Two Months Left, Two Games Out
August 1st, 2007 by Tank
With two months left in the season the Yankees are only two games behind Cleveland for the wild card slot, thanks to their playing .700 ball in the past month. They remain seven behind Boston for the AL East, and catching them just got slightly harder with their acquisition of Gagne, though I am relieved that, for once, the Yanks realized that they aren’t required to trade promising prospects away every season. As an aside, on August 1, 2004, the Yankees held a 9 1/2 game lead over Boston. Not that that year has any significance whatsoever.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 am
For those playing the “if the 1st-place team [Red Sox] only plays .500 ball the rest of the way…” game, that would give the Sox 93 wins on the season. The Yankees would have to win 2/3 of their remaining games to get to 94 wins.
If the Sox continue on their existing .611 win %, they’d end up with 99 wins. The Yankees would have to be the 96-97 Bulls to capture the Sox in that scenario. The Yankees would need to go 41-13 just to tie, i.e. win 3/4 of their remaining games.
And if the Sox actually play better than .611 ball down the stretch, i.e. get to 100+ wins somehow, well… I don’t think there’s enough games left for the Yankees to catch them.
All that said, and “liklihoods” aside… *anything* is possble. Still a *lot* of baseball to be played (54 games each in the case of the Sox and Yanks, including six vs. each other… including Sunday, September 16 when the Clifford Clan will be in attendance). For example, on August 2, 1978, the Yankees were in 2nd place in the AL East - 7.5 games behind the Red Sox. Does that mean I expect a 1978 redux? Nope. It just means that 1978 (and… um… 2004) prove to us that it’s baseball, baby, and yaneverknow.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:23 am
Back to our discussion about teams that get off to very hot starts - recall that our quick and dirty analysis showed that teams playing .650 or better ball through May 20 tended to cool off to around .550 for the remainder of the season. So far that’s been pretty accurate. There were two teams that qualified this year - Boston and the Mets. Since May 20, Boston has a .561 winning percentage and the Mets a .500 mark. If Boston sustains its’ .561 rate then they would end the season with 96 wins. In order to equal that, the Yanks would need to win 38 of their final 54 games - a .703 winning percentage. Entirely possible, but clearly not the way to bet.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
And back to 1978 for a moment, the Yanks and Sox only play six more times the rest of the way (which is horrible scheduling, fwiw). If the Yanks can sweep the Sox, well then… game on. But if the Sox simply take one game in each of the three-game series, those head-to-head matchups will be nonbearing fruit. Naturally, if the Sox somehow win each series (or dare I say it, sweep themselves), then that would be bad for the Yankees.
Still, it bears repeating ad nauseum, anything is possible - so let’s save all the “Yankees are done!” and “Sox have won the division/WS!” rhetoric until those things *actually* happen, shall we?