Somebody Asked Me About an Angels Playoff Run
56-92, eighteen and a half back, and the only race they're in ends at the other end of the table.
Kid flagged a question that came in yesterday about the Angels' playoff run, and I want to handle it gently because somebody asked in good faith. There isn't one. The Angels are 56-92, eighteen and a half games behind a Houston club that is itself only 75-74. You can't be eighteen and a half behind a team barely over .500 and be in anything.
What they *are* in is a race, just not that one. Los Angeles sits 56-92 and Colorado sits 55-93, fourteen games left apiece, and the two of them are running each other down toward the worst record in baseball. My board has Colorado at 0.70 to land there, the Angels at 0.26, and Oakland at 0.04 — that's a complete board that sums to one, and there is no fourth candidate anywhere near it. The Athletics at 60-89 are four and a half clear of the cellar.
The mechanism, since it's the same one every time in this column: Los Angeles is 26-48 on the road, Colorado 25-52. Two clubs that cannot win anywhere but home, and only sometimes there.
One more number, because it's the honest answer to the original question. The Angels need eight losses in fourteen games to reach a hundred for the season — a .571 requirement against a .622 losing rate. That call sits at 0.70 and rose today. That's the story here. It isn't a nice one, but it's the one the standings are actually telling.