Instead of the White Sox? No.
Instead of the Tigers. Apparrently, Mr. Brantley's math skills aren't quite that good. Assuming the Tigers go .500 the rest of the way, the Yankees (the team with the best chance to catch them) would have to go 46-30, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do. 46 wins out of 76 games would be a better record than they Yankees have had to this point. Currently, they are 14 games over .500.
So, Jeff, are you saying the Tigers will be worse than 37-37 down the stretch? I guess it is possible, but It's more likely that they will win 40 than win 20. If they win 40, that will be 99 wins, and, sorry for the Yanks, but that would make them pretty much uncatchable. If the Tigers win 99, the Yankees would have to win 2 of 3 for the rest of the season and the White Sox would have to catch the Tigers and the Red Sox would have to go 47-29 the rest of the way.
I'm not saying that it is impossible, but it would be improbable that the White Sox would keep up the pace, and the Yanks and the Sox would both win 46-47 games in the second half (Remember, 12% of each teams' remaining games are against each other.) If the Yanks and Red Sox split their remaining games, then they will have to play even better over the course of the other 88% of their games left.
Let's say one team gets hot. Say the Red Sox sweep the Yankees in their nine remaining games or vice versa. The losing team would have to play about .700 ball if the Tigers were to win 40 of the rest of their games and end up with 99 wins (by the way that's only .550 ball the rest of the way).
Remember, the Tigers have 10 games left against the Royals, and they are out of West Coast trips. If they can play .500 against the White Sox, Yankees and Red Sox, they will be all but impossible to catch. And if it is close, six of those ten Kansas City games will be in the season's final week, when the Royals are playing a bunch of minor leaguers, thinking about the future, and Magglio and Pudge are still in the lineup.
Mr. Brantley, you went out on a limb by picking the Dodgers as the National League Wild Card, but you went on an even longer, weaker limb by picking the Yankees and the Red Sox to both make the playoffs.
