Number Munchers: The Real Win Total We Should Be Aiming For

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There is a unique responsibility to sports media. It is an exercise that must straddle the fine line between information and entertainment. Everyone’s favorite blowhards must remain honest, yet hopeful to the billion dollar companies that give them a reason to exist. Give the information good or bad, but do so in a manner that still provides at least some shred of positivity to the teams. Slip too much to either side and you’ll find yourself in a new line of work faster than you can say “Frank White.”

All season, sports talk hosts in this town have been talking about the parity of the AL. It’s a down year, they say. With that perceived mediocrity and above referenced need to keep the listeners interested (and therefore the overlords happy), we’ve heard all kind of optimistic predictions as to what it might take to win that second wildcard spot. 84 wins? 86 wins? 88 wins?

Math (albeit a small sample size) tells us that AL WC teams over the past two years (since WC expansion) have averaged 92.5 wins. This has been my go-to social media comeback. When presented with this hard fact, the response always references back to that unquantifiable notion of mediocrity. In true Ned-Yost-feeling-in-their-gut fashion, they just feel that 86-88 wins will get the job done this year.

Now, no team has won the WC in the AL with only 88 wins since the 1996 Baltimore Orioles. But again Zach, This is a down year. There is parity. There are no dominant teams. This is the argument that I look to tackle here. Can we quantify this notion of mediocrity and somehow come up with a more accurate idea of what it will take to win the second AL WC?

My general opinion is that this is really just a trend like any other year, that with 2 months left in every season there are several teams bunched up until a few inevitably catch fire and separate from the pack. Of those few, two will find what it takes to scratch out enough wins. That this year’s perceived mediocrity is really just what happens every year. More importantly, that regardless of whether on August 8th the bunch is at 55 wins or 60 wins or 65 wins, that there is a mathematical figure on how many more wins will be needed to get a ticket to the dance.

To oversimplify it, I took the teams that have made that AL WC since expansion and figured out how many games they won from August 8 to the end of the season. Again, this is all fairly suspect due to sample size, but it should shed at least a little light on what the actual win total will need to look like.

I also included the closest team each year “on the outside looking in” just to get a larger sample size and get some idea of how heated the race was, therefore hopefully further illustrating the “catching fire” idea I am running with here. It also gives us a pretty telling idea of how close these races usually are.

In 2012 and 2013, the teams that won the 4 AL WC spots in question averaged 29.25 wins from August 8 through the end of the season. Adding in the two “outside looking in” teams, the average wins comes down very slightly to 29.167.

Right now the Royals sit at 60-53. This very sketchy mathematical exercise shows that 89 is the real number we should be shooting for (or 90 in remainderless reality, as (A) you can’t win .25 of a game and (B) the “outside looking in” number is also slightly above 29)

So, in true “everything is shades of gray” fashion, the truth lies in the middle. So often I start these articles thinking I am going to prove one side of the argument only to find that the world has a wonderful/annoying way of dragging everything to the mean. Regardless of this perceived mediocrity, 86-88 wins is not going to get it done like a lot of the mouthpieces of sports and social media in this town keep saying it will (again, understanding that at least half their job is promoting optimism to keep you somewhat pacified and, most importantly, listening).

However, the 92 mark that I have been responding with also seems to not be necessary. I suppose even this part time sports blogger can be errant sometimes.

Given this year’s current bell curve, 90 wins is what we should really be shooting for. The Royals would have to go 30-19 the rest of the way. Possible? Absolutely. The recent run of play would certainly lead us to believe that they are more than capable of doing so.

Likely? Ask any Royals fan on any given day after any given game the night before and you are going to get just about every answer under the sun. We are a town living and dying by the daily box score. The margin of error is coming down to just a couple games. A small number of plays. A series of pitches. A crucial handful of at bats. For a town that has had very little to actually be excited about in regards to baseball in almost 30 years, the next two months are going to be something special.

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Update: The question was raised to me what it would take to win the division. Since Detroit has decided to play like it wants a higher draft pick, this has become a possiblity. So, I ran the exact same exercise only using the AL Central Division winners since 1995 insead of the AL WC winners.

Surprisingly, the result pretty much came back the same. On average, teams that won the AL Central won 29.47 games from August 8th on. Apply that to Detroit’s current record of 62-50 and you see that our boys in blue would need 93 wins to take the division, or go 33-16 the rest of the way.

Admittedly, that is a pretty tall order. .674 baseball. But it could be done. The young team has shown the ability to get and stay hot for decent enough stretches of time. However, they have also shown the opposite and ABSOLUTELY can not stand a losing streak of any significant size. It also helps their cause that they play the Tigers quite a bit down the stretch.

And finally, in “Huh, I guess math is right most of the time” fashion, AL Central division winners have averaged 93.26 wins since 1995. Math don’t lie.

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