In a year in which it looked like the AL would produce a very good chance of a massive tie, and the NL held out hope, it looks like all scenarios are on life support with a little over two weeks left to play. The leaders in the NL won on Saturday, while the trailers lost. The leader in the AL lost, but the lower ranked teams failed to capitalize on that lost.
The AL teams don’t really surprise me. None of the five are very good or very bad, so they are subject to random winning streaks and losing streaks. I don’t want to end this survey, because at this time next week things might have improved drastically. Right now, it looks like a very tough road even for a three-way tie in the AL.
I’m keeping track of the various probabilities of this tie on this spreadsheet. The most probable outcome has the Twins winning four more games for a win total of 81. The probability of any tie between these five teams is 0.00008:
| Team | Won-lost |
|---|---|
| Twins | 4-10 |
| Angels | 5-9 |
| Mariners | 7-6 |
| Royals | 8-6 |
| Rangers | 9-5 |
The Rangers and Royals are probably out of it. Even the Mariners are under .500. I’m now also tracking the three way tie among the Twins, Angels, and Mariners, and the probability of that stands at around 0.01, or close to one percent.
The Cubs beat the Cardinals, the Rockies won, and the Brewers lost so the gap widened in the NL race between top and bottom The most likely outcome has the Rockies and Cubs winning five more games for a total of 87. The overall probability of this four-way tie occurring is 0.00036. Here is the 87 win scenario:
| Team | Won-lost |
|---|---|
| Rockies | 5-8 |
| Cubs | 5-9 |
| Brewers | 9-5 |
| Cardinals | 10-4 |
Milwaukee finishes the season with three games against St. Louis, so they would need to be separated by a odd number of games going into that series for a tie to be possible. The above calculation ignores that. The Cardinals really need a win today for their own playoff hopes. They have a four-game series with the Cubs coming up, and it looks like they will need to sweep that series to have a chance at a division title.
For today, the best outcomes would be:
- The Royals beat the Indians.
- The Twins lose to the Blue Jays.
- The Mariners beat the Astros.
- The Brewers emerge victorious against the Marlins.
- The Cardinals defeat the Cubs.
- The Rockies fall to the Padres.
- The Angels and the Rangers can go either way. The Angels winning is better for the three-way tie.