Heating Up and Debbie-ing Down

Baseball doesn't suck anymore.  Too bad I've been busy as dick and can't pay attention to most games in real time.  Either way, the Toronto Blue Jays are 4 games under .500, which, 3 months ago, would have been the most bullshit thing ever, but given the result of the first 40 games of the year, is actually quite a blessing.  I'm mostly confident that the preceding sentence made sense, but I can't really be bothered to double check that.

Texas is a pretty good team, regardless of how they've been scoring as of late.  Taking 4 straight from them is very good news for a team who needs every win they can get.  A month ago, this season was fucking over and done with, as hopeless as could be.  It's still an uphill battle, but this last couple of weeks have been pretty delightful, and Jose Reyes is coming back soon.

Cool Standings (and therefore ESPN) has the Jays making the playoffs 12.1% of the time from their current position.  That's a far fucking cry from the 0.3%-5.8% odds we were given 32 days ago.  May as well have the same look at this situation as we did a month ago.

Using that same 93-win plateau as our benchmark of determining what needs to be done to sniff playoff baseball, let's figure out what the Jays need to do from here on in.

The Blue Jays currently sit at 32-36 through 68 games, which leaves us with 94 more games in the season.  To get to 93 wins, the Jays need to win another 61 games.  That's a .648 winning percentage.  A month ago, the Jays needed to win 63% of their remaining games to get to 93 wins.  They're the hottest (or so) team in baseball, and they need to win games at a higher clip than what they've been doing.  Yeesh.  I checked the math on this three times, because even I didn't believe what I was writing.

For the record, Baseball Prospectus gives the Jays a 5% chance.  I feel like that's a lot more reasonable.  We'll know more soon though-- after the Rockies this week, it's Baltimore, Tampa, Boston and Detroit.  These next 15 games or however many it is are obviously the most important of the season.  Anybody can beat up on Houston or Minnesota.  It's takes the best to go out there and beat the best, or something like that.