The Pecan Park Eagle

When it comes to winning…
“There’s No Place Like Home!”
~ Houston Astros, 2015

If winning division titles were all a matter of simple probability projections on games left to play with about a month to go, based on home and road winning records to date, the Astros are in line to take the AL WEST in 2015. The math steps taken to arrive at this conclusion are fairly easy to follow below in tabular form. Of course, even for me, math of this nature always brings to mind one of baseball history’s major caveats about paying total attention to probability – and that reminder that features Bobby Thomson’s 1951 “Shot Heard Round the World” and NY Giants announcer Russ Hodges screaming “The Giants Win The Pennant”, ad nauseum, into the ether of recorded baseball history.

All we did here was to examine the the three contending clubs in the MLB-Com data bank, determining their home and road win percentages over all games played through 8/24/15. Then we applied those two H&R win percentages to the games that each club had left to play at home and on the road. Then we simply added these projected yet-to-be-played home and road records to standings to date to finish out the statistical look at how the three contending ALW clubs will end the season.

If were just up the math, the Astros will be rescued from their horrible road record by their lights-out exciting winning mark at home.

At any rate, here’s the same kind of math applied to 2015 that would have shown the Brooklyn Dodgers in late August 1951 as probably in line to win the NL pennant in a walk:

ALL GAMES THRU 8/24/15

HOME RECORDS THRU 8/24/15

ROAD RECORDS THRU 8/24/15:

HOME GAMES LEFT TO PLAY

ROAD GAMES LEFT TO PLAY

PROJECTED FINAL STANDINGS

Wouldn’t it be a relief to somehow know that our Astros’ suspiciously jinxed record in winnable road games (like last night’s 1-0 Astros loss to the Yankees) was simply our human tendency for leaning our own negativity into the way we resolve failed hope and expectation as either the result of some conditional jinx (like playing on the road) or reading it as the foreboding voice of destiny’s doom?

Back on the sandlot, we had a simpler way of describing our disappointment with losing, when we weren’t too mad or mortified by whom we lost to – or how it happened. And that rationale hung simply in the air as: “That’s the way the cookie sometimes crumbles.”

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