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Originally Posted by ctorg
Interesting. That one has the Angels' 1995 collapse as the worst mathematical collapse of all time. I wasn't following baseball much at that point, but I can see how having such a huge lead in both the divisional and wild card races would make the odds so difficult. 8332-1 odds. Wow.
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He's throwing two different numbers around, the "odds against" figure and the percentage-to-reach-playoffs figure. The "rankings" are completely different by each measure, and I'm less than convinced by either methodology.
The way he did it, he's apparently counting each game the '95 Angels lost (after their peak point) against them twice: as a slip in the relative divisional standings and with respect to wild card, multiplying the "odds."
Yet when we looks at the Mets, he mentions the wild card cushion with respect to the percentage (thus making the Mets percentage second-worst of all time, after the '51 Dodgers), yet he doesn't seem to be factoring the odds of, for example, the part the Rockies' surge had in removing the cushion.
Then, having deployed two totally different mathematics to evidently impressive effect, he basically tosses them both and ends up ranking the chokes by subjective aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Like, the 2004 Yankees failing in the ALCS is "mitigated" because "the World Series itself was a snoozer"!
Okay, whatever.