Let's Get Rid of the Weak Players Before We Even Start For two more months, the team with the best record will play the wild card team (aka the team with the worst record) in the first round of the playoffs. In this scenario, both teams have a 50% chance of winning the matchup and each team has the same chance of winning the first two games of the series. In games three and four, however, we can confidently predict that one of the teams will be eliminated. From here we can start guessing about who might win in game five and what chance that team has of winning a seven-game series, even though we have no way of knowing. A key is to predict the winner of game five and then choose a reasonable chance of winning the remaining games. The first thing you should do when picking a "reasonable chance" is put your finger on the back of your hand and tap on the table. Go ahead—try it. You'd be amazed at how few teams succeed at this. Now ask your kids if they can guess why. There are three possible outcomes for any single game. It's either a loss, a tie, or a win. However, it's very rare that a team will lose two or three games consecutively in a single playoff series. Therefore, in picking a "reasonable chance" of winning the series, you want to estimate a loss only once every few series. I'm sure that if we were to check the percentages of how often each result happens in a given series, the numbers would show that you'd want to pick a loss once every 4 to 6 series or so. I want to make this really clear: Teams that lose the first two games of a playoff series will never, never, never win the series. You can say it even more emphatically and loudly to the contrary if you want. But, teams will win and will go on to win playoff series. The teams that lose the first two games will just go on to lose the series. But, those teams will actually have a chance to win games three through seven. It's a pretty weak article, no? It wasn't supposed to be the final version, but it was the best I could do in a very short time and I thought I'd hit it. I was going to go with it as is—it's the longest piece on this website at about 8,000 words. I could've easily trimmed the length and made it about 4,000 but I thought that, on the off chance that I had readers or a few extra readers (hey, maybe this one person would be you!), that the more material the better. As you can see, it didn't work out that way and now it's at 9,000 words. I am very close to giving up on this project. I am not going to kill the whole series, but it will have to get a really big update at some point. I am close. I just can't get a great feel for how to handle it. However, I'm still going to keep it up through this year, as that was my plan all along. So, please enjoy! I need to start posting to Facebook as well as here, which I'm sure you understand. This is an awful lot of words for such a short topic. I guess I did not get my point across, so I'll rephrase it: I read with interest that one of the comments here was that it is not very good practice to pick one of the teams that will not make the playoffs. Well, guess what? That is exactly what teams do when they make their "picks" for the playoffs. They pick the two teams with the best record. Therefore, I don't think it is at all odd or unique that I'm going to pick two of them this year. And to me, by "pick", I really mean pick for the other teams. On a side note, I see many comments about the number of playoffs being wrong or being too low or too high, etc., and the only thing I ask of everyone here is this: Take those comments with a grain of salt. They mean very little to me. Some will be spot on, some will be completely off, but in the end I will do my best. I will not ignore anyone, even those people who are upset by the idea. But really, who am I to say that I know better? I am just doing my best to run a simulation, not write the laws of baseball. I would really appreciate it if you guys would get your opinion from all kinds of people, including those who never read this blog and those who do. I just want to be able to compare notes with others. Anyway, thanks for reading and have a wonderful Wednesday. (P.S. One last thing: I am going to start doing something at the end of each post with the post number so people know what post they are in. This should be pretty self-explanatory and will be a nice reference.) The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions.