With 22 Games Left, How Do Mariners Clinch Playoff Spot?
The MLB regular season is rapidly approaching its conclusion, and it’s looking like 11 of the 12 playoff teams have pretty much sealed their spots. In the National League, the Phillies, Brewers, Dodgers, Padres, Cubs, and Mets are well enough ahead of the other nine Senior Circuit contestants as to make any upset require a phenomenal collapse. And in the Junior Circuit, the first five teams are looking to be some combination of the Tigers, Blue Jays, Astros, Yankees, and Red Sox.
But as to that third wild card spot in the American League, it seems to be well and truly up for grabs, with even teams who are barely over the .500 mark having a chance to surge into the spot.
Coming out of the trade deadline, the Seattle Mariners looked like serious contenders for the AL West crown and potentially dangerous competition in October. But with the team losing 14 of their last 20 games (including nine of their last 12 on the road), they have not only bottomed out of the seeding contest for the top spots falling to 73-67, but have opened the door to a host of other AL teams.
Before we talk about the ways to analyze these teams’ chances, we must first discuss the tiebreakers, as Seattle has played all its games against all but one of the other contenders in the mix for a wild card.
The first tiebreaker is the head-to-head record, and the good news for Seattle is that they have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Rangers and Guardians. The Royals and Mariners have played four games against each other and split 2-2, but there is still one three-game mid-September series in Kansas City that will decide that tiebreaker. However, the record between the Rays and Mariners is complete at 3-3, so it moves on to the second tiebreaker.
That is interdivisional record, or the record against the teams’ own divisions. Here, the M’s currently have an advantage, at 27-18 against the AL West as compared to Tampa’s 16-23 against the AL East. Seattle has seven more games against its own division (and so its final divisional record could be anywhere between 27-25 and 34-18), whereas the Rays have 13 upcoming games against their own division (and as such have a range of 16-36 to 29-23). It’s therefore likely that the M’s will end up with the divisional tiebreaker over Tampa Bay, but not 100 percent certain.
There are multiple ways we can go over Seattle’s playoff chances. The simplest is to go over what are referred to as “Magic Numbers.”
Magic Numbers: 20 (vs. Rangers), 20 OR 21 (vs. Royals), 20 OR 21 (vs. Rays), 19 (vs. Guardians)
The “magic number” refers to the combination of positive results that the Mariners would need to clinch a better record than a given team, whether that be a win by Seattle or a loss by the other team. For example, if the Mariners go 11-11 over their final 22 games (finishing 84-78), Texas would be able to clinch a better record than Seattle by losing eight or fewer games. For Texas, this would mean going 13-8 over their final 21 games to finish 85-77, as any tie would go to Seattle.
Should none of the four other teams get particularly hot or cold and all finish with stretches around .500 (say, 11-10 for Texas, 11-11 for Kansas City, 11-11 for the Tampa Bay, and 12-11 for Cleveland), the Mariners would need to win 10 games of their own to match the higher magic number totals.
But it’s very likely that at least one of these teams does better than .500, which would force the Mariners to do a whole lot better than 84-68. If we say that the Rays go 17-6, for example, the M’s would have to go 14-8 to tie and 15-7 to stave off any tiebreakers, which would be records of 87-75 or 88-74.
But how can we tell which team might surge down the stretch?
Pythagorean Projections
A good start would be to look at what are known as the Pythagorean records, which are based on run differential. In the long run of things, a team’s record should begin to reflect its run differential—in essence, you could make a pretty reasonable estimate by saying that a team’s Pythagorean win percentage up to the current point (so long as you have a good sample size) will be its actual win percentage (or something close to it) for the remainder of the season.
Be careful not to fall into the Gambler’s Fallacy here: if a team is underperforming or overperforming its Pythagorean record, that does not mean it is bound to compensate by doing the opposite so that its final total record reflects its Pythagorean. Rather, it means its record in future contests should look like its Pythagorean. Past results don’t have an effect on future ones; it doesn’t matter if 10 straight coin flips have landed on heads, it’s still 50/50 for the next one.
What I will do here is go over each team’s current actual record and its current Pythagorean winning percentage and use the Pythagorean winning percentage to make a rough prediction of the final records.
Seattle Mariners, 73-67, +11 differential, ~.507 Pythagorean winning percentage: 84-78 projected final record
Texas Rangers, 72-69, +90 differential, ~.574 Pythagorean winning percentage: 84-78 projected final record
Tampa Bay Rays, 71-69, +63 differential, ~.550 Pythagorean winning percentage: 83-79 projected final record
Kansas City Royals, 71-69, -7 differential, ~.493 Pythagorean winning percentage: 82-80 projected final record
Cleveland Guardians, 69-70, -56 differential, ~.453 Pythagorean winning percentage: 79-83 projected final record
That’s a pretty dead heat, and the Mariners would currently be projected (using this method) to make the third wild card spot based on a tiebreaker with the Texas Rangers. But these are just guides as to what might be the average result if you were to play these last few weeks over 100 times, in reality, at least one of these teams will get hot.
But based on the Pythagorean records, we can make an educated guess as to what the “hot” team(s) might be: and that educated guess brings us to the Rangers and Rays.
In reality, however, I don’t have a crystal ball. The only thing that will tell us what happens is the outcome of these games in reality.
