[alnorth]

I spent a bit of time this morning trying to look at how bad you have to be in April to give up all hope for the year and just look at going to the ballpark as a meaningless fun way to spend a July evening with nothing on the line.

I know a lot of us have already written off 2012, some before the season started thinking 2013-14 was more realistic, but if one were to clinically examine our record without any prior knowledge that our pitching isn't there yet and we probably have no hope because of that regardless, if you want to overlook that minor detail and still have any hope at all of a flukey comeback with all things being equal, at what point can you let that go? How bad does our April have to be, before "Our Time" becomes "Pour (a beer) Time"?

I looked at every playoff team for the last 10 years, including the teams that would have gotten the 2nd wild card, and have 102 data points. (2 extra because 2 of those years we had a tie for the mythical 2nd wild card) It appears that the point where you begin to tentatively give up hope on May 1st is roughly 5 or 6 below .500, and the point of no return is 7 below .500 or worse. I won't say coming back from 7 under is unprecedented, I only went back 10 years, but it would be firmly in "hasn't happened in a long-ass time" territory.

Games above/below .500 at the end of April - # of playoff teams in the last 10 years.
+15 - 1
+14 - 0
+13 - 0
+12 - 1
+11 - 1
+10 - 4
+9 - 5
+8 - 5
+7 - 10
+6 - 6
+5 - 5
+4 - 6
+3 - 7
+2 - 6
+1 - 7
0 - 6
-1 - 7
-2 - 4
-3 - 5
-4 - 10
-5 - 3
-6 - 3
-7 or worse - 0

Average, +2.5
Average if under .500, -3.2

+5 or better - 37.3%
+2 to +4 - 18.6%
-1 to +1 - 19.6%
-4 to -2 - 18.6%
-5 or worse - 5.9%

I can't explain that strange inexplicable bulge of teams who are 3 or 4 games under .500 but still make the playoffs, but it does give hope that 3 or 4 under is not bad enough to write off a team (again, ignoring our pitching problems and that those 15 teams probably had better pitching) unless they follow it up with a crappy May.

In general, playoff teams that start out 5 or 6 under in April absolutely exploded in 1 or more of the following months (as in, about .750 or so in at least 1 month) and finished strong in September.

However, that is not common, maybe once every other year 1 team will do that. There seems to be at least 2 playoff teams every year that finished April somewhere between 2 and 4 games under.

The Royals have 10 games left in April, and they are in that 7-under no-man's land right now. Obviously if they reel off a 10-game winning streak to finish 3 over, we'll all be excited as hell, people will start climbing back on the bandwagon, and they'll be on the front page of ESPN.

More realistically, I think they need to go about 7-3 in the next 10 games to gain 4 net wins and finish just 3 under. If they just go .500, especially given the tough schedule coming in May, I think our hole will be too deep to get to 88+ wins.