Here’s something that is irking me greatly

[Moshagge3]

41 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I mean, I can see being upset that they didn’t play well and blew the playoff chance.  I just don’t get why it matters that it was to division teams.  I’m more upset that they lost to Detroit and Oakland, teams that were far inferior.

I would agree with this. Unless it matters for the (ugh) tiebreaker, and the ship has obviously long sailed for that, I don't really care about season series. If the Orioles won the season series against Toronto by taking 2 out of these 3 fairly meaningless games, would that make me feel better about them being in the postseason and not us? No. Is losing the season series to Boston going to stop us from feeling schadenfreude about their last place finish? I doubt it.

[SteveA]

Some back of the envelope calculations.   Let's say the Orioles lose 2 of these last 3 and finish 83-79.

They would be 34-42 vs the AL East, a .447 winning percentage.

They would be 49-37 vs the rest of MLB, a .569 winning percentage.

Next year they will play 56 games in division, 106 outside division.   So without any change in results, if they had a .447 winning % in division, that would be 25-31.   And if they had a .569 winning % in their 106 games out of the division, that would be 60-46.

So instead of 83-79, they would be 85-77 with the exact same in-division and out-of-division winning percentages.   I honestly expected a bigger difference than this before I ran the numbers.

And of course the other four ALE teams would get the same benefit.   So the only real advantage would be that it would help us compete a bit better for the wild card.

[JR Oriole]

Here is the crazy thing.  The Red Sox were 23-50 against the AL East.  13-41 against Toronto, New York. and Tampa alone. That means they were 52-34 against the rest of the majors, which is over .600.  They are a last place team, but far from it in terms of actual talent.

I definitely think there will be a benefit to all of the AL East teams by dropping 20 divisional games from their schedules. This division is just an absolute beast and I will be very glad to not only see less of these teams each year, but also to level the playing field a bit more with the other teams in baseball that have had it way easier for a long time.

[jabba72]

We've been outscored by all our AL East rivals so its not like we got unlucky or anything, they probably are all slightly better teams except for maybe Boston who outscored us anyway. 

Split	W	L	RS	RA	W-L%
BOS	9	10	103	106	.474
NYY	7	12	70	92	.368
TBR	9	10	74	82	.474
TOR	8	8	76	86	.500

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I mean, I can see being upset that they didn’t play well and blew the playoff chance.  I just don’t get why it matters that it was to division teams.  I’m more upset that they lost to Detroit and Oakland, teams that were far inferior.

I’m irked at those things too.  The day I posted this thread, we’d just choked away the Red Sox series, so this is what was on my mind.  

[Jim'sKid26]

1 hour ago, jabba72 said:

We've been outscored by all our AL East rivals so its not like we got unlucky or anything, they probably are all slightly better teams except for maybe Boston who outscored us anyway. 

Split	W	L	RS	RA	W-L%
BOS	9	10	103	106	.474
NYY	7	12	70	92	.368
TBR	9	10	74	82	.474
TOR	8	8	76	86	.500

This is the heart of the reason the O's need to upgrade on both sides of the ball. That data is telling. 

[Uli2001]

2 hours ago, SteveA said:

Some back of the envelope calculations.   Let's say the Orioles lose 2 of these last 3 and finish 83-79.

They would be 34-42 vs the AL East, a .447 winning percentage.

They would be 49-37 vs the rest of MLB, a .569 winning percentage.

Next year they will play 56 games in division, 106 outside division.   So without any change in results, if they had a .447 winning % in division, that would be 25-31.   And if they had a .569 winning % in their 106 games out of the division, that would be 60-46.

So instead of 83-79, they would be 85-77 with the exact same in-division and out-of-division winning percentages.   I honestly expected a bigger difference than this before I ran the numbers.

And of course the other four ALE teams would get the same benefit.   So the only real advantage would be that it would help us compete a bit better for the wild card.

I didn't know they are returning to a more balanced schedule. That's good news. Playing your division opponents 19 times in a season is too much, and it's highly unfair that AL East teams knock each other out while AL Central and AL West teams just breeze through.

[SteveA]

13 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

I didn't know they are returning to a more balanced schedule. That's good news. Playing your division opponents 19 times in a season is too much, and it's highly unfair that AL East teams knock each other out while AL Central and AL West teams just breeze through.

I made a mistake above, it's actually 13 games vs each AL East team, not 14.

13 games vs each AL East team = 13*4 = 52

6 or 7 games vs each AL Central or AL West team = 64

4 games (2 home 2 away) vs "rival" Nats = 4

3 games each vs the other 14 NL teams = 42

It will be the first time ever that all MLB teams play every other team in a season.