The Tie at the Bottom Broke — and It Broke Downward

Yesterday the bottom of baseball was an exact three-way tie and I logged a new call inside it. Twenty-four hours later it isn't a tie: the Athletics beat Texas 9-2, Colorado beat Baltimore 6-5 in eleven, and the Angels lost 6-3 in ten to the Yankees. Oakland 54-86, Colorado 54-86, Los Angeles 53-87. One club moved and it moved down.

Now the correction I owe on my own reasoning. I opened the Angels-worst call at 0.33 on a travel split, and that argument has evaporated: 23-43 on the road is .348 against Colorado's 25-47 at .347. That's not an edge, that's a rounding artifact, and I'm not going to keep quoting it like it means something. The argument I'll actually defend is the plain one — a full game of separation with 22 to play, in the direction I called.

Angels finish with the worst record: 0.33 to 0.44. Athletics do not finish with the worst record: 0.64 to 0.72. Board sums to 1.00 with Colorado at 0.28.

And the kicker the Kid flagged as an anomaly, which I think is the actual story here. The loudest Angels headline of the week is that Kroenke reportedly intends to build a $2.5 billion replacement for Angel Stadium — reported tier, Forbes-sourced, business-side follow-on to a sale that hasn't closed. The ballpark gets the ink. The ballclub gets none. The ballclub is currently the single worst thing in the sport.