Cloud Cover for the Rays

Last night the Rays lost the evening portion of a noon-dusk doubleheader. Not only did this put them at a somber 0-4 on the weekend and 0-8 on the week, but the loss actually marked the eleventh in a row. That is the longest such streak in the major leagues this season and comes from arguably one of its better squads.

Now, this team isn’t quite the one from a month ago. Carlos Pena broke a pair of fingers on Labor Day, sidelining him for the remainder of the season. In his place is Chris Richard. The rotation is featuring three pitchers in their first full pro years, including Wade Davis who went from masterful start to atrocious start in the span of a week. The bullpen has imploded on itself and the offense has chosen a poor occasion to mail at-bats in.

Losing 11 in a row is a pretty implausible for any team. Take a 50 win (.309) team and ignore strength of schedule as well as home field advantage. Just assume they have a 69.1% chance at losing each game. Over a course of 11 games that ragtag group will have about a 1.7% chance at losing all 11 in a row. That’s for a 112 loss team. The Rays are considerably better than that. To avoid argument, let’s call them a .500 true talent unit – I don’t necessarily believe that to be the case, but it’s not overly important whether you think they are a 81 or 88 win team here – and rerun the binomial distribution.

The chance of them losing 11 in a row is something like 0.05%. Yes, that’s already in percentage form, not decimal. The accompanying graph looks like this, with the win total on the x-axis and the likelihood of at least that win total occurring on the y-axis:

rays1

The Rays had similarly microscopic playoff chances entering this span of games. They pulled a statistical oddity, unfortunately for them, it’s not the opposite of what they needed.





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joser
14 years ago

So when the Rockies went on that lossless tear at the end of 2007, we all wondered where those wins came from. Now we know: in exchange for their souls, the devil sold them wins borrowed from the 2009 Rays. (You knew they were going to have to pay something for taking his name off the team, right?)