Monday, June 13, 2005
100 Games To Go
Yesterday's 8-5 victory over the Padres was thoroughly enjoyable. On the heels of Dustin Hermanson's 9th inning meltdown about 18 hours before, it sure was good to see the Sox steal one back from the Padres. It reminded me a bit of the Cleveland series to begin the year; the Sox pulled off an improbable comeback in the second game of the year, and then Shingo blows up in the 9th inning of the third game of the year. As I noted then, the Sox were playing with house money in the last game - here, the Padres were doing the same.
Rowand's shot was a bomb, though, wasn't it?
The victory left the Sox 42-20 after 62 games. Assuming the rain-out in Arlington will be made up (the Sox have a three-game series at Texas August 29-31), the Sox have 100 games remaining. That's a nice round number to make some projections and estimations.
The Sox need to break even (50-50) to win 92 games. Since the Wild Card was instituted in 1995, only the 2003 Mariners and the 2002 Red Sox have won 92 games and not made the playoffs.
The Sox need to go 54-46 to make 30 games over .500 and 96-66. This would be the best finish since the 1983 club. Going 54-46 would force the Twinkies to go 60-41 the rest of the way or better to catch the White Sox. Note - the Sox's third order winning percentage as measured by Baseball Prospectus (in other words, the "true" winning percentage based on raw stats) is .544. So 54-46 makes some amount of sense as a reasonable expectation.
If the Sox can go 58-42 (.580 winning percentage), they'll be only the second White Sox team to win 100 games. The only other Sox team to win 100 games was the World Champion 1917 squad.
Obviously, we'd love the Sox to play like they have in the first 62 games and win 68 of the next 100 to finish at a cool 110-52. I'm hoping the Sox can meet or exceed the century mark myself - but the big golden trophy with all the little flags is what we all should care about.
