POLL RESULTS: Astros still favored over M’s, but not by much
Published 9:44 am Friday, June 8, 2018
The champs are still the favorites, but not by much.
This week’s Seattle Sidelines poll addressed the Seattle Mariners’ chances of winning the American League West. Seattle passed the defending World Series-champion Houston Astros for first place in the division earlier this week, despite having a vastly lower run differential. Yet the Mariners were outpacing Houston because of their proficiency in one-run games.
Therefore, I asked readers whether they believed this was a case of skill or luck by predicting which team was likeliest to wind up winning the division. Here’s the results:
POLL: With the Mariners passing the Astros for first place in the AL West, which team do you think is more likely to win the division? Full context, including close-game performance and run differential, here: https://t.co/u8uPHVR4jR
— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) June 4, 2018
Add it all up and Houston is still considered the favorite to claim the AL West, but only by a 52-percent-to-45-percent margin over Seattle. Just 3 percent stumped for a team other than the Astros or Mariners.
I had interesting observation from this week’s poll. It’s not unusual for there to be a discrepancy between the voting on Twitter and on the blog. On Twitter, because of the character limits, very little context can be provided for the poll unless a responder clicks through to the actual blog post, something I suspect happens infrequently. Those voting on the blog, however, have to read through the entire post before getting to the actual poll, so they tend to be influenced more by the context I provide.
But this week seems to have had an opposite effect. I thought the context I provided this week — the vast run differential discrepancy that made for substantially different expected records — would sway voters in the direction of voting for Houston. However, voters on the blog went more heavily toward Seattle (59 percent to 39 percent) while Twitter voters were almost exactly the same percentages in the opposite direction (58 percent to 39 percent in favor of the Astros). Go figure.
The poll was first posted on Monday, and since then the Mariners and Astros split a two-game series, with both then winning the first game of their ensuing series. That means Seattle still has a one-game edge on Houston, while the Los Angeles Angels have crept a half-game closer and are 4.5 back. The Mariners also won another one-run game, beating the Tampa Bay Rays 5-4 Thursday evening to improve their record to 19-9 in one-run contests. Milwaukee still has 15 one-run wins, while no other team has more than 12, so Seattle is still way out front in that category.
Can the Mariners ride that formula all the way to their first division title since 2001? Only time will tell, but according to the voters Seattle has a legitimate shot.
