Quote:
Originally Posted by 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 early May, I think our hole will be too deep to get to 88+ wins.
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Great post. I know there's 150 or so left, but it's just tough to retain any hope when it all just looks so familiar. Guess we'll find out shortly what this team has in terms of resiliency.
As far as the pitching goes, at what point does DM just say "**** it" & start throwing up a couple AAA guys to see if they've got it? Or is it a "We don't want them to lose confidence if they suck" thing? Even if Chen & Duffy continue to pitch well, Hochevar turned it around last night & Sanchez evens out, I have zero faith that Mendoza contributes in a positive way. And then there's the pen...
...
And (I know I'm all over the place, sorry) are we going to have any legitimate All Stars? Even if Hos, Moose, Butler, any OFs, etc. start to destroy the ball & play at a really high level immediately, there's a high profile guy blocking all of them. Hosmer's gotta get past Pujols, Texiera, Fielder & Gonzalez. Escobar's gotta get past Jeter (**** him) and Andrus, Moose has A-Rod, Beltre, Longoria. OFs are gunna be tough with Ichiro, Bautista, Hamilton... Not necessarily saying that every player listed is better than the Royal, but in most cases they're at least considerably more well known. Only guy I can see getting in right now is Butler at DH.
Normally, I wouldn't give a flying shit about ASG selections, but with a team that's 10 games out & hosting the damn thing this year, it'll be a little embarrassing (I know, add it to the list) to have just our 1 MLB-mandated selection. Part of the reason I have no interest in going to the ASG (other than the ridiculous prices and that I don't want to have to deal with a bunch of dumbass Yankee/Red Sox fans. Once or twice a year when they're apart is bad enough, I don't need to see them all in the same stadium at the same time.).
/rant