AboutBrian Flaspohler Expertise Questions about baseball rules, general information about the game, statistical analysis, questions about players, questions about Baseball records. I am a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and a lifelong baseball fanatic.
Experience Lifelong fan, article about player movement from team to team throughout history.
Question On average, how many games must a team win in order to make the playoffs? I'm interested because the Colorado Rockies are pretending to play ( a little) baseball this year. Yes, I know, we can't keep leaving players stranded on base or not beating those team we should, not to mention our on and off again offense and think we'll make the postseaon... But just in case, how many games do we need to win on average?
Answer Peter,
On average, it takes 86 wins to get into the playoffs since the wildcard has been in place. However, it depends on how well the top four teams in the league are playing and if a weak team gets in because it ends up leading a weak division.
