At the start of the year we all like our chances, and even if we think someone else did a better job in the auction, our trading and waiver skills can make up the difference. Plus, if one or two of our coveted sleepers come in, we’re golden.
But in early September the scales have fallen from our eyes. Most teams know they don’t have a prayer. In Tout Mixed Cory Schwartz says he’s got a 90-percent chance of winning, but when he describes how he might lose he can’t. His lead is too big. A loss is impossible to imagine, though not impossible to happen. Another team or two claim a slim chance of prevailing, but all know that realistically the door has closed.
In Tout AL Larry Schechter says it’s a tossup between him and Jeff Erickson at this point. Responding to the question of what bad thing happened to hurt his team this year, Schechter says it was Erickson owning Mike Trout.
The story in Tout NL is a little different. Tristan Cockcroft has opened up a sizeable lead over the last few weeks by climbing from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. He’s in good position, but a slump could drop him back into the 80s in a hurry. Peter Kreutzer (that’s me) is in second place, in the high 80s. In the middle of June, when I starting trading to maximize my points, I thought if I finished with 88-90 points I had an excellent chance of winning. Now the target has moved.
Third place is fluid, shared from day to day by Lenny Melnick, Derek Carty, Todd Zola and Phil Hertz. As I write this the standings are:
Cockcroft 97.5
Kreutzer 87
Carty 83.5
Hertz 83.5
Melnick 79
Zola 78
When I asked earlier this week what everyone thought their chances of winning were, the answers were:
Cockcroft 50
Kreutzer 20
Carty 30
Hertz 5
Which got me to thinking about what it means when we assign ourselves win percentages. I expected that we would be overly optimistic, but us NLers are barely over the threshold. Which doesn’t mean I think they’re right. I’m pretty sure that even last Monday, when Tristan’s lead was 96, 89, 81, 81, 79.5, he was better than a 50 percent favorite. If I could have bet a buck to make two on his team I would have done it in a second. And as the week has gone on his position has improved. With only weeks to go, every advantage multiplies. It is way better to have stats in hand than not.
But my team wasn’t/isn’t out of it. I’ve made all the right moves, I don’t think I’ve played the game better. I have three or four points to gain in homers and a less likely two or three to gain in RBI. If I got to 93 or 94, just a bad week or two for Tristan (and he hasn’t had many of those) might slip me past him. But realistically, I think his chances are more like 65 percent.
I like Derek Carty’s enthusiasm. He has points to gain, so I don’t feel that confident about beating him for second place, but a few places he might lose points there are points at that will go to Tristan. So, while Derek has done an amazing job changing up his team in ways that have been surprisingly effective, maybe he has a 10 percent chance of things breaking his way. That said, if I could get 10:1 on Derek’s team I don’t think I’d bet energetically.
And this is what it all comes down to: Our good analysis and where we would put our money. I may think Tristan is underselling his position, and Derek is overselling his, but the fact that our estimates add up to about 100 percent (as do the estimates in the other two Tout leagues), is a sign that at this point in September we’re not deluded. We just don’t know what’s going to happen.
And I’m hoping that Tristan is right, that his chance is about 50 percent.