Race Ain’t Nothing But a Number

Age is also a number — a number that informs statutory rape laws in almost every state.

As the reader has probably gathered, it’s the custom of Team NotGraphs to spend the better part of each day at our lushly decorated headquarters lounging about in different angles of repose whilst drinking delicious, peaty scotches and then comparing them to other delicious, peaty scotches, which we then proceed to drink.

It was, in fact, this very thing we were all doing this afternoon when — I don’t know how it happened, really — but when colleague Jackie Moore and I found ourselves discussing what constituted a “playoff race.”

Jackie submitted that, so far as he could tell, only two races remained in the major leagues as of today — those in the AL Central (between Detroit and Cleveland and Chicago) and NL West (Arizona and San Francisco). When I asked Jackie Moore how he defined race, he proceeded, first, to laugh out loud and then to roll on the floor while laughing and then to laugh his ass off. When he’d composed himself, he proceeded, at that point, to suggest that, in any case where a team had a 90% or better chance of making the postseason, that a race ceased to exist involving the team.

Looking at the playoff odds report conjured up by our mortal enemies, we find that Jackie’s initial statement about the remaining races and his definition for what constitutes a race are mostly in harmony. The one exception appears to be the Atlanta Braves, whose 86.2% chance of winning the Wild Card, and 88.4% overall mark, fall just short.

Is that how it feels? I mean, does it feel like the races Jackie named are the only two remaining ones? I’m inclined to say “yes” — while also maybe making an exception for the NL Central race between the Brewers and Cardinals (one that, granted, has become less interesting in the last few days, even).

And, second question: would this 85-90% threshold apply to previous seasons? On the one hand, one is inclined to believe that what constitutes a playoff race would go deeper — to somehow account for the personalities of the respective teams involved, or momentum, etc. On the other, it’s also entirely possible that our intuitions and the numbers agree in this case.