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SIT REP

Okay.  :: cracks knuckles briskly :: Eight teams in the AL have 0.0% chance of postseason play, including the Yankee$ with their $226MM payroll, including the Astros (thanks to the Mariners) and the champ Royals, and especially including Jerry DiPoto's old bosses who are -14 games out of the Wild Card.  

With only two games to go, 7 teams have chances at 5 spots.  The Orioles have 88 wins, the Jays 87, the Mariners 86 and also the Tigers have 86, with a rainout game in hand.  Fangraphs puts the Mariners and Tigers at 18-22% to play a Wild Card game.  Is that as opposed to a "Play-In Game?"  Probly not.

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ORKLAND

But heed ye not, yon Fangraphs' supposed 80% chance of the Mariners missing the playoffs.  It falsely presumes that the Mariners might lose one or both of the last two games to the Orks.  Nonsense!  As we know:

• The beaten-down Orks have long since assumed grovel position, as they confirmed again (early) Friday night
• Even before they did, Iwakuma and Felix had Uruk-Hai sway over them, per Mojician
• The M's are playing very well, have their two most vet aces going, and a rested bullpen

So let's get back to reality.  Assuming the Mariners win their last two, then what are our chances of a play-in game?  Well, we need to catch up to 2 of the 3 teams, the Blue Jays and Tigers both.  The Orioles are welcome to the first Wild Card.  Alternatively, if the O's wanted to botch two games, that would be okay too.

....

What would be the chances of two good things happening out of these three?

• Baltimore losing both games in New York = 88 wins
• Toronto losing one of their two games in Fenway = 88 wins
• Detroit losing one of their last three games (2 Atl, 1 Cle) = 88 wins

We discussed this, and several other esoteric subjects, in the game thread.  FiveThirtyEight.com gives the Blue Jays 57% chances to win Saturday and 46% chances to win Sunday.  That translates to a mere 26.2% chance for the Blue Jays to parlay and win both games.  Flip that around and you get a 74% chance that something good (namely, one Jays loss) for the Mariners will happen in Fenway.

The same site gives the Orioles' chances as 55% Saturday and 57% Sunday.  .45 times .43 is the Yankees' chance of parlaying one victory into two, which is the 0-2 Baltimore scenario we need.  That's a 19.4% chance of the Orioles tanking.  Wouldn't count on it.

538.com gives the Tigers 62% on Saturday, 51% on Sunday (really?), and 52% on Monday.  To lose only one game?  It's only 15.2% that the Tigers will sweep three straight.  yeah, on paper maybe...

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Here's the tricky part.  You've got a 74% of the Jays letting us in, and a 19% of the Orioles letting us in, and a 85% chance the Tigers will.  What are the chances of TWO of those three things happening?  Dr. D long since forgot the algebraic equation for that -- if any of you kids carry the formula in your 16E 22A brain cell, I'd be amused to know -- but here is a website that offers the calculator.

Unfortunately, that calculator reads out the results for everything EXCEPT what we need, that of "at least two happening." LOL.  But since it says 3.2% chance of NONE happening (all the M's rivals winning) and a 27.7% chance of "exactly one happening" that sounds to us like a 30.9% chance of 0 plus 1 .... or a 69.1% chance that at least one Mariners rival will slip and let us in.

The math major in residence, that being SABRMatt obviously, signed off.  :: shrug :: that's within 2% of what I calculated in my head, rounding off, he sez.  Ummmm ...

Why would anybody of Dr. D's obvious dignity and military bearing sit idly, and calculate this stuff?  The alternative, in the Shout Box, was to ponder the nature of the human soul if a Star Trek transporter duplicated a beaming denizen.  (We neatly solved this problem with reference to identical twins, or thought we did.)

....

All of this is assuming that the M's win 2 and that the Jays and Tigers lose only one each ... there's a different scenario in which the M's win 1 of 2, and the Jays and Tigers lose two each.  But we started the whole thing assuming the M's take care of bidness.  If you start asking what do all the scenarios add up to... well, that's 18% per Fangraphs.  Also, some amigo on ROOT said that the M's cannot be eliminated Saturday.  Huh.

....

So, you've got maybe 7 chances in 10 that two of the M's rivals will let us in, if we do win on Saturday and Sunday.  I'll take 'em.  

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PLAY-IN GAMES

Supposing the Jays, Tigers, and M's tie at 88 wins behind Balmer at 89, behind the Red Sox at however many ... the way they do this thing, is designate the Jays and Tigers teams A and B.  The M's are team C.

The Jays and Tigers play each other, and then the M's take James Paxton on the road for the "Play-In Game," winner to play Baltimore in the Wild Card Game.  Why do the M's get Team C designation?  Tiebreakers.  Could the M's, in theory, take the Team A slot and play two home games instead of one road game?  They could, yes.  Everybody assumes they wouldn't.

Go 'Kuma,

Jeff