Massive Tie Scenarios

The probability of a five-way tie in the AL and a four-way tie in the NL went up just slightly on Sunday. The Twins won, while everyone but the Rangers lost. The Rangers were the trailing team, so the four teams behind the Twins are a little more bunched up.

I’m keeping track of the various 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 0.00005:

Team	Won-lost
Twins	3-10
Angels	5-8
Mariners	7-5
Royals	8-5
Rangers	8-5

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 0.006. That took a hit today with the Angels and Mariners losing ground to the Twins.

The Twins open a three-game series at Yankee Stadium on Monday. Those should be very competitive games as Minnesota tries to catch the Yankees for the first wild card slot, and the Yankee still have hope of catching the Red Sox. A sweep of the Twins would reduce the Yankees magic number for the first wild card slot to four over Minnesota. The rest of the pack has to hope the Yankees earn the sweep.

The Cubs beat the Cardinals, the Brewers kept pace with the Cubs and gained on the Rockies. The most likely outcome for a four-way for the NL Central and the second wild card has the Cubs winning four more games for a total of 87. The overall probability of this four-way tie occurring is 0.00022. Here is the 87 win scenario:

Team	Won-lost
Cubs	4-9
Rockies	5-7
Brewers	8-5
Cardinals	10-3

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 Thursday, so the Brewers still control their own destiny.

For Monday, the best outcomes would be:

• The Twins lose to the Yankees.
• The Brewers defeat the Pirates.

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