Twins Schedule Works Against Them (But Not Much)

First, let’s look at the raw numbers. Here are the five teams' remaining games. The opponents on the left are in order by worse record to best.

The green teams are teams that are more than a couple of games below .500. The yellow teams are within a few games of .500. The red teams are more than a little above .500. There’s a lot of data there, but one thing that jumps out at me: the Twins have the fewest games against the other wild card contending teams. They only have six games (five after Tuesday night), while the other teams all have at least nine.

But now I want to go back to those pretty colors. If you add up the games in those categories, the story becomes a little clearer:

From this look, at least, the teams in the AL East have a pretty tough road. Baltimore has 18 games versus Toronto, New York and Kansas City, and the Rays face the same teams just three fewer times.

The Twins face a dichotomy. One the one hand, they have a few more tough games than the Rangers or Angels. On the other hand, they have the most of any contender versus the “below .500” category. So it that a good schedule or a bad schedule?

To figure that out, we’ll try to get a bit more precise. By looking at each opponent’s winning percentage, we can determine how a completely average team would fare against that schedule. When we do that, the Twins schedule becomes a bit uglier:

Basically, the Twins record is about one loss tougher than average, while Texas record is about a half game easier than average. The Twins, despite having the most games against the “green” teams, have the second hardest schedule ahead of them.

That’s because the teams the Twins face are at the top end of those categories I set up. The Royals, whom the Twins face more than any other team, should essentially be dark red. And the three green teams the Twins face – Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago – are the three toughest green teams in that category.

The truth is that our initial confusion was probably justified – the remaining schedules for each team are close enough in overall competition to make a clear difference between them uncertain. One game or one-and-a-half games difference isn’t particularly significant in the randomness that is a pennant race. For instance, running into one of these team’s bottom half of the rotation versus their top half of the rotation can be a much larger difference than that one game spread.

But the Twins schedule, seemingly, isn’t doing them any favors. As Twins fans watch their team's and their opponents' matchups on a daily basis, they’re more likely to be frustrated than pleased.