This has to be a FIRST!!! (OT)

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Saturday morning, July 30, 2005:

EVERY team in the National League East has a WINNING record, and...

EVERY team in the National League West has a LOSING record!!

Good Lord...

can we just call the NL West the "Pacific Coast League" and put them all in the Minor Leagues??

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

What if...

the winner of the National League West FINISHES with a LOSING record and makes the playoffs???

It would be like the NBA.



Since switching to the 162 regular game schedule 45 years ago...

the WORST record for a World Championship Team goes to the:

1987 Twins (85-77 in the regular season)

and the WORST record for a team who won the League pennant but LOST the World Series goes to the:

1973 Mets (82-79 in the regular season)

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Posted By: Peter_Spaeth

I wonder what the odds against that happening are, assuming say a 50 50 chance that any given team will have a winning or losing record. Any statisticians here?

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

To make it even MORE "symmetrical"...

take a look at your morning paper where they list the National League standings.

They always list the EAST teams on TOP, then the CENTRAL teams in the middle, and then the WEST teams on the bottom.

WELL... it just so happens that the CENTRAL has 3 teams with winning records and 3 teams with losing records...

so you can actually DRAW A LINE straight through the DEAD CENTER of the NL teams as they are LISTED in the paper (right through the middle of the NL Central)...

and 100% of the teams above the line have winning records...

and 100% of the teams below the line have losing records.

HOW CRAZY!!!!!!!!!

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Posted By: Julie

Go As! (Secretly: Go White Sox!)

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Posted By: dennis

i always thought they should do away with the divisions and just let the top 4 teams in each league go to the post season. 4 best records play in the post season, 1 plays 4, 2 plays 3....too simple?

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

If they did it that way... they would have to go back to balanced schedules so that all of the NL teams would play roughly the same number of games against every team.

I would be all in favor of this... but I think the new "unbalanced" scheduling keeps the players from having to make a lot of East to West road trips for 3 weeks... so they LOVE it the way it is.

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Posted By: Anson

It doesn't always pan out this way, but look where the money is. The Diamondbacks, Giants, and Padres haven't invested gobs of money into their clubs. The Dodgers payroll isn't small but they aren't in the same leage as some of the east teams.

Granted, their are teams doing well with low payrolls too. But, it does account for something.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Actually the payroll difference isnt big between the 2 divisions

Braves and Dodgers rank 10 and 11 with basically the same payroll
Giants and Phillies are only 3 million apart
Diamondbacks are only 3 million higher than the Marlins
Rockies and Nationals are the exact same

Between those 8 teams the NL West is just barely(not even a million) higher which leaves the Padres and Mets which are 38 mil apart in favor of the Mets and if you look at those 2 teams side by side its just wasted money that seperates them.Piazza,Glavine,Matsui,Trachsel make over 40 mil and 2 are old collecting back end contracts, Trachsel hasnt pitched at all and Matsui's been hurt more than half the year and wasnt producing anything when he was healthy hitting .234 with 21 rbi's and horrible fielding.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

So the Mets will "solve" this money problem by trading FOR Manny Ramirez??



A fool and his money...

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Posted By: dennis

you have to keep up with the yanks

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Actually Hal,Mets dont really have a money problem as far as how much they have to spend,their problem is bad contracts,except Trachsel who is just hurt. They were trying to sign Delgado at the beginning of the year and from what i heard they gave him the highest offer,he just didnt want to play in NY. They settled for Doug Men-kay-vich(warning Simpsons reference:spelled out pho-net-ic-ly) for only 2 million.They can afford Ramirez its just a matter of trading away the farm to get him.

Omar Minaya is a good GM put into a bad spot otherwise i think he couldve done alot more with 100 mil and youll probably see that once Piazza and Glavine are gone this offseason.Meanwhile the other side of NY tries to make you feel bad for them by saying theyve had pitching injuries all year so theyre piecing together a pitching staff.Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright dont count as injured pitchers because theyre more valuable on the DL.Pavano was a below .500 pitcher before 1 good season last year and under NY pressure you couldnt expect him to repeat his one good season(hes at 4-6 4.77 in his 17 starts) and the other pitcher injured wasnt supposed to see the majors this year.Big friggin deal,they have their 2 best pitchers still, over 100 million in offense,and 2 relievers that every other team would trade for.Boo hoo!

I heard someone on the radio saying Joe Torre is having his best year as a manager this year because of the starters.What! are they serious.Heres a tough job.Let me write Jeter,Arod,Matsui,Sheffield,Posada in the lineup everyday, Johnson and Mussina start every 5 days,8th inning Gordon,9th Rivera.... I dont think id be called a genius if i have a record of 54-47 at this point even if my other players made Mario Mendoza look like an all-star

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Posted By: Julie

Every year, they trade a Tejada, a Mulder, Hudson--anyone who is now deserving of a big, fat raise. And every year, they manage to do quite well. It's partly their farm system, which is second to none. They must spend less than almost any team there is--anybody know?

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

If you haven't read the book "Moneyball" by Billy Beane, the GM of the A's...

you NEED to do so.

Amazing how they scrimp and save by signing players who have good "fantasy" numbers on their "stratomatic" computer programs but who do NOT have big salaries attached to them!!!

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Posted By: Julie

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Posted By: john/z28jd

A's are 21st in payroll about even with the Twins who are just slightly ahead,another team that wins every year

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Posted By: Judge Dred

Low budget teams that are competive are staffed by some of the better baseball minds.

That was an interesting observation: All Nat'l East teams >.500, Central 50/50 and West teams all < .500.

Could we officially call the Nat'l West "stinky?"

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Yes.

I knew I smelled a stinky last week.

It was coming from the left coast.

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Posted By: Scott Thompson

As a long suffering Padre fan, I look for San Diego to get all their players healthy and the win division in a runaway. I dare say they might even win as many as 82 or 83 games before it is all said and done.

Scott

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Posted By: jay wolt

"If you haven't read the book "Moneyball" by Billy Beane, the GM of the A's...

you NEED to do so."

"Moneyball" was written by Michael Lewis about Billy Beane. It was a very favorable book about Beane and how he assembled a quality team w/o the advantage of a large payroll...jay

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Posted By: Julie

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Posted By: Glenn

The specific odds that every team in the NL East would have a winning record and every team in the NL West have a losing record, assuming a 50/50 chance at a winning record for each team, are [10!/(5!5!)]. That is, 252:1.

On the other hand, the odds than all the teams in any division would have a winning record while all the teams in another division in the same league have a losing record (still using the 50/50 assumption) would be substantially higher. I can calculate that if anyone's interested, but the problem is that the records of the different teams are not independent events. If each team has a 50/50 chance of winning each game, the odds that all the teams in the NL West would have losing records are MILLIONS of times higher if all the NL East teams have winning records than if all the NL East teams also had losing records (which is nonetheless possible, as, for example, if no NL Central team had lost an out-of-division game all season, AND all the other NL teams were playing .500 ball against each of their other opponents).

edited to add: The original calculation assumes that half of the 10 teams will have losing records and half will have winning records, and assesses the odds that all 5 of the winning teams are from the East, which is not exactly what Peter asked. Without that assumption, the odds are even easier to calculate. 2^10:1. That is, 1024:1.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

I knew it was pretty weird!!!

Sure, it might happen again on opening day or something like that...

but NEVER again during a season when 100+ games have already been played!!

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Posted By: dennis

it really might be a first, they will all be under 500 at the end of the season...i'll bet the oddsmakers would agree!

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Posted By: Anson

As a longtime Padre fan, I would love to see them runaway with the pathetic West. But, as of late, the Padres are dropping games faster than Calista Flockhart with dress sizes.

Rollercoaster pitching and ailing run production won't do it. Picking up the Rangers' sloppy seconds won't do much either.

The West is a disgrace, I have to admit

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Posted By: bob rousseau

I'm still so upset that the Mariners didn't pick up Miguel Tejada when they had a chance, I still can't talk about it. They've been cursed ever since.

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Posted By: dennis

the mariners got real old as a unit faster than any team i can remember.tejada would have been much better $$ spent than beltre.(hindsite is good) beltre perhaps might have dabbled with illegal substance to produce a monster year at the end of a contract.

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Posted By: J Levine

The odds are a little skewed...the assumptions are off because of interleauge play. Interleauge play adds different odds into the mix and really confuses the math...this statisically has to incredibly rare.

Joshua

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Posted By: Glenn

Interleague play is one of the (many) issues that makes it possible to answer the question in more than one way. It is, because of interleague play, possible for every team in the NL to have a losing record. Compared to that scenario, what's happening right now is rather unremarkable. Still, I've never seen it before. My guess is that one team will come out of the NL West with a winning record this season. Just don't ask me which team.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

It is STILL happening!!!

The NL West is in shambles...

The NL East is all playing decent ball.

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Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

The NL west has a .500 team.... now the only question is "for how long?"