It has been fun doing this and thinking of teams on the brink of elimination. Last Tuesday, after losing the White Sox, the Royals were about to be forced out. They'd already been gone from wild card contention, but the AL Central is a land of midgets where anything can happen (which hopefully means the Tigers win it, but that is another story). But the Royals were facing mathematical elimination on Wednesday... but beat the Sox. Then they did it again on Thursday. The White Sox flew west to face the Angels and the Indians came to Kansas City, so with there being zero room for mistakes - the Royals had to win out their season, and White Sox lose it out - it seemed like it would happen quickly. But Friday night, both the Angels and Royals won. Then it happened again yesterday, and not only were the Royals still not mathematically eliminated, but the Tigers had moved into half a game of the White Sox. That meant they'd have to start losing too.
Today, in the first game of a doubleheader, the Tigers did exactly that. The Royals were still hanging tough. But then they got crushed by the Indians, 15 to 4, and the magic rally was over. The Royals are now mathematically eliminated from Major League Baseball 2012 World Championship contention. Still though, this scrappy bunch of shitheads outlasted a third of the MLB, solidly ensuring their position as middle class status, albeit very low middle class status. Perhaps this is a thing to build upon, perhaps it is a thing to forget. I am not one to say. Only time to can reveal such mysteries.
The most painful part of Math in baseball is the W/L% where there are games where your team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs and the rest of the games are empty ones.
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