these american league races are messing with me in a major way. back in vegas, i was really pushing the guys that the tribe would win the central. for a while there, it looked like it might happen, as the tribe had the white sox lead down to a mere 2 games (it was 15 games in mid-august). however, the last two days have tempered that talk a lot, as the tribe is now down 3 with 4 games left to play (3 games hosting the cws). if the tribe wins out and the cws lose out, the tribe can win the division... but the odds of that are very tiny.

locally, of course, everyone is interested in boston and new york. yankees up 1 with 4 to play, 3 of those being nyy@bos.

appropriately enough, the actual race is cleveland and boston fighting for the wild card. both teams are tied, both teams are hosting the team leading them in the division... and the team that loses less in that final series (cle or bos) will probably win the wild card. kind of bizarre.

anyways, i did a little math and came up with the pythagorean win-loss for boston, new york, the white sox, and cleveland. let me digress for a moment and explain the pythagorean win-loss.

this formula has an incredible knack for predicting the expected winning percentages of teams. bill james developed it to define which teams were more 'lucky' than others. the concept is somewhat simple - the formula looks at the relationship between the runs scored and runs allowed by a given team. i used baseball-reference.com's definition, which is:

(Runs Scored)^1.83
---------------------------------------------------------
(Runs Scored)^1.83 + (Runs Allowed)^1.83

The traditional formula uses an exponent of two, but this has proven to be a little more accurate.

. to learn more, read some bill james :)

anyways, i did this more for an exercise for myself. the tribe has put together an incredible season but have faltered ever so slightly over the last 3 days, which may be enough for them to miss the postseason; though, as chad pointed out to me in an email earlier, not as unlikely as one might think. the indians really benefit from the yankees playing the red sox, since one of those two teams has to lose 2 games. but i digress. i did this little exercise just to see if the tribe was in a worthy position, fighting for the playoffs, or if their recent success has been partially due to luck.

TEAM	RS	RA	PWP	EWTD	AWTD
BOS	886	789	0.553	89.562	92
NYY	866	766	0.556	90.056	93
CWS	727	637	0.560	90.747	95
CLE	778	632	0.594	96.221	92

glossary-
RS = runs scored
RA = runs allowed
PWP = pythagorean winning pct
EWTD = expected wins to date (using PWP)
AWTD = actual wins to date

so boston is pretty lucky, the yankees are similarly lucky, the white sox are the luckiest team in the american league, and the indians are incredibly unlucky. i take two things from this:

1a) the tribe has really done all the right things in putting this team together. if only our bats heated up earlier in the year, who knows what this table would have looked like...
2b) there really is something to be said about being lucky

go tribe!