24_Guy wrote:
The theory is that, in the baseball standings, the correct way to calculate games back should be to sum up the number of games back behind ALL teams ahead of you in the standings.
I don't think it holds water. Now, it is true that it's better to be, say, 7 games out behind one team, than 7 games out with three teams ahead of you. But, simply adding up the games back from every position ahead of you is overkill.
It comes down to this. Among all the teams in your division, the team with the most wins will win x number of games. Your goal then, is to win x+1 number of games. The other teams don't matter.
If there are three teams ahead of you, the likelihood of x being a higher number is therefore stronger. But there's still only one team you have to really "catch". You just don't know which one it is.
Also you can't overlook that fact that the teams ahead of you will be playing each other. Which means, assuming your teams starts winning games, you are guaranteed to pick up games against some of them.
I agree with you. I never bought into that twisted bullshit either. 5 GB is 5GB back.