The Phillies vs >.500 Teams

While looking at the MLB standings today, I noticed that the Phillies had only played 47 games against teams with records above .500. This is the lowest amount of any team in baseball, and is exactly half the amount of Minnesota, who have played 94 games against teams with records above .500, the most of any team in baseball. In their 47 games against teams above .500, Philadelphia has gone 26-21, good for a .553 winning percentage. Compared to their record against teams below .500, in which the Phillies have gone 58-25 (.699), this .553 winning percentage is substantially lower. Now, to be fair, most teams in baseball have better records against sub .500 teams. As of games finishing August 29, all of MLB has a .443 winning percentage against >.500 teams, but a .565 winning percentage against <.500 teams. Still, this got me wondering how the MLB standings would look if every team had played 94 games against >.500 teams this year, just like the Minnesota Twins. Obviously this is impossible, but it's not supposed to be a factual study, but rather a fun exercise.

What I did was apply every team's winning percentage against teams with records above .500, and teams with records below .500 to the Twins breakdown of games - 94 games against >.500 teams, and 40 games against <.500 teams. This is what the standings would look like as of today:

AL NL EAST W L GB EAST W L GB BOS 82 52 PHI 80 54 NYY 80 54 2 ATL 79 55 1 TBR 73 61 9 NYM 64 70 16 TOR 65 69 17 WSN 62 72 18 BAL 53 81 29 FLA 54 80 26 CENTRAL W L GB CENTRAL W L GB DET 74 60 MIL 71 63 CHW 66 68 8 CIN 66 68 5 CLE 65 69 9 STL 62 72 9 MIN 56 78 18 PIT 61 73 10 KCR 55 79 19 CHC 56 78 15 HOU 43 91 28 WEST W L GB TEX 72 62 WEST W L GB LAA 71 63 1 SFG 70 64 OAK 60 74 12 ARI 67 67 3 SEA 57 77 15 LAD 60 74 10 SDP 57 77 13 COL 57 77 13
As you can see, not wildly different than the actual standings, but there are some changes. The only division lead change came in the NL West, where the Giants jumped ahead of the Diamondbacks. This change had almost nothing to do with the Giants (70-64 compared to actual 71-64), but was based entirely on Arizona, who changed from 76-59 to 67-67. This was due to their .442 winning percentage against teams with winning records, at 23-29 in contrast to their record against losing teams at 53-50 for a .639 winning percentage. As for the Phillies, they drop 4 wins, going from 84 to 80 and dropping to only 1 game up on the Braves, losing 5.5 games of their actual lead. The AL West also gets a bit closer with the Rangers dropping a few wins and ending up only one game up on the Angels. The NL Central as a whole all got worse, starting with Milwaukee, who lost 10 wins. Luckily for them, the rest of the division fared poorly as well, so they still sit comfortably with a five game lead over the Reds. The Wildcard races stay virtually the same, with the winners both still coming out of the East in both leagues. The only team with a better winning percentage against winning teams than losing teams so far this year is the Detroit Tigers, at 40-32 vs >.500 (.556) compared to 33-28 vs <.500 (.541). In conclusion, there's probably nothing too groundbreaking to be learned here, I just found it interesting comparing how teams would fare if they all played the exact same number of games against winning and losing teams.