In this post, from when the Red Sox had played 99 games and had a 10-game loss-column lead in the wild card, I said that the media should be telling people what a great chance the Red Sox had of making the playoffs, kind of like how after 12 fucking games they gave us all kinds of stats saying how the team wouldn't go anywhere.

As it turns out, according to Cool Standings' playoff odds, our chances of missing the playoffs as of that date were about 4%.

As of today, 115 games in, that percentage is down to 1.4. Ninety-eight and a half times out of 100, in this scenario, a team should make the playoffs. I hope every moron who used the word "panic" in April and dug up all those completely meaningless stats when there were 150 games left to be played write new articles assuring people that there's nothing to worry about now. Fat chance. The worst part about it for me, though, is how they always imply it's the fans who are "panicking" instead of just coming out after 12 games and saying "I'm panicking! I've been paid to write about baseball yet I've somehow never learned despite watching season after season through my entire life that you can't look at a handful of games out of 162 and think it determines anything. Again, I, pathetically, am panicking about a team full of all-stars in April."

At one point during April I had that Saturday morning baseball show on. A guy called in and very calmly and seemingly thoughfully, as if he'd gone into his workshop for hours and came up with a level-headed theory about the under-.500 Red Sox that somehow all the other analysts had missed, asked the question:

Is this just a bad team?

I would love to hear that guy's thoughts today. (And needless to say, the hosts didn't bust out into laughter, taking it as a legitimate question.)

[Note: Yes I realize the Cool Standings prediction system doesn't know what's going to happen from here on out anymore than anyone else, but the point remains that 115 games gives a much better idea than 12 does, and that these guys all used similar predictions based on 12 games so why wouldn't they tell you what those percentages are now instead of just continuing to find flaws and wonder when the team will collapse?]