Can the Yankees Catch the Red Sox ... Again?
May 30, 2007
As May comes to a close, it looks like Baseball Mogul did an excellent job of predicting the 2007 season. We picked Boston to win the AL East. And we picked Detroit and Cleveland to fight it out for the AL Central title.
But we also thought the Yankees and Red Sox would compete for the AL Easttitle. Although we picked the Yankees to finish second, we thought they had a good shot at winning the division, and an even better chance to make the playoffs.
With one-third of the season in the books, the Yankees are 14.5 games behind the Red Sox -- tied for last place with the Devil Rays. Roger Clemens has already signed on to pitch more than half the season with the Yankees, but his minor league starts have been less than Rocket-like.
The big question is, can the Yankees catch the Red Sox?
- In 1978, the Red Sox had a 10-game lead on July 7th. The Yankees won the division in a one-game playoff decided by Bucky Dent's 3-run homer (I was only 7, but I still remember it).
- In 2006, the Red Sox had a 4-game lead on July 4th. Then in mid-August, the Yankees swept a 5-game series at Fenway, and the Red Sox finished the season in 3rd place -- their worst finish since 1997.
To assess the Yankees' chances of catching the Red Sox in 2007, we updated our database to match the Major Leagues on May 30th. We loaded in the current real-life records for each team, and the injuries for each player -- from Philip Hughes' hamstring to Carl Pavano's elbow. Then we simulated the remainder of the season 1,000 times. Thanks to Baseball Mogul's optimized simulation engine, this only took a few hours.
What we found is that the Yankees still have a very good team. Baseball Mogul predicts they will win 61% of their remaining games, and finish the season around 83-77. Although the Yankees are currently in last place, they have a 67.2% chance of finishing the year in second.
The Red Sox should end the season with about 97 wins and the best record in baseball. However, they might stumble, and the Yankees have the best shot at catching them. In fact, the Yankees still have a 13.3% chance of making the playoffs, and a 7.1% chance of knocking the Red Sox out of first.
To put this in perspective:
- The odds of the Yankees coming back from a 5-2 deficit to win Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS: about 7.8%.
- When Kevin Millar came to bat in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, the Red Sox had less than a 3% chance of defeating the Yankees and winning the series.
The Yankees fighting their way into first place wouldn't be the weirdest thing that's happened in the storied history of the Red Sox. But, for Red Sox fans everywhere, it might be more painful than Bucky "*&%#ing" Dent.