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Monday, September 20, 2004

THE FAT LADY IS WARMING UP
I will be honest with you; I did not even know Chris Young existed until yesterday.

We are three games back with thirteen to play; with six of those games against the A's, this is theoretically doable, but let us face facts: this is not a championship caliber team.

As for me, I have been saddened and disgusted by our offensive shutdown. We've got Kelvim Escobar and Ace Washburn pitching their heart out, and over here we can't even scrape out one run against Texas! Of course, these are all things you know ...

Here is what we would have to do, based on how Oakland does, in order to tie or win the division:

Oakland    Tie    Pct    Win    Pct

13- 0 XXX XXX XXX XXX
12- 1 XXX XXX XXX xxx
11- 2 XXX XXX XXX XXX
10- 3 13- 0 1.000 XXX XXX
9- 4 12- 1 .923 13- 0 1.000
8- 5 11- 2 .846 12- 1 .923
7- 6 10- 3 .769 11- 2 .846
6- 7 9- 4 .692 10- 3 .769
5- 8 8- 5 .615 9- 4 .692
4- 9 7- 6 .538 8- 5 .615
3-10 6- 7 .462 7- 6 .538
2-11 5- 8 .385 6- 7 .462
1-12 4- 9 .308 5- 8 .385
0-13 3-10 .231 4- 9 .308
So that's encouraging. As you can see, it's not even in our own hands at this point. Texas and Seattle have to help us out, or it's just over*. But this is all very dispiriting ...

P.S. Baseball Prospectus claims we have a 17.6% chance of making the playoffs. Okay ...

P.P.S. Maybe Quentin Griffin really does suck.

*As pointed out in the comments section, this statement is not literally true -- it is mathematically possible for us to win even if Seattle and Texas lose every game from here on in. But realistically, we would have to expect that Seattle and Texas will win more than one game between them over the next two weeks.

As this is now the second revision I've made to this post since originally putting it up, I may put this in the file for Worst Post Ever.

Comments:
Your post makes no sense. We have six games with Oakland. If we swept them, we would be three up on them.

I think you have few words messed up on your post.
 
You are right; I wasn't thinking clearly at all ... sorry about that. I fixed it ...
 
"Maybe Quentin Griffin really does suck."

I was going to point that out, but I see you beat me to it.
 
Texas and Seattle have to help us out, or it's just over..
.
What? If The A's swept those teams, and the Angels swept those teams, and the Angels went 5-1 against the A's, then the Angels wouldn't need any help from those teams. Maybe you're saying that you think that going 5-1 against the A's is impossible, but the fact remains that it is mathematically possible for the Angels to get win without help from the Rangers and Mariners.
 
Well, yes, it's mathematically possible for that scenario to happen -- but going 5-1 against the A's and sweeping the others means we'd go 12-1. Do you really think we're going to go 12-1 in the next two weeks? We've had hot streaks this year, but that would be a historically notable comeback. (It also depends on both Seattle and Texas ending the season on 0-13 streaks, which seems a bit unlikely.)

Reading it again, I misstated the case by putting it in literal terms; for most realistic scenarios, we need help.
 
If the Angels go 4-2 against the A's, then they only need to do 1 better than the A's in the other 7 games. If the Angels win both of their other two series, that puts them at 9-4, with the A's guaranteed to be at best 9-4. If the A's go 4-3 against the M's and the Rangers, that puts them at 6-7, and that looks like a tie to me. This seems very doable at this stage, although, we will certainly see what happens better over the next couple of days.
 
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