September 25, 2005

92 and Counting

With each Indians victory down the stretch of the regular season, I guess it's obvious that the focus is on the Red Sox and the Yankees, since we only have to beat out one of those teams in order to make the playoffs.

It seems likely that even if the Indians overtake the White Sox for the Central Division title, the White Sox are still the probable Wild Card team, since they have a three game lead on both the Yanks and Red Sox with only eight games to play. So we can't be overly concerned about whether or not we catch the White Sox. If we can shave one more game off of their lead between now and Friday, we can win the division by taking two out of three from them next weekend.

The best news for the Indians is that the Yanks and Red Sox play each other three times that last weekend, so there will definitely be three more losses for them to divide up one way or another. That will make it very difficult for both teams to catch the Tribe, unless of course the wheels somehow fall off for the Good Guys.

For the sake of argument, I'm figuring on the Indians for four wins in their last seven games, giving them 96 wins for the year. The Yanks and Bosox each have eight games left, and only 90 wins each, as of this writing. Even if they both manage to win all five of their games before their head-to-head series begins, that would leave them both one victory short of the Indians, and then they have three total losses to distribute between them. The best that one of them can do is tie us with 96 wins. If either team sweeps the other, we're in.

That's if the Indians win just four of their remaining seven games. If we win five out of seven, we're in, no matter what the Yanks and Bosox do..

Posted by dan at September 25, 2005 1:30 AM