Even though the MLB Playoffs started yesterday, I’m posting my picks now. It’s not BS, either, because even though the Red Sox lost game 1 I am sticking with them over the White Sox. My picks:

League Division Series:
New York Yankees – 3 games, Los Angeles Angels of Aneheim – 1 game
Boston Red Sox – 3 games, Chicago White Sox – 1 game
San Diego Padres – 0 games, St. Louis Cardinals – 3 games
Houston Astros – 2 game, Atlanta Braves – 3 games

League Championship Series:
Boston Red Sox- 2 games, New York Yankees – 4 games
Atlanta Braves – 1 game, St. Louis Cardinals – 4 games

World Series:
St. Louis Cardinals – 2 games, New York Yankees – 4 games

Yeah, it’s homerism. I’m picking the Yankees. But their pitching has come around, their offense is running on most or all cylinders. I don’t think the White Sox are for real. The Astros-Braves series will be the most exciting series of the postseason. The Padres are outclassed by the Cardinals.

The Yanks will pick off the Red Sox because Boston’s pitching staff is in bad shape, and all their hitters except Manny and Ortiz seem to be tired. They’ll get some 2-run shots, some 3-run shots, but they won’t get by New York. I think Atlanta will keep the games against St. Louis close, but lose in five.

Finally, I don’t think the Cardinals have the fire to get by the Yankees. They’ve been bored since August. They’ll phone it in against the Padres. The Braves series will only go five, but it’ll wear them down. They’ll scrape a couple against the Yankees, get blown out in one or two, and drop the rest.

The New York Yankees are the 2005 American League East Champions.

Today the Yankees beat the Red Sox 8 to 4, and the White Sox beat the Indians 4-3. One of the requirements for the “nightmare scenario” double one game playoff was the Indians taking exactly two out three against the White Sox this weekend. That game finished before the game at Fenway, so Joe Buck let us know that the winner of the Yankees-Red Sox game would wrap up a playoff spot, the Yankees spot being as division champs.

Here’s the updated chart:

NYY	BOS	CHI	CLE		NYY	BOS	CHI	CLE
96-66	94-68	99-63	93-69	BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
96-66	94-68	98-64	94-68	1GP CLE@BOS	1	0.5	1	0.5
95-67	95-67	99-63	93-69	BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
95-67	95-67	98-64	94-68	BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
				Out of 4:	4	3.5	4	0.5
				Out of 100:	100.0	87.5	100.0	12.5

The Red Sox have an 87.5% of making the playoffs. The Indians have the remaining 12.5%. The Indians have a 25% of forcing the one game playoff with the Red Sox, and then a 50% chance of winning that game. The Red Sox are guaranteed to play beyond Sunday, because their worst-case scenario is the one game playoff against the Indians.

After today, the Red Sox still control their own destiny — if they win Sunday against the Yankees they earn the Wild Card, or if they drop the final game to the Yankees they still only need to win the one game playoff against the Indians. The Indians, on the other hand, need the Red Sox to lose, need to beat the White Sox, and then need to beat the Red Sox in Boston.

So I re-ran the odds after tonight’s games. In case you didn’t hear, the Red Sox beat the Yankees (crap), and the White Sox beat the Indians (ehh … good I guess, because although I was hoping the Indians would beat out the Red Sox for the Wild Card, I suddenly need to worry about the Yankees beating out the Indians …). Here’s the update:

NYY	BOS	CHI	CLE		NYY	BOS	CHI	CLE
96-66	94-68	99-63	93-69	NYY wins ALE; BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
96-66	94-68	98-64	94-68	NYY wins ALE; 1GP CLE@BOS	1	0.5	1	0.5
96-66	94-68	97-65	95-67	NYY wins ALE; CLE wins WC	1	0	1	1
95-67	95-67	99-63	93-69	NYY wins ALE; BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
95-67	95-67	98-64	94-68	NYY wins ALE; BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
95-67	95-67	97-65	95-67	1GP BOS@NYY; 1GP NYY@CLE/CLE@BOS	0.75	0.75	1	0.5
94-68	96-66	99-63	93-69	BOS wins ALE; NYY wins WC	1	1	1	0
94-68	96-66	98-64	94-68	BOS wins ALE; 1GP NYY@CLE	0.5	1	1	0.5
94-68	96-66	97-65	95-67	BOS wins ALE; CLE wins WC	0	1	1	1
				Out of 9:	7.25	7.25	9	3.5
				Out of 100:	80.56	80.56	100.0	38.89

We’re now down to nine possible outcomes. The Yankee sweeps and Indian sweeps are gone.

Obviously the most surprising change is that the even though the Yankees lost, their odds of making the playoffs are essentially unchanged — increased by less than one percentage point. What it translates to is that the Yankees had one throw-away game. And they’ve used it. No more.

The next surprising thing is not that the Indians’ odds have dropped, but the fact that they’ve dropped so much. Their odds went down by more than 23 percentage points. It’s one game — why are their odds hurt so much? The answer is that before tonight’s games, the Indians were competing with one team for the Wild Card: Boston. Now the Indians are competing with both the Yankees and the Red Sox. Had the Yankees won tonight, they would have had greater than a 97% percent chance of getting in, and the Red Sox and Indians would have been nearly tied around 50% each. (In fact, the Indians would have had exactly 50%, and the Red Sox would have had 50% plus the leftover 2½% or so that the Yankees had not yet sewed up.)

Because the Indians had been competing only with the Red Sox, they would have benefitted most from a Yankees sweep of the Red Sox.

Incredibly, all three teams still control their own destiny. If the Yankees or Red Sox win the next two games, they would win the AL East. If the Indians win the next two against the White Sox, the worst they can be left with is the “nightmare scenario,” and a one game playoff against the loser of the Yankees-Red Sox one game playoff.

If the White Sox sweep the Indians, then both the Yankees and Red Sox are guaranteed spots in the playoffs. Should this happen, the Yankees have a slight advantage over the Red Sox, for the same reason that they White Sox have already clinched the AL Central: Should two teams tie for their division, but both are guaranteed playoff spots, the head-to-head record is used as a tiebreaker, rather than a one-game playoff. The Yankees currently have a 9-8 lead against the Red Sox. If they split the next two, the Yankees would have 10-9 edge, and the division crown.

The Yankees have an 80% chance of making the playoffs. The Indians have a 62.5% chance. And the Red Sox have a 58% chance.

There are sixteen possible outcomes after this weekend’s six games — three between the Yankees and the Red Sox and three between the White Sox and the Indians. You could say there are two possibilities in each of six games, which would be 2*2*2*2*2*2, or 64. But really, we only care about the outcome of each series. There are four possible outcomes of each series, meaning that we take 4*4, or 16. There are sixteen possible outcomes of this weekend. We could go further and talk about possible one game playoffs. Personally, I’m interested in which teams will make the playoffs. Further, I’m interested in what the odds are that each team will make the playoffs.

So what to do? Figure it out in Excel, then use Excel to create a table!

Below I show the sixteen possibilities for what the New York Yankees (NYY)’s, Boston Red Sox (BOS)’s, Chicago White Sox (CHI)’s, and Cleveland Indians (CLE)’s, respective records could be after this weekend. (Apologies for the ugliness.) To the right of those columns, I show what the playoff picture will be Monday morning. The final four columns show the odds, per each Monday morning playoff picture, that each team will make the playoffs. Note that in each scenario, the White Sox have 1 out of 1 odds of making the playoffs, because they have already secured the AL Central title.

About ⅔ of the way down, you’ll see the “nightmare scenario,” where MLB would have the first ever two-tiered one game playoff. Here, I have determined that the Yankees, for example, have a 50% chance of winning the first game. They also have a 50% chance of losing that game, meaning they would play the second game against the Indians, where they again have a 50% chance of winning. 50% * 50% = 25%. The 50% from the first game plus the 25% from the second game equals 75%. (Blah blah blah, etc etc etc.)

The last two rows show first, the odds out of 16 that each team will make the playoffs. The White Sox will make the playoffs 16 out of 16 times, because they have already locked up the AL Central. The final row shows each team’s odds out of 100. Enjoy.

NYY	BOS	CHI	CLE		NYY	BOS	CHI	CLE
97-65	93-69	99-63	93-69	NYY wins ALE; 1GP CLE@BOS	1	0.5	1	0.5
97-65	93-69	98-64	94-68	NYY wins ALE; CLE wins WC	1	0	1	1
97-65	93-69	97-65	95-67	NYY wins ALE; CLE wins WC	1	0	1	1
97-65	93-69	96-66	96-66	NYY wins ALE; CLE wins WC	1	0	1	1
96-66	94-68	99-63	93-69	NYY wins ALE; BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
96-66	94-68	98-64	94-68	NYY wins ALE; 1GP CLE@BOS	1	0.5	1	0.5
96-66	94-68	97-65	95-67	NYY wins ALE; CLE wins WC	1	0	1	1
96-66	94-68	96-66	96-66	NYY wins ALE; CLE wins WC	1	0	1	1
95-67	95-67	99-63	93-69	NYY wins ALE; BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
95-67	95-67	98-64	94-68	NYY wins ALE; BOS wins WC	1	1	1	0
95-67	95-67	97-65	95-67	1GP BOS@NYY; 1GP NYY@CLE/CLE@BOS	0.75	0.75	1	0.5
95-67	95-67	96-66	96-66	1GP BOS@NYY; CLE wins WC	0.5	0.5	1	1
94-68	96-66	99-63	93-69	BOS wins ALE; NYY wins WC	1	1	1	0
94-68	96-66	98-64	94-68	BOS wins ALE; 1GP NYY@CLE	0.5	1	1	0.5
94-68	96-66	97-65	95-67	BOS wins ALE; CLE wins WC	0	1	1	1
94-68	96-66	96-66	96-66	BOS wins ALE; CLE wins WC	0	1	1	1
				Out of 16:	12.75	9.25	16	10
				Out of 100:	79.68	57.81	100.0	62.50

Here are the crucial games so you can plan your weekend. I almost didn’t include NL games. I don’t know when it happened, but I just don’t care about the NL anymore.

I’ve read on ESPN.com that more games than indicated here may get airtime. If I find anything definite I’ll update this post. I might add the spreads, too.

Oh, and this is courtesy ESPN.com.

TEAMS	TIME (ET)	NAT TV	PITCHERS
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Chicago Sox at Detroit	1:05 PM	ESPN	Garcia vs Grilli
NY Yankees at Baltimore	7:05 PM		Small vs Bedard
Toronto at Boston	7:05 PM		Downs vs Clement
Tampa Bay at Cleveland	7:05 PM		Fossum vs Sabathia
Chicago Cubs at Houston	8:05 PM		Rusch vs Rodriguez
Friday, September 30, 2005
NY Yankees at Boston	7:05 PM	ESPN	Wang vs Wells
Chicago Sox at Cleveland	7:05 PM		Buehrle vs Millwood
Philadelphia at Washington	7:05 PM		Brito vs Hernandez
Chicago Cubs at Houston	8:05 PM		Zambrano vs Pettitte
Saturday, October 1, 2005
NY Yankees at Boston	1:15 PM	FOX	Johnson vs Wakefield
Chicago Sox at Cleveland	1:15 PM	FOX	Garland vs Westbrook
Chicago Cubs at Houston	4:05 PM	FOX	Williams vs Clemens
Philadelphia at Washington	4:05 PM	FOX	Myers vs Patterson
Sunday, October 2, 2005
Chicago Sox at Cleveland	1:05 PM		McCarthy vs Elarton
Philadelphia at Washington	1:05 PM		Lieber vs Carrasco
NY Yankees at Boston	2:05 PM		Mussina vs Schilling
Chicago Cubs at Houston	2:05 PM		Maddux vs Oswalt

I just spotted this add banner on MLB.com:

I bring it to your attention because of the teams featured on it: The Boston Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox, and the Oakland Athletics.

Last night, the New York Yankees moved ½ game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East, and the Red Sox are 1 game behind the Cleveland Indians in the AL Wild Card race.

The Chicago White Sox hold a 2½ game lead over the Cleveland Indians. They held something like a 10 game lead at the All-Star break, and have been playing .500 ball since then. They just lost two of three to the Indians, and are in danger of suffering the biggest collapse in baseball history.

The Oakland Athletics are 2½ games behind the Los Angeles Angels of Aneheim, and 5 games behind the Cleveland Indians in the Wild Card chase.

In a worst-case scenario for this trio of teams, the Angels, Indians, and Yankees win the divisions. That leaves the Wild Card, which one of these teams would earn. Of course, they could all still win their divisions.

The closeness of these four AL races (three divisions and the Wild Card) is exciting enough, but the fact that in the final weekend of the season the Red Sox host the Yankees, the Indians host the White Sox, and the Athletics host the Angles for a 4 game set in the second-to-last series of the season. What this means is that all of these races will probably be undecided until that last week. Outstanding.

I’m watching tonight’s Arkanas-USC game on Fox Sports Net, and I am aware of two things:

USC has a good football team, and

Arkansas has no business playing USC.

But what I really want to talk about is Matt Leinart’s decision to play his Senior year at USC. Leinart won the Heisman Trophy last year, and had he declared for the NFL draft, he almost certainly would have been the number one pick of the San Francisco 49ers.

But he didn’t. I did a Google search for “matt leinart insurance,” and the first result was an article on Insurance NewsNet titled Premium Players; Insurance Policies Are Becoming Standard For Elite College Athletes.

I was going to summarize the article, but instead I’ll suggest that you read it. The one fact from the article that really surprised me was that insurance policies have becomes something of a norm for “elite draft-eligible college football players.” Something much less surprising but perhaps more intriguing is that such insurance policies have increased in number significantly since Willis McGahee’s horrendous knee injury in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl — unsurprising because it was the final game of an elite college player’s senior year — intriguing because McGahee has seen none of that money, after signing a healthy contract with the Buffalo Bills. (Go Bills.)

The article points out that because of advances in sports medicine over the past twenty or thirty years, these insurance policies may not be worth it, and McGahee is the perfect example. Carson Palmer’s father almost didn’t take out a policy on his son, but Carson asked him to do it.

The NCAA offers injury insurance to athletes likely to be drafted highly — it does so in order to give sports agents one less reason to whisper in the ear of college athletes. It’s called Exceptional Student-Athlete Disability Insurance — ESDI. While I was thinking over this post I planned on saying some sentence like, “What does all this money mean in relation to the question of whether or not college athletes should be paid?” The answer? I don’t know. Maybe the NCAA should guarantee $1 million to every single college student who plays one of the four major sports — if an athlete suffers a career-ending injury while playing in an NCAA-sanctioned event, the NCAA pays up. I don’t expect to see that any time soon, though.

Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for the seventh straight year. Seven. There is no accomplishment against which to compare this feat.

Michael Jordan won six NBA titles in eight years, but basketball is a team sport.

Pete Sampras won Wimbledon seven times in eight years, but there are four majors in tennis.

Tiger won seven out of eleven majors, but that streak took only about three years, and there are four majors in golf.

Toward the end, Lance competed in fewer events. This might be comprable to winning the Daytona 500 every year (the Superbowl of NASCAR) for seven years. Nobody’s done that.

But did anyone hear Lance’s speech on the podium after he won? I’ve noticed this before — when Lance is among the French, his English almost sounds like it has a French accent. From what I understand he lives over there for six months out of the year, or at least he used to back when he was in more events. When in France …