WillyWonka

The question is not can the Jays catch the Rangers, but can the Rangers hold off the Jays.

I started rooting for the Jays shortly after I started playing baseball when I was 5 years old.....that was 1994. Timing was absolute BS. Good times now though....

That beats logo....

Caught

Chicks love Lawrie. Chicks will cheer

it is unlikely that you are able to control how many flips the coin makes before it lands or the exact amount of force you exert because you are not a freak of nature. Therefore, compared to your intentions, the outcome is luck. If I win ten coin tosses in a row, it doesn't make me intrinsically lucky, it just means that we witnessed a statistical oddity (aka luck!). Similarly, hutch's stats indicate that he's not as terrible as his ERA indicates. Maybe hutch pitches a perfect game next week because every ball happens to be hit right at fielders...or maybe he gives up 10 straight lil loopers.....either case is luck

So if we flip a coin 10 times and I win 7 and you win 3, you would conclude that I'm a more talented coin flipper??

Ya but he walks so many batters that it negates the movement/velocity. Plus ground ball pitchers tend to get rocked hard when they miss up because they lead to line drives.....flyball pitchers get popups. At any rate, I'm not arguing that Hutch is more talented than Sanchez, I'm arguing that Hutch has been relatively unlucky while Sanchez has been relatively lucky. Hutch has been getting results below his capabilities while Sanchez has had a few breaks.

So? That means the Angels have to go 2-1 in those 3 games just to tie us.

Even if a batter is impressed by the fastball, it still has a decent chance of landing in play for a hit. A lot of Hutch's balls have been falling into play for hits, making him look worse than he really is. Sanchez's fastball hasn't exactly been striking out a lot of batters (5.9K/9 isn't amazing). Having an impressive dick helps, but you still need to know how to use it.

We've only played 21 games since the All-Star break, which is a pretty small sample size. This leave rate stats like ERA, save% and WHIP wide open to the "sh*t happens" factor that get smoothed out over time. Although Price would have had a slight impact so far in his two games.

The numbers that you just gave support the argument that Sanchez has been lucky relative to Hutchison (especially that BABIP differential), so we can expect Hutchison's ERA to improve vs. Sanchez's in the future. Despite this magical fastball, Hutchison still has more K/9 and fewer BB/9.

Jays home advantage is bigger than I realized. Oddly, the Angels are apparently at a (very) slight home disadvantage over the past 5 years. Source: http://www.betfirm.com/mlb-home-field-advantage/

The advantage is what....6% extra chance of winning for one game? Not huge. Making sure we get there matters most

Ya but I was hoping for a LAA win. Since there's no benefit to being WC-1 over WC-2, I would prefer to maximize the difference between us and the rest of the pack.