I thought this was an interesting exercise in figuring out exactly who had the easiest road left this season. We've looked at the Royals upcoming schedule a lot, but I wanted to compare it to the rest of the AL contenders to see where ours stacks up.
I took the winning percentages of each MLB team and I subtracted that from 1 to get a team's win expectancy against every team. Quick example, the Royals are 58-53, for a winning % of 0.523 (woohoo!) which means other teams have an expected win % against us of 0.477. Then it was simply a matter of adding up the winning expectancy numbers for the AL contenders' games remaining to get the following chart:
Tm | W | L | W-L% | Expectancy |
KCR | 60 | 53 | 0.531 | 25.135 |
DET | 62 | 50 | 0.554 | 25.120 |
LAA | 67 | 46 | 0.593 | 24.856 |
OAK | 70 | 44 | 0.614 | 24.501 |
BAL | 65 | 49 | 0.570 | 24.399 |
CLE | 57 | 58 | 0.496 | 23.990 |
SEA | 60 | 54 | 0.526 | 23.868 |
NYY | 60 | 54 | 0.526 | 23.723 |
TOR | 61 | 55 | 0.526 | 22.757 |
And would you look at that! The Royals mathematically have the easiest remaining schedule of all AL contenders right now. I'm still not sure I love our chances down the stretch, but it made me feel a little bit better seeing these numbers.
Updated after the Arizona sweep.