Something I've been wondering for quite a while.

[xiphias]

Okay. Baseball. There are some basic, fundamental things I don't understand.

Within a game, I pretty well understand how things work. But I don't understand, entirely, how teams are ranked. How can someone be X and a half games back -- baseball doesn't have ties? And how does the wildcard race work?

Can anyone help?

Comments

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

That's a great analysis. I would just add three things:

First, sometimes teams don't play all 162 games in a season, because the powers-that-be (i.e., the Commissioner's office) can decide that a rainout doesn't need to be made up if it can't affect playoff standings.

Second, I think the half-game thing is easier to figure out if you think of every game a team wins as gaining a half-game in the standings, and every game it loses as losing a half-game in the standings. That's why, yesterday, when the Yankees won two games (in a double-header vs. the Devil Rays) and the Red Sox, alas, lost one to the Mariners, the Yankees gained 1.5 games on the Sox.

Third, the wildcard thing can get a lot more complicated if two or more teams have the same record. This article has a much better analysis than I could write, though keep in mind the records quoted are from last season.