Formulaic Satisfaction

As you know, I have been cultivating and caring for something that is important to me over these last few months. Doing so has at times been frustrating, at times tedious, at times engrossing, but even so always I have enjoyed it.
Of course I am talking about my baseball ratings spreadsheet.(1)
In the last week or so, I've completed what I'm proud to announce is an accompanying spreadsheet that predicts the results of the playoffs. This second file is superior to the first in that it's almost wholly automated. I am required to enter data in just 48 total cells,(2) and the entire playoffs with its myriad possibilities and probabilities fills itself in for me.
I had been playing with this file mostly late at night or early in the mornings while watching the baby, and also some while at work since I was (conveniently, almost) stuck covering the reception desk twice lately. Yesterday was a beautiful moment, when I finally finished the column representing each team's chances to win the World Series. To test for bugs, I did a simple SUM of the column, and when I hit enter and the cell filled in with a clean number "1"............let's just say it felt good.(3) It meant that there were no real mistakes within the four-sheet file, that I'd done it right.


1. I think I'll always have a weird relationship with my first big sheet because definitely the one team I most associate with it is the Atlanta Braves. The Braves are currently leading their division by 2.5 games and are just 2 back of San Diego for the best overall record in the NL. But it wasn't always so. On May 19, they were in last place, already six games behind with a 13-18 record. But my sheet told me they were good. On May 4, my system told me they were the third best team in the league, just a hair behind the Phillies, and in fact it has told me at every checkpoint from April 22 through today that they were a top-3 team. The system never doubted the Braves, and so I found myself rooting for them to turn it around and then maintain their position.
This rooting for the Braves is odd for me, because as a sports fan I've more or less always hated them.(A) In the early 90s, I was a fully developing baseball fan, my little league career coming to an end and my analytical love for it still a decade away. At exactly this time, my Pirates happened to be winning, and doing so with one of the best players of all time, Barry Bonds. They won three division titles in a row and twice in a row finishing just a game shy of the World Series. Both of these losses came to the Braves, the second in especially tragic circumstances.(B) And even though he wasn't my favorite Pirate, even at my young age, I was well aware that he was easily our best player, the best in the league. He won three MVPs in a four year span. Most people forget this now because of his (alleged) steriod-fueled romp to four straight a decade later, but Bonds was totally robbed out of four straight in the early 90s. The one year he lost was 1991 and the player he lost to was Terry Pendleton, of the Atlanta Braves.(C)

2. There are eight teams that qualify for the playoffs. For each team, I must fill in the team name, the team rating (which of course I copy from the other spreadsheet), and the four individual pitcher factors for the rotation member (which of course I also copy from the other spreadsheet).
3. So here is what you really want to know, the odds for each team to win it all, based on current standings, in order:
Yankees - 24.0%
Rangers - 17.3%
Phillies - 17.3%
Braves - 12.5%
Rays - 11.1%
Twins - 7.0%
Padres - 5.8%
Reds - 5.0%

A. Outside of the usual suspects like Michigan, Notre Dame, and the Cleveland Browns, and maybe Dallas Cowboys, my list of hated teams has varied. As a kid, I hated the 49ers because I didn't want them to tie the Steelers' Super Bowl record. As a teenager, I hated the Pacers and the Heat (and even MJ and the Bulls for a little while) because they always had emotional playoff contests against the Knicks. As an adult, I've hated both the Patriots and the Red Sox for obvious reasons, and also the Seahawks for less obvious ones (oddly, I don't like bitterness, or complaining). My OSU alumni status required me to hate Florida in recent years.
B. I'll never forget you, Francisco Cabrera, you piece of shit. My dad had already bought game 1 World Series tickets for us that year. I've still never been to a World Series game, and Pittsburgh has not yet had another winning season. It's not the Curse of the Bambino, but in many ways, it's more pathetic.
C. Bonds had more than two more WAR than Pendleton, and double the WPA. If you don't know what those acronyms mean, I'm sorry.