finish the season with a run of .500 ball.
- The rest of the teams all fall of the pace quickly. The Chi Town Black Sox have lost 8 in a row and project to play about .500 rest of the way, and with their current record 6 games under .500 they'll likely fall short of contention.
- Rusty Kuntz Traveling All Stars have played well of late, but face teams with a collective .511 winning percentage.
- I Miss Rod Beck will have a tough go of it as well. They are currently being outscored by 17 runs and are expected to win 21 of their last 45 games, coming up 6 games short.
Harry Caray League
I won't spend much time on the less exciting Vin Scully League. Three teams project to easily outpace the pack, with the only playoff spot in doubt coming down to the last Wild Card team. The Edinburgh Caber Tossers have a much easier strength of schedule when compared with Planet 10: .486 vs .536. And while Planet 10 has a better run differential, they still project to lose one game on Edignburgh, finishing 2 out. Both teams have 26 home and 19 road games left.
If interested, here is the team by team look at the remaining schedule.
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