Baseball Toaster: The Juice Blog : Clinching

Clinching

2005-09-23 10:30

by Will Carroll

I've spent the morning pouring over charts, stats, and schedules and while this won't be a long post, I will be a pretty clear one. Right or wrong, this should give us something to talk about.

The Red Sox will miss the playoffs.

The White Sox will win the division, clinching by winning the first game of their final series.

The Indians will mount a furious charge, finishing just one game behind the White Sox although the last two games will likely be against a skeleton crew of Pale Hose as they would have clinched and prepped for their meeting with the Angels.

The Yankees will finish just strong enough to defeat the Red Sox, killing my preseason predictions as dead as dead can be, clinching by winning the penultimate game. Randy Johnson will pitch a complete game and point to the sky as Yankees fans (and Big Stein) forgive the heartache of the 2005 season.

Which, under these calculations means the playoffs will look like:

White Sox (HF) vs Angels
Yankees vs Indians
Cardinals (HF) vs Padres
Braves vs Astros

Comments

2005-09-23 10:40:46

1. Todd S

Mr. Davenport disagrees:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_odds.php

2005-09-23 11:27:11

2. Ken Arneson

Yankees vs. Indians would be a very interesting matchup. The others don't excite me much.

I'd love to see the Yanks/Red Sox go down to the final Sunday, with the loser going home. What could be more fun than that?

2005-09-23 11:31:45

3. Cliff Corcoran

Ken, I almost agree with the second part of your post, but it would be fitting for Johnson v. Schilling to decide it on Saturday as well. Of course, for my sanity I'm hoping the Yanks take care of business before then, though it doesn't seem terribly likely.

2005-09-23 12:11:33

4. Scott Long

Who can it be writing at my blog?

So way to go Will, first Sheehan damages my screed on some of his work and now you go and predict the White Sox to sneak in to the playoffs. I should have just stuck to ripping Curly Mullet and Windy City Woody Paige, considering they are not credible on a consistent basis.

Who can it? Who can it.......be now?

2005-09-23 13:07:46

5. Will Carroll

My calculations aren't as extensive as Clay's but take into account the starting pitchers, matchups, and a few other little things I was playing around with. It's actually a small simulation built off of Clay's original idea and using Strat as the engine. Clay's is likely to be much, much more accurate, but I figured as long as I was doing work, I'd post it.

2005-09-23 14:02:32

6. Todd S

It's just interesting that the first day in a long time that Cleveland has better odds than the White Sox, you go the other way.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Just interesting timing...

2005-09-23 14:48:36

7. RickM

I think you have the AL Central backward. The Indians are the team to beat there.

The Red Sox aren't out of it yet, but they need to get on their horse.

Watch out for the Astros in the NL.

How many of you guessed that there would be two teams from the AL Central in the playoffs when this season started?

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