AP Photo/LM Otero
Sonny Gray cleared the gray days and made them sunny in Oakland. (That is a big word to pun ratio.)
And with that, the Dodged Bullet Teeth Grinder tally for the season is over
An explanation of what this is all about can be found HERE.
I took the three teams I followed the closest from the beginning of the year and figured out did they have more close games that got away or that they snatched from defeat. With 3 teams, I tried to see if there was a pattern in the final tally.
Let’s look how the Giants, A’s and Red Sox did…
GIANTS DODGED BULLET – TEETH GRINDER FINAL TOTAL
59 Dodged Bullets 53 Teeth Grinders
TOTAL: +7
A’S DODGED BULLET – TEETH GRINDER FINAL TOTAL
Sonny Gray’s complete game shutout gave the A’s reason to celebrate as they clinched a playoff spot, 4-0 over the Rangers. DODGED BULLET
56 Dodged Bullets 61 Teeth Grinders
TOTAL: -5
RED SOX DODGED BULLET – TEETH GRINDER Tally
Dodged Bullets 64 Teeth Grinders 78
TOTAL: -14
So of the three teams, only the Giants had a positive tally.
The A’s were 12 back of the Giants total and only 9 in front of the Red Sox. Yet the A’s won 17 more games than the Red Sox.
What did we learn from this? Maybe there is no correlation between final record and how many close games you win or drop.
If the Red Sox broke even, they would have a record of 85-77.
If the A’s broke even, they would have been 93-69.
Both instances, there would be no change. The Red Sox would be out of the playoffs and the A’s would be a wild card team.
In the end, maybe it was just a fun (for me) exercise in keeping track of how the teams I am following this year wound up doing. Yeah probably. Alas it is over… until next year.
Sully Baseball 