Massive Tie Scenarios

The five-way tie for the second wild card in the American League is not doing well, especially with the Twins taking the first two games from the Royals. That, for the moment dropped the Royals out of the five way race, but brought in the Mariners.

I’m keeping track of the various probabilities of this tie on this spreadsheet. The most probable outcome has the Twins winning eight more games for a win total of 82. The probability of any tie between these five teams is 0.00017:

Team	Won-lost
Twins	8-13
Angels	10-11
Rangers	11-11
Orioles	11-10
Mariners	12-9

The Twins are 22-11 starting Aug 6. They received great offense from Joe Mauer, Brian Dozier, and Jorge Polanco. Polanco’s power seems to have come out of nowhere, but it could not have come at a better time. Up until recently, he did not hit for power in the majors nor the minors.

There is also the possibility of a four-way tie in the NL, a three-way tie for the NL Central coupled with a four-way tie for the second wild card. That would be a very disruptive situation. The most wins for that to happen would be 89, but the most likely win total for this tie would be 86. The overall probability of this four-way tie occuring is 0.00079:

Team	Won-lost
Cubs	9-12
Rockies	10-11
Brewers	13-8
Cardinals	13-8

Of course, there is the three-way tie for the second NL Wild Card buried in there, which would be fun on its own. 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.

For today, the best outcomes would be:

• The Orioles end the Indians winning streak.
• The Rangers defeat the Yankees.
• The Brewers take the second game of their series from the Cubs.
• The Twins fall to the Royals.
• The Cardinals emerge victorious over the Pirates.
• The Mariers win against the Angels
• The Rockies can go either way against the Dodgers.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2wPUojq