Team B: Steampunks – 10 wins, 8 losses, 2 games remaining Team A: Flywheels – 12 wins, 6 losses, 2 games remaining We didn’t say how many games there had been in the season, only that there were two left. Let’s use this formula on our example of the Flywheels and the Steampunks. Calculate how many games team A needs to win to surpass team B’s maximum total by 1. This second formula basically says: Assume Team B wins every remaining game. WA is the number of wins that Team A has in the season GRB is the number of games remaining for Team B in the season WB is the number of wins that Team B has in the season The magic number can also be calculated as WB + GRB – WA + 1, where It’s the second option on the Wikipedia entry about the magic number: The best follows the logic of our previous example. Luckily, there are a few easy formulas to follow to calculate it. In more complex situations, the magic number is harder to derive by instinct. The magic number is a relative calculation. A team’s own result can change their magic number but so can another team’s win or loss. I don’t need to win any more games to assure myself that I’m going to finish the season ahead of my rivals. If they lose, then they only have one game left and they are still down by two games in the standings. Let’s say though, that the Steampunks play one of their remaining games before our team, the Flywheels, does. My magic number to end the season ahead of the Steampunks is therefore one. All I have to do is win a single game to make it impossible for the Steampunks to catch up. My team, the Flywheels, is ahead of the Steampunks by two games in the standings. There are two games remaining in a season. I find the easiest way of thinking about the magic number is that it is the number of games a team needs to win for them to achieve a goal no matter what another team does. First, let’s talk about how the magic number works. We’ll look at their Major League Baseball (MLB) section later. Some recent examples are this article on The Detroit Sports Site which begins, “The Detroit Tigers’ Magic Number to clinch the AL Central stayed stuck on seven with Sunday’s loss in Kansas City.” or this article on SB Nation’s LA Dodgers blog, True Blue L.A., entitled, “MLB standings 2014: Dodgers and Giants both lose, magic number now 5.” There are websites devoted completely to following the magic number, like Playoff Magic. The term “magic number” is used in other sports as well as baseball, but these days, with the baseball playoffs quickly approaching, we’re seeing it most often in baseball news stories. Most frequently, it’s a metric that show how close a team is to winning their regular season division or conference title, or to making the playoffs. The “magic number” is a calculation used to state how far a team is from achieving a goal.
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