Expert: Brian Flaspohler - 8/3/2009

Question
How does baseball compute standings. The games back is what I do not understand.For instance the Red Sox and Yankees have the same number of losses but the Yankees have one more win yet they are one-half game ahead.Thanks.

Answer
Darwin,

Here's how it works.  Each game better then the other team both on the wins and the losses is worth 1/2 game.  So, if two teams have the same number of wins, but one of the teams has lost two fewer games, then the team that has lost two fewer games is considered 1 game ahead.

What's really crazy is that a team with less wins and less losses can still be ahead in the standings.  Check this out:

Team A 40 wins and 20 losses
Team B 39 wins and 17 losses

Team B is minus 1/2 game on wins, but plus 1 1/2 game on losses so they are really 1 game ahead!

That's how its calculated!

Brian