Baseball Hope Springs Eternal

I hate this time of the baseball season.  It is early enough in the season where few teams have been mathematically eliminated, yet far enough in that most teams should know better about their chances but delude themselves with false optimism.

For example, let’s take the New York Yankees.  At the trade deadline they uncharacteristically became sellers, unloading two All-Star relief pitchers, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman, to contenders in exchange for prospects, and for good measure they unloaded their best hitter, Carlos Beltran. Yet, even after all this activity, I heard an ESPN talking head (maybe a former Yankee, but I don’t recall) say the old cliché, “The Yanks aren’t out of it!”

Speaking mathematically, that is technically correct.  At the time the Yanks were 58-56, only 3 ½ games out of the second wild card position.  With 50 games to go, why couldn’t they make up 3 ½ games?

The answer is because they are a .500 team after 70% of the season.  That is a pretty good sample size.  Baseball Reference gives them a Simple Rating System rating of -0.1, meaning that factoring in strength of schedule they are actually a below average team (an average team has a SRS of 0).  To get to a reasonably good number of wins to make the playoffs, like 87, they’d have to go 29-19 or play .600 the rest of the way.  Is there any reason for thinking a .500 will become a .600 team after giving away their two best closers and best hitter?  It isn’t impossible, but I estimate the odds of it happening are less than 3% NOT factoring in the loss of talent.

The Yankees are only 3 ½ games out of the second wild card spot, but they are behind the Tigers, Mariners and Astros.  This means that the Yankees would have to play 3 ½ games better than three teams ahead of them (who obviously have a better record than them right now), plus hope no team behind them passes them.  Add in the fact that the Yankees have a losing record against the other teams in the AL East, and their prospects of inning diminish even further.

Manager Joe Girardi said the reason why he refused the play A-Rod at third base in his final game was because he was trying to win ballgames.  I guess he didn’t get the memo from Yankee management that by trading for prospects the Yankees are now playing for the future, not to win.

And even the above argument is all about getting to the second wild card spot.  In the four post seasons since the implementation of the second wild card spot, the team eking its way into the playoffs by that method has only won in the next series twice out of eight times (St. Louis in 2012, Chicago in 2015), but none went any further.  So winning the second wild card slot is hardy a road to the World Series (granted this is a small sample size, plus in 2014 both San Francisco and Kansas City made it to the World Series as first wild card teams).

I’ve always lived by the rule of thumb that if your team is at or below .500 on August first, don’t get your hopes up.  Even a returning superstar would be hard pressed to drive a team to the playoffs that had as many losses as wins that late in the season.  As the old saying goes, wait ‘til next year.