New York Mets: Winning Franchise?

With all the bumbling and incompetence attributed to the Mets, I started to wonder how they’d do in a purely random system.  If you simply decided the World Series champion based on a roll of a 30-sided die on Opening Day the Mets would win one out of every 30 seasons.   The Mets have two titles in 50 years, but there weren’t always 30 teams.  So what does the math say?

For the first seven years there was a 5% chance to win, so they should’ve won .05 titles a year.   As expansion happened that .05 number drops towards the .0333 it is today.

 

7 * .05 = .35 (1962-1968)

8 * .04167 = .3333  (1969-1976)

16 * .0385 = .6154 (1977-1992)

5 * .0357 = .1786 (1993-1997)

14 * .0333 = .4667 (1998-2011)

 

If you add that all up you get 1.944 titles the Mets would’ve won in their history purely based on the roll of a die.  Statistically they’re beating the odds, however they will fall behind the pace if they don’t win one in the next two years.

 

How about just making the playoffs, based off the randomness.

7 * .1  = .7 (1962-1968, 10 teams, 1 spot)

24 * .1667  = 4 (1969-1992, 12 teams, 2 spots)

.1429 (1993, 14 teams, 2 spots)

4 * .2857   = 1.1429 (1994-1997, 14 teams, 4 spots)
4 * .1667 = .6667 (1994-1997, 12 teams, 2 spots)

14 * .25 = 3.5 (1998-2011, 16 teams, 4 spots)
14 * .1429 = 2 (1998-2011, 14 teams, 2 spots)

The Wild Card and divisional format makes it a little tricky, as the Mets technically aren’t competing for an NL West playoff berth.   I don’t think even random odds should award them that.   I did the math based on the two potential spots the Mets could win, and removed the two teams that would win the other two divisions.   It’s not exact since if the two best teams were in another division the Mets could get in as the third best team, but for the sake of randomness I think it’s close enough.

 

Adding them up gives you 7.5096 playoff berths (9.4858 if you want them to try to win the NL Central) which is a shade off the seven playoffs the Mets have seen.

 

What if just the playoffs were determined randomly?  The Mets actually do pretty good there.

 

4 * .25 = 1 (1969, 1973, 1986, 1988.  4 team playoffs)

3 *  .125 = .375 (1999, 2000, 2006.  8 team playoffs)

 

They would’ve won 1.375 championships once they made the playoffs, suggesting that the Mets have made the most out of their playoff berths. ( They’re 9-5 in playoff series)

 

So overall, the Mets aren’t a bad franchise.  They win their fair share of championships, make the most of their time in the playoffs, and get regularly, if not frequently play in October.

 

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