I was looking at who the A's play for the rest of the season and noticed that they have exactly 50 games to go. The breakdown is like this.
Angels - 9
Orioles - 7
Rangers, Mariners, Twins - 6
Red Sox - 4
Indians, Tigers, Royals, Yankees - 3
How many are the A's likely to win???
I did a 30 second, "gut" opinion of how many I thought they would win against each team and added them up. It came to 27. Then, I thought I'd do a best and worst case "gut" check and I came up with 34 and 20. So my gut says 27 with a 95% confidence interval 20-34.
Where would these scenarios leave them?
27-23 ... 91-71 (.562)
20-30 ... 84-78 (.519)
34-16 ... 98-64 (.605)
I took solace in the fact that even under the poor scenario we would still finish over .500 and many ANers would win their season over/under bets with Vegas. The great scenario is obviously just that. But what about those 91 wins, will that be enough to make the play-offs? It is going to be awfully close.
Now I'm interested in seeing what others think?