Magic Numbers
Last night I was looking at the baseball standings on Sportsline and noticed how they always denote at the bottom that a team’s magic number will be in (). However, they don’t bother to use the magic number until near the end of the season. I want to know this no matter how large it is. I did a search and the first site I found was very cool. RIOT lists the number of games a team needs to win to win its division or wild card as well has the number it needs to win to avoid being eliminated. For example, the Phillies currently 35 games left. If they were to go 34-1 the rest of the way they would win the division, no matter what the Braves or anyone else does. If they falter and go 33-2, they would still win the wild card. Another interesting note is that no team is eliminated yet. Even with the Royals 19 game winning streak they weren’t eliminated. It will likely happen next week, they only need to lose 5 more games. I’m sure I’ll be checking this page out almost daily.
Some other neat standings related sites:
Baseball Prospectus Playoff Odds Report - They run a million simulations each night. Here they show the average final record of each team and the probability that the team will make the playoffs. As of today the Phillies have a 10.6% chance at winning the division and a 16.5% chance at the wild card, making their chances of making the playoffs about 27%.
Pennant Race - Graphs each team and their record throughout the season. You can browse by division or make a custom graph. Really interesting to see the Astros and A’s climb back to the top.