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August 13, 2003

Lies, Damned Lies

A Roll of the Dice

by Nate Silver

The Red Sox ended Tuesday night four games behind the Yankees in the AL East. What are the odds that they can make up that deficit to take the division? And, failing that, what are their chances to edge out the A's for the wild card?

Seriously. Grab a pencil and a piece of paper, come up with your best guesstimate, and write it down. Harder than you thought, huh? Keep reading, and we'll have an answer for you in a bit.

Whether they realize it or not, major league teams are making calculations like this all the time. Implicitly or explicitly, they can determine the direction that a team chooses to take: whether to move prospects for veterans at the trade deadline, whether to shut a young pitcher down for the season, or try (injury risk be damned) to get as much work out of him as they can. Wins are the currency that baseball transacts in, but for many purposes, they're only as good as the pennants and postseason appearances that they can be redeemed for. Much as some pundits like to talk about Mystique, Aura, and Veteran Leadership, the postseason is a lottery of sorts. Winning 11 playoff games is often a lot easier than winning 90 or 95 in the regular season, and many teams consider their season a success if their postseason ticket is punched, and they get to take their chance in the playoffs.

What's less certain is if these teams are estimating these odds properly. It's human nature to evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses less rationally than you would anyone else's, and it's all but inevitable that, like a poker player gone on tilt, at least a couple of teams each year will imagine only the rosiest possible scenarios--making a bunch of bad bets in the process. While no estimate of postseason odds will be perfect, laying down some ground rules is potentially valuable.

It is, in fact, relatively easy to come up with a reasonable estimate these odds if you know just three things:

1. What the standings are currently;
2. The true, intrinsic strength of each team;
3. The quality of competition (strength of schedule).