Shannon here. Dan wrote this one (two wins ago) and I had planned to hold it until after the Subway Series, because I try to match the headspace of the readership, and it didn’t make sense to me to write a Doom & Gloom article after back to back shutouts and into the Subway Series.
Then, this crossed my newswire from the WSJ
Since 1996, just 9% of teams with a losing record on June 1 wound up with 90 wins, the number teams usually shoot for to make the playoffs, according to data crunched by The Wall Street Journal and Ben Alamar, founder of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. During that early season period, the average correlation between a team’s win percentage on June 1 and its final winning percentage is 0.76. Statisticians consider that to be a very high correlation
I think that’s an article very well worth reading….and since the WSJ opened the can of worms, I might as well let Dan ruin your day. Here’s Dan…
At this point even the most optimistic Mets fan would probably have to admit that the likelihood of a playoff spot this year is somewhat unlikely. Me being a numbers guy wanted to know just how unlikely, so let’s look at the math.
Looking at data over the last 15 seasons (1996 was the first full season with the wild card), the Mets have had an average record of 20-19 through May 17th. This year through May17th they are 19-22 – or 10% below their average.
Over the remaining games of the season they have averaged a 62-60 record, essentially the same rate as games through May 17th. If that pattern held true this year the Mets would finish with a 75-87 record.
But wait Dan, they’ve underperformed so far, surely they are better than a .500 team. Challenge accepted.
Let’s look at only those seasons where the Mets were below .500 as of May 17th and see how they did the rest of the way. There were 5 such seasons (96,01,03,04, and 10). Collectively in those years the Mets averaged 17-23 up to this point. And you know what? They weren’t as bad as that record would indicate. The rest of the season they had an average improvement of 7%! Of course that’s really not that much, and they still averaged under .500 ball the rest of the way. (For the record that 7% avg. improvement was heavily driven by the 2001 team)
So what of this team. Well, if we assume that this team will also show a 7% improvement for the rest of the season, they would finish the year at 79-83
You shouldn’t have used the record as of a certain date, but the the record as of the number of games played.
What the Mets’ record averages on a certain date is meaningless, as the number of games played by that date will vary.
wasn’t 1995 the first year with the wild card? or aren’t you counting that because of the players’ strike at the beginning of the season (and “only” a 144-game sked)… i guess that would skew your numbers somewhat…but like walt says, rather than picking an arbitrary date, you should pick an amount of games (say 60 or so) into the season to establish a baseline
not that you’re wrong, but it’s not an apples/apples comparison
All the Mets should worry about is winning tonights game. As of today they are 3.5 out of the wildcard, 5 out of the division. So they have the rest of the season to make up those three and a half games.
Who cares how many wins teams made the playoffs with 10 years ago. All that matters is what happened with this year. Was it ’99 or 2000 when they went on that 40-15 run after the subway series? I’m a realist. Is that likely again? No. Are they as good as a lot of the other teams out there? No. But sometimes the best team doesn’t win. Just the better team that day. Anything can happen.
Unfortunately the numbers do not take into account 2 of your most productive offensive players being traded at the deadline. That looks to be the reality of things this year, and a 7% increase will soon turn to a more than 7% decrease.
While I understand that keeping Beltran is certainly not in the cards and never has been, I do not agree with letting Reyes go. The Mets are a far better team with him in the lineup and will suffer dearly without him. We’ve all heard how they don’t have a #2 hitter… well, without a #1 hitter as well, who will they put on base for (name your 3,4,5 hitters)?
Without Reyes and Beltran in the lineup, I say they finish the year 70-92… at best.