{"id":1811,"date":"2013-09-04T14:56:35","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T18:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2013-09-04T14:56:35","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T18:56:35","slug":"the-pirates-have-not-clinched-a-non-losing-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/09\/04\/the-pirates-have-not-clinched-a-non-losing-season\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pirates have not clinched a non-losing season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fac-mtrick02.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/nl_standings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1812\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" alt=\"nl_standings\" src=\"https:\/\/fac-mtrick02.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/nl_standings.jpg\" width=\"295\" height=\"361\" \/><\/a>The newspapers here are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/stories\/local\/neighborhoods-city\/pirates-win-end-20-years-of-futility-701924\/\">full of news<\/a> that the Pittsburgh Pirates (Major League Baseball) have broken a twenty-year reign of mediocrity by guaranteeing a non-losing season. \u00a0Since they have won 81 games in a 162 game season, that seems self-evident.<\/p>\n<p>But those of us in operations research know enough to check out the details before leaping to a conclusion. \u00a0Consider the following situation:<\/p>\n<p>1) The Pirates proceed to lose all their remaining games to end up at 81-81.<\/p>\n<p>2) St. Louis and Cincinnati pass the Pirates, to win the division and the first wild-card.<\/p>\n<p>3) Arizona ends up at 81-81 also, with all other teams (except division winners) with a worse record.<\/p>\n<p>The Pirates would then play Arizona a one-game tie-breaker to determine who the second wild-card team is. \u00a0Suppose (horrors!) they lose again. \u00a0Where does the game count? \u00a0It turns out that tie-breaking \u00a0games count in the regular season records, as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/One-game_playoff\">Wikipedia<\/a> confirms. \u00a0So Pittsburgh would end up 81-82, for another losing season. \u00a0Note that it has to be a one-game tie-breaker: \u00a0subsequent playoff games are not included in regular season records.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think anyone is losing sleep over this possibility. \u00a0But a correct computer system for determining clinching of non-losing seasons would have to take this into account. \u00a0 Having worked on such a system for another professional sports league, I can assure you that all the difficulty is in these near (but not quite) impossible events. \u00a099% of the code handles cases that have never occurred, and are unlikely to occur in our lifetimes.<\/p>\n<p>Note that if Pittsburgh wins one more game, then they are guaranteed a winning season: \u00a0a tie-breaker can&#8217;t turn their record into a losing (or .500) season.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update 9\/9:<\/strong> With the win tonight, the Pirates guarantee a winning season. \u00a0Now the streak is truly broken! \u00a0Go Bucs!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The newspapers here are full of news that the Pittsburgh Pirates (Major League Baseball) have broken a twenty-year reign of mediocrity by guaranteeing a non-losing season. \u00a0Since they have won 81 games in a 162 game season, that seems self-evident. But those of us in operations research know enough to check out the details before &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/09\/04\/the-pirates-have-not-clinched-a-non-losing-season\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Pirates have not clinched a non-losing season&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}