@@Baseball

The Los Angeles Angels have been falsely reported as being eliminated from playoff contention.

  • September 11, 2024


Bear with me…

Following their loss last night, several national outlets have reported that the Angels have been eliminated from 2023 2024 Playoff contention, but from what I can tell this is not true. link

The Angels are sitting at 60-85 with 17 games left, at best they can win 77 games. The Yankees, Orioles, Guardians, and the Royals all currently have more than 77 wins, so the Angels at best can achieve the 3rd Wildcard. BUT, that spot is held by the Twins for now. The Twins have already won 77 games and hold the season tiebreaker against the Angels 4-1, so Anaheim has been eliminated from the Wildcard.

But they can still win the AL West. Current standings are as follows, with the remaining divisional games:

Astros 77-67

Mariners 73-72

Rangers 70-75

Athletics 63-82

Angels 60-75

Mariners and Rangers play 7

Mariners and Astros play 3

Mariners and Athletics play 3

Mariners and Angels play 0 (Angles Tiebreaker)

Rangers and Astros play 0 (Astros Tiebreaker)

Rangers and Athletics play 3

Rangers and Angels play 3

Angels and Athletics play 0 (Oakland Tiebreaker)

Angles and Astros play 7

Athletics and Astros play 2

Assuming the Angels win out, and all other AL West teams lose all their remaining non divisional games, the following can happen:

Angels win out, finish 77-85

Astros lose out, finish 77-85

Mariners take 3 against the Astros and 1 against the Rangers, finish 77-85

Rangers take 6 from the Mariners and lose all other games, finish 76-86

Athletics take 3 from the Mariners, 2 from the Astros, and 3 from the Rangers, finish 71-91

In this case, the Angels, Astros, and Mariners al finish with a record of 77-85. The Angels would own both tiebreakers and thus win the AL West and be playoff bound.

Is this going to happen? I’m not counting on it but if my math is right, it is possible, and would be absolutely hilarious. I’ve already spent way too much time thinking about it and writing this out, meaning they will end up actually eliminated tonight. Oakland also still has a path to the AL West crown, which would be equally as funny.

42 comments

  3. Just a heads up that you should double space between lines in that middle section with their records and how many games they have remaining.

    They all run together in one line on at least some reddit platforms!

  5. Boy is Ohtani’s face going to be red when he faces the Angels in the world series this year

  6. Completely agree, not sure how they messed this up.

    In my opinion, when calculating whether a team is eliminated, you should just assume they’ll win out, all other teams will lose out, and they’ll get any tiebreakers. At that point, if they still wouldn’t have a playoff spot, then you can just call them eliminated and move on.

    If you want to declare them “eliminated” before that point, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that it’s either impossible for all other teams to lose out (because they play one another) or that it’s impossible for them to win the necessary tiebreakers. And I look forward to reading those types of posts because we usually get them on this sub.

    But not only did Fox Sports *not* provide any of that info, they were actually *wrong* about it. Whoops!

  8. *inb4 Houston eliminates the Angels themselves with a walkoff grand slam in the 12th inning by Altuve*

  9. That was a lot to type out. Glad you got it all in before they lose one more game to be actually and completely eliminated from contention.

  16. o7

    Thank you for your service. This was important work. Don’t let the haters tell you otherwise.

  25. Lets all be honest here, the Angels were (un)officially eliminated from the playoffs when Trout went on the IL

  26. They eliminated the use of tiebreaker games when they expanded the playoffs. The three way tiebreaker would be as follows:

    If the three clubs DO NOT all have identical records against one another and Team X has a better record against Teams Y and Z, then Team X is the qualifier. If Team X and Y have identical records against one another and each has a better record against Team Z, then Teams X and Y follow the two-club tiebreaker rules to determine the qualifier. Otherwise, the three clubs are ranked by their overall winning percentage against one another, and the club with the highest overall winning percentage is the qualifier. If two of the clubs have identical winning percentages in this scenario, then they would follow the two-club tiebreaker procedure.

    ~~Edit: I’m not taking the time to figure out all the head-to-head records at play in this scenario, but I’m gonna assume this is the reason the Angels have been declared eliminated.~~ Edit: they would hold the tiebreakers, too.

  33. Assuming each team has a 50% chance of winning each game, I believe the odds of all of this happening is ~1 in 5,146,971,000,000,000 (or roughly 1 in 5 quadrillion).

    |Scenario|Odds|Chance|
    |—————-|————–|——————|
    |LAA win remaining 17 games| .5^17 = 0.000763%|~1 in 131,000|
    |HOU lose remaining 11 games (excl. 7 vs LAA)| .5^11 = 0.0488%|~1 in 2048|
    |SEA lose 4 non-division games|.5^4 = 6.25%|~1 in 16|
    |TEX lose 4 non-division games|.5^4 = 6.25%|~1 in 16|
    |OAK lose 6 non-division games|.5^6 = 1.56%|~1 in 64|
    |SEA-TEX finishes 1-6|.5^(7)*7 = 5.47%|~1 in 18|
    |TEX-OAK finishes 0-3|.5^3 = 12.5%|~1 in 8|
    |SEA-OAK finishes 0-3|.5^3 = 12.5%|~1 in 8|
    |Total = .5^(55)*7|0.0000000000000194%|~1 in 5.15×10^15|

  38. About the same chance as the Sun exploding tomorrow but we don’t act on that miniscule chance do we.

  40. By the time I scroll over to the sidebar, I better see an unfaded Angels logo or there’ll be hell to pay.

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