Game Over for Many Baseball Teams

Photo Illustration by Ian Keltie; Getty Images (4); Associated Press (3); Southcreek Global/Zuma Press (2); Reuters; European Press Agency; CSM/Landov

Major League Baseball proposed a rule change last month that would expand the number of playoff teams to 10 from eight, as early as next year. The idea was to create competition for more teams further into the season.

Some traditionalists howled, and argued the game is already gloriously unpredictable. Baseball's supremacy is determined during six grueling months, culminating in the pennant race of August and September. Anything can happen.

But the numbers say they're wrong. Much of the drama of the season is pretty much over after 50 games—by June 1. By then, about one-third of the teams are out of it; another half dozen will join them if they don't get hot quickly.

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"I usually give up by my birthday, which is May 4," said George Will, the writer, Cubs fan and one of the 14 members of a committee which, in a secret vote, unanimously recommended the change. Though as conservative about the game as he is on other matters, Mr. Will is fine with expanding the playoffs as long as the games don't extend later into the year.

"It's important for baseball to take back September," Mr. Will added, referring to a month that the National Football League has commandeered. "You do that by making more fans and more cities feel like they are in the scramble."

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 (see sidebar).

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By those measures, fans in Houston, Minnesota, Seattle, Arizona, San Diego, Pittsburgh and both sides of Chicago can start waiting 'til next year (barring a dramatic turnaround in the next week and a half). Just below them, hovering a few games under .500 and with hope dwindling are teams in a half dozen other towns, from Washington to Milwaukee, Los Angeles and half of New York, whose fans might want to start thinking about football.

"By May, you know," said Harold Reynolds, former All-Star second baseman for the Seattle Mariners.

The statistics squarely contradict some of baseball's most cherished cliches. Baseball is supposed to be a marathon, not a sprint. Fans are encouraged not to give up hope, to keep coming out to the ballpark through the dog days of summer. Players dutifully say they're "taking it one day at a time." Even the worst team is supposedly just an extended hot streak away from contention.

The it's-never-too-late trope is even built into the game's personnel calendar, which encourages teams to wait to make major trades until the two-week period between the All-Star game in mid-July and the first trading deadline July 31.

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Outfielder Garrett Jones of the Pirates, a team that must pick it up soon to avoid two decades without postseason play.

Yet veterans know reality sets in far sooner.

"You need 50 games to know who you are," said Mets outfielder Carlos Beltran. After that, Mr. Beltran said, teams need to make major changes or decide whether to begin planning to take the team in a new direction the following season.

Dennis Eckersley, the Hall of Fame pitcher, said no matter what players say about putting losses behind them and taking the season one game at a time, poor starts have a debilitating effect, especially if a team within the division scorches the first two months.

"It affects the guys who play every day," Mr. Eckersley said. "They get disheartened." Mr. Eckersley was on the Boston Red Sox in 1984 when the Detroit Tigers started the season 35-5 and had an eight-game lead by May 23. "You just knew no one was going to catch that," he said.

That's why the best players and teams, no matter what they say when the microphones are on, are trained to ignore the old saw that "it's a long season."

Statistically Speaking...

Behind the numbers: Why it's so hard to overcome a bad start after June 1

How high is a 0.76 correlation? Statisticians consider 0.7 a "significant" correlation and 0.8 a "strong" one. These are on a scale where 1.0 represents a direct statistical relationship and 0 represents no relation at all. Ben Alamar, the founder of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, said football stat-heads are thrilled when they find a correlation of 0.4. in predicting whether certain plays lead to extra yardage. The system of college admission in the U.S. is largely based on SAT scores. The College Board's 2008 analysis of the relationship between SAT scores and first-year college performance found a correlation of 0.53. In terms of sports, the June 1 winning percentage correlation in baseball is higher than the correlation of winning percentages of NFL teams at a comparable point in the season (five games). Also, despite just a 16-game schedule, 12.6% of NFL teams under .500 at that point ended up making the playoffs, which is higher than the rate for baseball. A comparison with hockey and basketball teams isn't applicable because more than half of those make the playoffs.

They approach the games and at-bats in April and May with at least the same level of intensity as the ones in September, knowing that a victory or a loss could be even more important early on.

"You really do come in and try to win every game, even though you know you can't," said San Francisco Giants reliever Ryan Vogelsong. "I can assure you, no one is thinking we have time to make anything up. It's really intense."

There are always exceptions. The Red Sox this season started 2-11 but are 20-9 since then and are creeping up on the division-leading Tampa Bay Rays.

"We know we're good, we just haven't played like it very much," said veteran pitcher Tim Wakefield. "When you're bad, you know it right away."

And to be sure, there is the occasional team that is sluggish through the spring and catches fire in August and September. But baseball's two most famous comeback clubs, the 1978 Yankees and the 1951 Giants, were 29-18 and 22-21 respectively on June 1.

The best explanation for why 50-games is all it takes to sort out the winners from the losers has to do with a combination of mathematics, psychology and the secrets of winning baseball games. While any bad team can have a good week or month, excelling for a 50-game stretch without very good players is virtually impossible.

"Ultimately, there's just no substitute for talent," said Kansas City Royals Manager Ned Yost. His team is showing promise this year for a simple reason—better players, including outfielder Jeff Francoeur and shortstop Alcides Escobar. It's a definite improvement, even if a 3-7 streak of late has them on the bubble of survival.

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"You could tell there was a different attitude and a buzz in spring training," Royals assistant general manager Dean Taylor said. "There were some prospects on the verge. We saw a different level of expectation."

The Royals, whose farm system is considered the best in the game, had a strange season in 2010. The team's batting average was second in the Major Leagues at .274, but the Royals were 20th in runs scored in part because they were 14th in on-base percentage and 26th in home runs. Their solution: become more aggressive on the basepaths.

"It was the first thing we did every day in spring training, working on baserunning drills," Mr. Yost said. This season the Royals have stolen a Major League-leading 48 bases and are now sixth in runs scored per game through Wednesday.

For teams on the bubble, players and executives say a combination of luck and consistency governs whether a team falls forward or back through the summer.

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Stan Kasten, the former president of the Braves and Nationals, said every year he started the season thinking that with a little luck and a good move or two, a winning season was possible. "It's not simply the first two months that are important, but if you play under .500 for any two-month stretch, that is going to be awfully hard to recover from."

It's also no surprise that good teams avoid the injury bug and get a certain level of quality not just from their starting pitchers but also from the bullpen.

"That's what makes all the difference," said Royals utility player Mitch Maier. "When you get that, you know you're never out of a game and you know if you get a lead it's probably going to hold."

Meanwhile, the Twins, who have made the playoffs six times since 2002, look like they will be home in October for a simple reason—an awful run differential. The Twins are scoring the fewest runs per game in baseball (3.1) and allowing the most (5.32).

Early season run differential can be an important indicator of how a team will perform. During the past five seasons, six teams each year on average manage to turn a losing run differential into a winning one after June 1—or vice versa. The die is already cast.

Given the increasingly competitive sports landscape, even baseball traditionalists now favor an expanded playoff that balances keeping hope alive without diminishing the vitality of the regular season. And having the first round be just a one- or three-game playoff could probably be done without extending the season any closer to wintry months than it already is.

Some players complained about the plan to move to four wild cards and 10 playoff teams.

But the players' union isn't necessarily opposed to the move—it will be a collective bargaining issue—and compared with the apoplectic reaction by purists to other moves like the designated hitter in the American League and the introduction of two wild-card playoff teams in 1995, baseball people this time seem to realize they have a problem.

"Anything that keeps fans interested has got to be good," said former Commissioner Fay Vincent. "It may be a marathon, but if you're a mile behind early in the marathon, you're way behind."
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