2025 Detroit Tigers Magic Number Thread

[CMU97]

[chasfh]

Tigers beat Royals, 4-2. Guardians result pending.

[chasfh]

Guardians lose to Rangers, 10-0.

[lordstanley]

Guardians lose. 

[Motor City Sonics]

I can't wait to post Fidrych.   The reason I fell in love with baseball. 

[CMU97]

[lordstanley]

Guardians lose. I don't want to intrude on MCS so ...

 

[holygoat]

KC won, so doesn't the number reman 21?

[gehringer_2]

11 minutes ago, holygoat said:

KC won, so doesn't the number reman 21?

any loss by a team behind you or any win of ours both increment (decrement) the number. We both lost but they still now have one less game to make up the difference.

[holygoat]

KC is closest to us in the standings, and they just gained a game on us.

[lordstanley]

The Royals have 31 games to play and automatically lose the tiebreaker to the Tigers. The Royals can max out at 98 wins (67+31). 20 Tigers wins (78+20) will therefore eliminate the Royals no matter what. This is no change from what the Tigers needed before today's games to eliminate the Royals. But the magic number still went down because ...

..the Guardians have 33 games to play and do not necessarily lose the tiebreaker to the Tigers (6 games left to play against each other). The Guardians can max out at 97 wins (64 + 33). Since the Guardians can still win the tiebreaker over the Tigers, the Tigers need 20 more wins (78 + 20) to eliminate the Guardians no matter what. Before the Guardians lost today, the Guardians could have maxed out at 98 wins, so the Tigers would have needed 21 more wins to eliminate the Guardians no matter what. Therefore, the magic number has gone down from 21 last night to 20 now.

[holygoat]

Ah, I didn't consider the tie-breaker.

[chasfh]

IMHO, when it comes to a magic number for winning the division, I don’t think the tiebreaker thing applies. If we end up in a tie, the Tigers will not have won the division. We will have tied for it. I don’t regard tying for the division title and winning it outright as the same thing. 

[holygoat]

If you end the season in a tie for 1st in the division, and you're the team that moves on to the playoffs while the other team stays home, I damn sure think of it as "winning the division."

[lordstanley]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

IMHO, when it comes to a magic number for winning the division, I don’t think the tiebreaker thing applies. If we end up in a tie, the Tigers will not have won the division. We will have tied for it. I don’t regard tying for the division title and winning it outright as the same thing. 

And this site, while unofficial, does seem to be leaning your way because it has KC still at 21. Although curiously, it does say "Tiebreakers will begin to be calculated when there are 32 games remaining in the MLB season.". 

https://playoffmagic.com/mlb/league/

Then again, this one has it at 20:

https://www.playoffstatus.com/mlb/americanwinmagicnumbers.html

Soon MLB.com or ESPN will start adding elimination numbers to its standings and we will know for sure.

Edited Monday at 04:04 PM by lordstanley

[Tiger337]

5 minutes ago, holygoat said:

If you end the season in a tie for 1st in the division, and you're the team that moves on to the playoffs while the other team stays home, I damn sure think of it as "winning the division."

If you regard division titles as an important achievement, I can see where one might think that a tie is not as pure as an outright title.  However, the magic number is not about purity.  

Edited Monday at 04:08 PM by Tiger337

[chasfh]

17 minutes ago, holygoat said:

If you end the season in a tie for 1st in the division, and you're the team that moves on to the playoffs while the other team stays home, I damn sure think of it as "winning the division."

Damn ok. 

[chasfh]

19 minutes ago, lordstanley said:

And this site, while unofficial, does seem to be leaning your way because it has KC still at 21. Although curiously, it does say "Tiebreakers will begin to be calculated when there are 32 games remaining in the MLB season.". 

https://playoffmagic.com/mlb/league/

Then again, this one has it at 20:

https://www.playoffstatus.com/mlb/americanwinmagicnumbers.html

Soon MLB.com or ESPN will start adding elimination numbers to its standings and we will know for sure.

Magic numbers have traditionally used 163 as the basis of calculation, which contemplates winning a title outright, so that’s what I will continue to go with here. 

[oblong]

23 minutes ago, holygoat said:

If you end the season in a tie for 1st in the division, and you're the team that moves on to the playoffs while the other team stays home, I damn sure think of it as "winning the division."

Yep.  The Twins in 2009 won a tiebreaker.  In that situation they played a game.  Now they do not play a game but use another method.  In both cases whoever wins the tiebreaker wins the division.  As a Tiger fan on the losing side in that game in 2009 it wouldn't make me feel any better if the Twins had won their tie breaker via a formula vs a game.

 

 

[lordstanley]

2 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Magic numbers have traditionally used 163 as the basis of calculation, which contemplates winning a title outright, so that’s what I will continue to go with here. 

Ok, I'll celebrate a game earlier but I will save you a bottle of champagne and lend you my goggles if you want them. 🙂

[chasfh]

Tigers suffer heartbreaking defeat at the hands of A’s 8-3, but even so …

[Edman85]

I've got the following magic numbers.

Home field: 30

Bye: 25

Division: 19

Playoff spot: 19

 

I would contend division is the third most important of those.

[lordstanley]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

I've got the following magic numbers.

Home field: 30

Bye: 25

Division: 19

Playoff spot: 19

 

I would contend division is the third most important of those.

Agreed. And the bye is more important to me than home field. So if you offered me a deal today that the seeds would be Toronto, Detroit and Houston (or Seattle) in that order I’d take it. I don’t know that the #1 seed’s opponent in the ALDS will be any tougher than the #2 seed’s, so home field would only come into play if the ALCS was between Toronto and Detroit and it went 7 games. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:38 PM by lordstanley

[chasfh]

50 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

I've got the following magic numbers.

Home field: 30

Bye: 25

Division: 19

Playoff spot: 19

 

I would contend division is the third most important of those.

Magic numbers are typically done for winning division outright, versus for tiebreakers or playoff spots or other things. I'm going to continue to post to that. I hope you don't mind.

[Edman85]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Magic numbers are typically done for winning division outright, versus for tiebreakers or playoff spots or other things. I'm going to continue to post to that. I hope you don't mind.

Who cares if I mind!?!?!

Just saying making the playoffs and the bye are more important than winning the division in the current format.