September 15, 2016

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle:

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

posted by huddle to general at 07:00 AM - 4 comments

The MLB.com site insists on listing "Elimination Numbers" for teams to indicate how close that team is from being eliminated from post-season contention.

However, they only use raw numbers (games played and wins) to do the calculation, and they ignore future match-ups.

For example:

Tampa Bay is listed with an elimination number of 1.

However, Tampa Bay is already eliminated from post-season play.

The most wins the Rays can have at the end of the season is 79. They have 62 wins, and 17 games left.

  • Boston has 81 wins.

  • Baltimore has 80 wins.

  • Toronto has 79.

  • New York has 77.

Toronto and New York play each other 4 times before the end of the season. Either Toronto wins at least one game (meaning BOS/BAL/TOR finish with more than 79 wins) or New York sweeps and finishes with 81 (meaning BOS/BAL/NYY finish with more than 79 wins).

Therefore, Tampa Bay can't possibly get the 2nd wild card.

(They were actually eliminated before yesterday's games, but I hadn't looked at the standings in a bit.)

posted by grum@work at 08:53 AM on September 15, 2016

Ok, maybe Bravo is a little better with his feet than Joe Hart.

posted by yerfatma at 12:22 PM on September 15, 2016

Portion of Cedar Avenue...

As an organization steadfastly determined to be flawed and illegitimate, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame picked the perfect city in which to locate their headquarters.

posted by beaverboard at 05:59 PM on September 15, 2016

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