Massive Tie Scenarios

Wednesday turned out to be a good day for the massive tie scenarios. The Twins lost again on Wednesday, reducing the Yankees magic number to clinch the first wild card slot to four. The Royals unleashed their fury on the Blue Jays 15-5, and the Rangers beat the Mariners 8-6 to help the tie between the top three-teams. The Angels fell to the Indians 6-5 as Cleveland appears intent on earning the best record in the majors for home field advantage. Through the playoffs. With the Rays beating the Cubs, Seattle and Tampa Bay are tied for fifth place.

I’m keeping track of the various AL tie probabilities of this tie on this spreadsheet. The most probable outcome has the Twins winning three more games for a win total of 81. The probability of any tie between these five teams is 0.00022:

Team	Won-lost
Twins	3-7
Angels	5-6
Rangers	6-5
Royals	7-4
Mariners or Rays	7-3

The Twins need to play really poorly or the Royals, Rays, and/or Mariners need to play very well down the stretch for this to happen. A little more likely is the three way tie between the top three teams, with a probability of 0.019. That’s about 100 times more likely than the five-way tie.

On the NL side, in addition to the Cubs losing, the Rockies and Brewers fell, so the Cardinals gained on all three. The Brewers had a chance to gain as well, but gave up a one-run lead in the eight inning, then Adam Frazier ended the game with a walk-off home run for the Pirates.

The most likely outcome for a four-way for the NL Central and the second wild card has the Cubs winning three more games for a total of 87. The overall probability of this four-way tie occurring is 0.0007. Here is the 87 win scenario:

Team	Won-lost
Cubs	3-8
Rockies	5-5
Brewers	6-4
Cardinals	8-3

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 Cubs open a four-game series in Milwaukee on today, so the Brewers still control their own destiny. The best bet for any tie would be a for a tie between the Rockies and Brewers for the second wild card.

For Wednesday, the best outcomes would be:

• The Angels win against the Indians.
• The Rays defeat the Orioles.
• The Royals score a victory against the Blue Jays
• The Cardinals get a must win against the Reds.
• The Cubs fall to the Brewers.
• Texas and Seattle can go either way, a Texas win better for the three-way tie, a Seattle win better for the five-way tie.
• The Rockies and Padres can go either way, with a slight bias towards a Rockies loss, since a three-way tie for the second wild card seems a more likely possiblity.

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