how far behind are you?

One incredibly common thing that is talked about in baseball is the amount of games behind a particular team is out of first place.

I might guess that most die hard fans can't easily figure it out.  For instance, we can look at the NL Central Standings from April 26.  It has everything I would like to explain.

As you can see, St. Louis leads the division by 1/2 game ahead of Cincinnati and 1 game ahead of Milwaukee (games behind is the GB column).

Each game that each team plays counts as 1/2 game in the standings.  For instance, if St. Louis lost their game tonight and Cincinnati weren't playing, they each would be tied for 1st place with a 12-11 record.

We can also play a real life scenario with Milwaukee.  Milwaukee is 1 full game back, and is playing Cincinnati tonight.  If Milwaukee beats Cincinnati and St. Louis loses their game against Houston, Milwaukee would move into a tie with St. Louis, each with that 12-11 record.

Now how do you figure out how many games Houston is out?  The easiest way I've used is to analyze the absolute difference with respect to the 0.500 mark (the games above or below a team is to having won and lost the same amount of games).

St. Louis' record is 12-10, which is 2 games above 0.500.  Houston is 8-14, which is 6 games below 0.500.  The absolute difference between these two teams is 8.  Take 8 and divide by 2, and you get Houston as being 4 games behind.

Try this method whenever you see the standings.  It is more fun to try in September when some team is 25.5 games out of first place.