GO ROYALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[phuqueue]

Yeah 2 of 5 is perfectly fine cuz our margin for error isn't razor thin here or anything, and after all we were just gifted a home series against the worst team in baseball so we picked up three easy wins there to cushion the blow if we drop this series in Detroit, right?

[grovester]

Just trying to be realistic, we're aiming for a wild card, going 2/5 against the best team in the AL is a victory. I'd love more, but the thought that it's a "disaster" ignores what they have to do against everyone else.

[shinatoo]

Just trying to be realistic, we're aiming for a wild card, going 2/5 against the best team in the AL is a victory. I'd love more, but the thought that it's a "disaster" ignores what they have to do against everyone else.

If we are going to be in the hunt for the wild card we are going to be in the hunt for the division. We have to win all the games we can win.

[grovester]

Sorry, I forgot, we must win all the games we can.

[grovester]

I'm sorry, was that Getz? I think some board owes somebody an apology!

[phuqueue]

Just trying to be realistic, we're aiming for a wild card, going 2/5 against the best team in the AL is a victory. I'd love more, but the thought that it's a "disaster" ignores what they have to do against everyone else.

I mean the disaster already began with dropping two games to the Marlins of all teams. Maybe 2/5 here would have been okay if we'd swept that series, but this is the Royals, so of course that didn't happen. If we're aiming for a wild card, winning 2/5 isn't going to cut it no matter who we're playing. We don't exactly have the wild card locked up here and those teams that are ahead of us are better than we are and some of them have easier schedules than we do. That anyone is even talking about us in the wild card race is due to our having played over our heads from the All Star Break until about last Monday night. "Going 2/5 against the best team in the AL" isn't a victory in the wild card standings, it's a moral victory at best (and only by Royals standards, for that matter -- "we lost the series, but not by that much!"). In your other post you act like "we have to win all the games we can" is some stupidly obvious statement, yet you somehow don't think that losing games is incongruous with hanging in a playoff race.

[pash]

.

[grovester]

Jesus you guys need to relax or take some valium or something. Why do you even watch when you have turned the experience into such an excruciating endeavor? It would be best if we won all of our remaining games. It is unlikely. If losing 2 of 3 to the Marlins is a "disaster", you should turn off the tv and get a hobby.

[phuqueue]

How is watching baseball not a hobby

[MidtownCat]

Jesus you guys need to relax or take some valium or something. Why do you even watch when you have turned the experience into such an excruciating endeavor? It would be best if we won all of our remaining games. It is unlikely. If losing 2 of 3 to the Marlins is a "disaster", you should turn off the tv and get a hobby.

Stop being a dumbass. This is a Royals thread.

[pash]

.

[mean]

For the record, I said might be considered a disaster. We'll have a better idea in a month.

[MidtownCat]

Say what you will about the Royals but that was a playoff caliber effort last night.

[grovester]

Absolutely.

[macnw]

If valium doesn't work, try some deep breaths. It's cheaper and legal. It was a tough game, the Royals had their chances and they blew it, move on for Christ's sake. Everyone's a dumbass except you. Here's the reality check, someone has to win and someone has to lose, get it? Teams make mistakes and other teams take advantage of those mistakes, duh? Thinking about it, maybe LSD would be better, because then you can live in your fantasy world where all teams, including the Royals play perfectly and win all those close games. Guess what dumbass, it ain't gonna happen. Royals look pretty respectable in my opinion. Of course if they get blown away today, it doesn't matter that we are facing the best pitcher in baseball. Just remember, someone has to win and someone has to lose. Just keep repeating that...

[phuqueue]

k, so we love the Royals so much that we don't even care whether they win or lose now, got it. We've gone from "maybe they would win more if we all just believed in them" to "actually it doesn't even matter if they win cuz somebody has to lose, so it may as well be them."

At least nobody could accuse you of being tough to please.

[MidtownCat]

So, with about 40 games left what's it going to take? I'm assuming with a win today and we take the series against Detroit we will need to go +/- 30-10 to have any realistic chance of making up 5 games in the Wild Card race. It's just so hard to make up that much ground with that many teams in front of us...

Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Today is HUGE.

[chingon]

It's just so hard to make up that much ground with that many teams in front of us...

This is the critical detail. Too many teams would have to simultaneously implode/underperform to really give us a shot. With that in mind, I don't think today's game is really that critical.

Yesterday's game was a more important game to me, since it would have meant that a banged up Royals squad would have locked in a series win with the potential to more or less embarrass Detroit today. With that potentiality eliminated, I think today is just another W/L an increasingly long long shot.

[phuqueue]

If we assume that all other teams continue to win at their current paces, Oakland will take the second wild card with 92 wins. We're currently at 64-58, so we need to go 29-11 (.725 winning percentage) to sneak in. If any of the teams ahead of us (or even those just behind us) in the wild card standings heat up though all bets are off, of course. The flip side is that some could stumble, but it's unlikely that all three will fall significantly off their current marks. It'll take 93 wins to beat Oakland's pace, 89 to beat Baltimore's (25-15), and 88 to beat Cleveland's (24-16).

Also can't forget about Texas and Tampa, who may be our competition if Oakland heats up significantly to take the AL West. Texas's current pace is about 94 wins, so we'd need 95 (31-9) to top them. But if everyone keeps playing at their current paces except Oakland getting hot and leapfrogging Texas, our competition for the second card will actually be Tampa, who is also on a 92 win pace.

So yeah, our magic number is probably somewhere in the range of 29-31 wins. Of course, since someone has to win and someone has to lose, it doesn't really matter which we do, does it?

Edit: side note, for what it's worth, we're 21-9 since the break, a .700 winning percentage. Continuing to play at that level over an even longer period of time is pretty unlikely, and upping our game even a little more to a .725 winning percentage is less likely still, but the fact that we've already been in the neighborhood we need to be in for the past 30 games certainly helps. We've still got seven games against the White Sox, three against the Twins, four against the Mariners, and three against an underperforming Washington. We also have the chance to make up ground against Cleveland (six games) and Texas (three games) directly. Our margin for error is basically zero but after the hole we dug ourselves in May and then again heading into the break, this is about as close as we'll ever get to having the baseball gods set the table for us. (double edit: we also get three games against Toronto, also a sub-.500 team, one against Tampa, and even seven more, counting today, against Detroit if we want to keep divisional title dreams alive for a little longer; literally every game from here on out is meaningful insofar as it's either an excellent opportunity to pick up wins against losing teams, or they're head-to-head matchups with our direct competition for the wild card/division)

Yesterday's game was a more important game to me, since it would have meant that a banged up Royals squad would have locked in a series win with the potential to more or less embarrass Detroit today. With that potentiality eliminated, I think today is just another W/L an increasingly long long shot.

Given the steep hill we have to climb, I would say every win is pretty important. We may not have the potential to "embarrass" Detroit today, but we can still take the series with a win today. 4-4 over the past week isn't a particularly good look for a long shot team trying to make up ground in a playoff race, but it's better than 3-5.

[MidtownCat]

At this stage, I just hope they finish above .500.

Wow, what a shit show.