What Are the Odds?

With 14 games left in the season, seven American League teams still have a conceivable chance of earning a slot in the Wild Card play-in game. (Baltimore and Toronto have fading hopes of winning the AL East; the Orioles play a set in Boston starting tonight.)

Orioles       82-67    --

Blue Jays    81-68    --

Tigers         79-70    2

Mariners   79-70    2

Astros        78-71    3

Yankees     77-72    4

Royals       76-73     5

With 13 games left, there's plenty of opportunity for the two teams leading the charge to falter and for a team down near the bottom to streak its way in.

If you figure that 88 wins will be necessary for a Wild Card game appearance, Baltimore and Toronto still need to go 6-7 and 7-6 to get in. Each team has done worse over 13 game periods at various times during the season.

Detroit and Seattle have to get hot -- 9-4 -- but nothing outrageous. Each team has posted 9-4 records over 13-game stretches previously. (Indeed, Seattle is in such a stretch.)

For New York and KC, great drama would be necessary. The Yankees, stripped of their best hitter (pre-Gary Sanchez) and their two best relievers, would need to win 11 of 13 to pass four competitors ahead of them. The Royals would have to reprise recent miracles and win 12 of 13. 

Baseball Prospectus, which uses all kinds of fancy calculations about strength of schedule, real team performance and so on to derive its playoff odds, puts Baltimore and Toronto at 76% and 63% respectively. That seems high to me, particularly considering the drama we've seen in recent years.

BP also suggests the Tigers and Mariners each have a 23% chance of getting in. It doesn't feel right that the odds could be so against a team that would be at 50/50 with two wins.

In case you're wondering, the Astros are listed at 13%, Yankees at 2% and Royals at .3%. 

Go ask the 2011 Red Sox and Braves about those odds. Ask Rhonda Rousey and Ian MacGregor. Ask anyone (like me) who dismissed the idea that an ignorant, unqualified, juvenile jackass clown could become President of the United States.

Go Royals.

Swinging Bunts and Bloop Hits

Miracle on 161st Street
More on this in a full post, but if Joe Girardi isn't AL manager of the year then I'm Barry Manilow. He's taken an ever-changing replacement-player roster to contention and done it without a hint of rancor or complaint. He's incorporated the Alex Rodriguez Traveling Circus into the family with beneficial results. And he's had to have The Talk with a parade of .196 hitters whose 15 minutes in pinstripes has ended. 

All that and his ace has gone half-joker. If this team were challenging Toronto for the cellar, no one would blame them.

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Dodgers Make A Splash
Did I miss the memo on pool parties? Is that another unwritten rule that you're just supposed to intuit? Man, I can't keep track. I always thought that celebrating in a pool was a great idea.

What's the unwritten rule on calling opponents classless? Someone ask Willie Bloomquist. What's the unwritten rule on politicians who can't get anything done in Washington commenting on the baseball team celebrations? I think "shut up" is the rule, John McCain, but I don't know because it's unwritten.

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Star Bucs
A yearlong fear: The Pirates have a spectacular season but run out of steam -- as young, inexperienced teams often do -- in the last 10 or 20 games. They fall into the Wild Card and lose the one-game play-in. Six months of developing goodwill disappears in nine innings. It feels like another "Wait 'til Next Year" scenario in Pittsburgh.

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Yasiel Who?
More on the MVP races in a full post, but consider this couldabeen: In exactly half a season of work, Hanley Ramirez is hitting .351/.403/.656 with 20 homers and 10 steals from the shortstop position. He's playing some of the best defense of his career and has been worth 5.6 wins for the Dodgers. In half a season. 

The last player to post 11.2+ wins against replacement without taking drugs*? Pedro Martinez 13 years ago. The last everyday player? Yaz in '67.

*As far as we know.

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New Joba Rules
At $2 or $3 million in his last year of arbitration, it's hard to see Joba Chamberlain sticking with the Yankees in 2014. He's regressed as a pitcher, walking 5.4 per nine innings and contributing replacement value the last two years. His home run rate has risen each year but one to an unsustainable 1.7 per nine innings. At this point he's little more than a middle-inning mop-up guy. For the suddenly cost-conscious Yankees, that may not play.

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#Quitchacussing
Issues Brandon Phillips shouldn't comment on publicly: chemical weapons in Syria, Russia's crackdown on gays, possible implications of the Affordable Care Act, his .310 on-base percentage. You want to shut up the Enquirer writer, Brandon? Get on base more.

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Cashnering In
After closing at TCU and 93 MLB games as a reliever, Andrew Cashner may be emerging as a rotation ace this season. At 10-8, 3.21 for the Padres, the bearded one has hurled five straight games of at least seven frames relinquishing two earned runs or fewer. Scouts believed Cashner had the best stuff of college pitchers in the 2008 draft.

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Flipping the Script
The Red Sox are just the fourth team all-time to win 93+ games the year after losing 93+ games. With two more victories, the Indians will become the fifth.

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Playoff Odd In yesterday's post, these were the quoted AL playoff odds from Baseball Prospectus:

Tampa Bay 70%
Texas 67%
Cleveland 49%
Baltimore 9%
KC  4%
New York 1%

Just to give you an idea how fluid these ratings are, consider them one game later:


Tampa Bay 78%
Cleveland 60%Texas 50%
KC  6%
Baltimore 4%
New York 2%

It does call into question how a team can plummet from highly likely to a toss-up after one loss, as the Rangers supposedly did. These playoff odds remind me a bit of five-day weather forecasts. Follow the fifth day forecast over the week and you'll see it change daily before ultimately missing the mark.

The AL East: Your Nose Runs and Your Feet Smell

If you had the AL East this way on your tout sheet to start the season, no one would have even sniffled:

Toronto
Yankees
Baltimore
Tampa Bay
Boston

With 10 games yet to play, your basement dweller has, in real life, clinched a Wild Card berth and is the leading candidate for the best overall record. Your pick for division king has clinched a losing season and lags 12 games behind .500. Indeed, like the man whose nose runs and feet smell , you've got it upside-down.

We all wondered (or fantasized) about the Blue Jays, who cobbled together high-profile parts from failed organizations to create an intriguing roster. Instead, the imports have scuffled either with injury or ineffectiveness or both, leaving Ontarians with a lineup that doesn't get on base and a pitching staff with a 4.65 ERA.

Other than the Jays, the rest of the division is at scraapping furiously for a Wild Card. Tampa Bay, despite its 18-25 August and September, leads the pack. They host Baltimore and visit New York and Toronto in their final 10 games, almost certainly securing a spot with six wins.

For the Orioles, three games short of the Rays, the four meetings in Tampa are critical. Failing to win at least three leaves them dependent on others to take down Tampa and Texas while they exploit last-place Toronto and coasting Boston.

Oh so improbably, the Yankees cling to contention's edge, even as Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte prepare for life after baseball, and the Disabled List hogs the services of Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter. Losers of nine of their last 14, the Bombers have been outscored this year and have auditioned 18 shortstops and 19 third basemen. While the rest of the division engages in internecine warfare, New York can feast on San Francisco and Houston sandwiched around a set with the Rays. Four out in the loss column and trailing four teams for a play-in berth, they probably need to steal seven wins in the last nine to have any hope. 

Texas, Cleveland and Kansas City figure into this morass as well. The Rangers, reprising their 2012 role as late season face-planters (they're 4-13 in September), run into hard-charging KC on the road, then host the minor-league Astros and the enigmatic Angels to end the season. The Royals head home for the punchless Mariners and the feckless White Sox. They need at least seven of ten but might have the least resistance of all the contenders to deal with.

Then there is the Tribe, a mere half a game out of the Wild Card after an 11-6 September, but let's face it, they're Cleveland. They're 83-70, they're pounding the ball, their final three opponents (Astros, White Sox and Twins) are a combined 105 games under .500, but . . . they're Cleveland. By all rights they should be favored to nab one of the Wild Card slots. But, as may have been previously noted, Cleveland.

For the record, going into games of Sept. 20, Baseball Prospectus rates Tampa a seven-in-ten favorite to reach the play-in, while Texas is a two-to-one favorite. That means there is a 54% chance that one of them will relinquish their lead, and The Indians are best positioned to accept it. Cleveland is a 50-50 proposition while the Orioles, Royals and Yankees are all rated less than one-in-ten longshots, with New York a one-in-a-100 fantasy. These projections are based on the current roster of each team, their opponents and their current position in the Wild Card puzzle.

Besides determining the winner of the NL Central, it's the only intrigue left in the last two weeks. But from Dallas to the Bronx and from St. Pete to Cleveland, every pitch, every out, every run is magnified, and that's intrigue at the James Bond level.

Nothing Certain But Death and Playoff Teams

Why can't you just get it through your head: It's over, it's over now. Yes, you heard me clearly now, I said, it's over." -- Boz Scaggs

While you were busy noticing that the NFL tore its ACL and is out for the season, the Major League Baseball pennant races evaporated. Sorry.

Over the last two weeks, the rich have gotten richer and the struggling middle class has lost ground.

Braves - 14 straight wins
Tigers - 12 straight wins
Rangers - 9 of 10
Pirates - 8 of 10
Dodgers - 15 of 19
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Yankees - lost 7 of 10
Angels - lost 7 of 10
Phillies - lost 7 of 10
Nats - lost 6 of 10
Dbacks - lost 6 of 10

The result is that, with 50 games left in a season filled with intrigue and mystique, surprises and revelations, breakouts and comebacks, it's largely over but the waiting.

Consider the playoff odds of the teams most likely to see October action, according to Baseball Prospectus:

Tigers - 99.5%
Red Sox - 96%
Rays - 91% 
Rangers 80%
A's - 73%
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Indians - 29%
Orioles - 26% 
No one else with more than 5% (KC)

Braves - 100%
Pirates - 99.5%
Cardinals - 98%
Dodgers - 97%
Reds - 93%
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D'Backs - 12%
No one else with even 2% 

In other words, the NL races are done and only the NL Central division is at issue. (BP gives Pittsburgh the edge.) The nine NL teams with virtually no chance of challenging will get a home version of the game.

There's more to be determined in the AL, with two division races still in play. (Detroit may not have self-government, but it's got the AL Central.) While Cleveland and Baltimore have both shown signs of returning to earth, either is a short winning streak from contention. But that just gets them into the conversation, and neither appears equipped to overtake the teams ahead of them.

We need to be wary of foregone conclusions, of course, but that's not a lot of uncertainty for early August. The Braves have a 15-game cushion. Pittsburgh is 11.5 games clear of the Wild Card. The incumbent World Champs are 12 games under .500, while the two big off-season spenders are a Minor League Astros franchise from occupying last place simultaneously. And that's not even mentioning the consensus best team in baseball, the one with last year's best record. They're all aiming to break even at this point.

Before you wail and rend garments, recall the last few seasons in which the Mets, Braves, Red Sox and Rangers disintegrated in the season's waning days to push Philly, Philly, Tampa and Oakland into the post-season (or in Oakland's case, the division title). Let's hope the lottery known as the playoffs are kinder to us.