Contender or pretender?

Even with a big July, the Wild Things haven’t gained much ground on the playoff contenders. Washington started August with a 5-2 loss at Midwest on a night when a victory would have allowed the Wild Things to gain on every team they were chasing in the standings, with the exception of Kalamazoo. Then, Sunday afternoon they receive another dreadful start from pitcher A.J. Jenkins and waste five home runs in a loss to the Sliders.

So are the Wild Things contenders or pretenders?

Let’s look at this from the angle of what it’s going to take for Washington to make the playoffs. As mentioned in a post last month, the popular saying around the Frontier League is play .500 on the road and win two of every three at home. If the Wild Things win tonight at Midwest, they return home with a .500 road trip. For the sake of argument, let’s give them a win and a 33-33 record with 30 games remaining. They begin tonight four games out of a playoff spot.

If Washington follows the pattern listed above, they’ll finish with a 51-45 record. In the five seasons the FL has played a 96-game schedule, 51 wins has been good enough to finish fourth overall only once (2008). The average win total for the fourth-place team has been 53.4. Fifty-one wins was the fewest for the fourth-place finisher and the high was 57 in 2006.

In two of the previous five seasons, the FL’s setup was different than this year. In 2007, there was a three-division format. In 2006, the league had only 10 teams. If you throw out those two years, the fourth-place team averaged 52.6 wins in the three remaining 96-game seasons.

No matter how you break it down, the Wild Things will likely need 52-54 wins to get into the playoffs. They MUST get a couple of series sweeps or winning road trips to even have a shot at the postseason.

At this point, the only teams that can be eliminated from playoff consideration are Traverse City, Gateway and Evansville. Midwest is clinging to slim hopes but does get some help from the schedule (more on that later). You can lock Kalamazoo into one playoff berth. The remaining eight teams can be called playoff hopefuls.
Does the schedule favor Washington?

No.

The only thing the Wild Things have going for them is their 12 remaining road games are less than every playoff hopeful except Rockford, which also has 12 road games.
What works against the Wild Things is they're the only team that will not play the Eliminated 3 (Traverse City, Gateway and Evansville) down stretch. Every game from now until the end of the season will be against a team currently in the playoff hunt. There are no gimmes for Washington, unlike for other clubs.

The schedule favors River City in the West because the Rascals have only 13 road games remaining and play the Eliminated 3 a whopping 13 times. The Rascals, however, do play powerful Kalamazoo six times, as do the Wild Things and Florence Freedom. Midwest has 12 games remaining against the Eliminated 3, hence I’m not ready to drop them from contention.

In the East, the schedule heavily favors Lake Erie because the Crushers have 6 games left with Evansville and do not play Kalamazoo.

I'm no oddsmaker, but I'd put the Wild Things' chances of making the playoffs at no better than 5%, based on the difficult schedule ahead.