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September 7, 2007

Prospectus Matchups

The World Turned Upside Down

by Jim Baker

What's all this talk of division champions and Wild Card teams? What is our unrelenting obsession with success in this country? Hell man, there's a whole other world below the surface of the water, too! What of it?

Today, we're going to look at the six races (well, five, one of them is on ice already) for last place in the divisions. I'm not so sure how much shame is affiliated with finishing last anymore. Time was, when there were eight and 10 teams in each league, last place was a far piece from first-–seven to nine teams away. With the current divisional alignments, a last-place club is never more than five teams from the team in front, and can be as close as three. This isn't taking into account games back, of course, but somehow, finishing in fourth, fifth, or sixth place to come in last doesn't seem to bear quite the stigma that finishing in eighth or tenth seemed to. Or is that just my perception?

To determine who has the best shot at coming in last, we're going to reverse the Baseball Prospectus Postseason Odds Report. (For an excellent explanation of how it works, be sure to check out Derek Jacques Toolbox piece on that very subject.)

Below you will find charts (which do not include yesterday's handful of games) that look similar to those that you'll see in the Postseason Odds Report. They'll look like they're upside down, though. This is because these show you which teams stand the best chance of coming in last. The first column you see is marked "Last Place." This shows the percentage of simulated seasons in which the teams came in last in their division. Clay Davenport, who I am grateful to for running a million seasons to come up with these charts, explains the other two columns as follows: "The worst team in the league that doesn't win a title is the 'Wild Card.' The playoff column just adds the 'division titles' with the 'wild cards,' so it is their chance of being a 'playoff team'... if playoffs were defined by golf scores, the lowest score instead of the best."

American League East