20/20 Seesaw

Q: How many teams in baseball history have reached the .500 level, after falling 20 games below .500, earlier in the season?

A) According to The Elias Sports Bureau, the answer is one, the Kentucky Colonels in 1899. No team in more than a century has accomplished this, although the Marlins are poised to do so later today.

We were so skeptical of Elias' claim that we did some spot checking on our own and soon discovered that several variables are at play which make this counterintuitive phenomenon, indeed, so rare.

First, there's two swings involved. The first swing is falling twenty games under followed by a +20 swing to regain .500. For the purposes of this stat, a team doesnt need to finish the season at .500 either - just fall twenty back, come back and touch .500 at any later date, and they're in. And it's a long, long season.

Second, the timing of the two swings is critical. The bad swing needs to not only occur first, but also early enough to allow sufficient time for a realistic, subsequent run. For example, a rudderless 20-40 team on June 1st would need to finish at least .598(61-41).  Compare that with a hypothetical team at the All Star break, just a month later. Let's say they're wallowing at 35-55 . They need to play at least .639(162g) or .656(154g) for several months to break even. Extremely unlikely.

Third, perhaps most importantly, the two swings are in opposite directions. A team that dips 20 below and then plays 20 up is neither a particularly good or bad team. It is, by definition, a .500 team. Average. And here's the key - while all teams have ups and downs, truly average teams, contrasted with genuinely good or bad teams, tend to hover nearer .500 without extended swings in either direction. This is not coincidence, but results directly from the average quality of the team and equilibriums inherent in baseball.

By contrast, think of how common a pair of 20 game swings in the same direction is. Any team that either wins, or loses 101 games, accomplishes this. You go twenty up or so in June(1st swing), and finish strong(second swing) towards your 101-61 record. Because you're, you know, really good! Same concept applies for teams that lose 101. Twenty under, forty under and so on.

Fourth, the twenty under to .500 construct is an arbitrary, rather tiny hoop to jump through. It does not recognize other potential 20 game "recoveries". For example, from 10 below .500 to 10 above, or even 19 below .500 to one game above, would not be included in this statistic.   

All things considered, however, we think the Marlins imminent achievement is much more than some statistical contrivance. It reflects a genuinely rare, substantitive degree of intra-season improvement, transcending luck or coincidence, that speaks very well of their wildcard chances.