I was following the moves at baseball’s trading deadline this year like I normally do. I’ve written three books about baseball history, after all, so I still follow the game as much as I can. The behavior of most teams attempting to reach the baseball playoffs this year struck me as a superb example of a real-world application (misapplication, really) of mathematics. Here is why.

Every year, baseball teams that think they are championship contenders will trade for players to try and upgrade their rosters for the baseball playoffs, usually offering other teams young prospects who may turn into important players later in exchange for players who are quality players now.

I believe this is close to useless in the present and detrimental in the long run. Here is the math:

For any baseball team to win the World Series, it must defeat opponents in 3 rounds of playoffs – the Division Series, the League Championship Series, and the World Series. There are 8 teams that reach this possibility each year.

Now, if each team was equally talented, each team would have a 12.5% chance of winning the World Series at this point. (100% divided by 8 = 12.5) This means that your odds are low, even if you reach the baseball playoffs.

Now, if your team is very good, your odds will be somewhat above 12.5%, and if your team is less talented than other playoff teams, your odds will be a bit worse. No matter how good you are, however, your odds will never be higher than about 25%. That is 1 out of 4. For instance, this year’s Houston Astros are a very strong team. Far stronger than their record, even. At the trading deadline (August 1) Fangraphs listed them with a 23.6% chance to win the Series this year. The next most dangerous team at that moment was Cleveland at 14.1%.

That means that even if you trade for some really good players, say, players good enough to lift you from an “average” baseball playoff team to the playoff team with the 2nd best chance to win the World Series, you’ve only increased your chance of winning it all by 2-3%. That’s 1 chance in 40, essentially.

Trading for a playoff run is even dumber if you are a wild card team. If you are a wild card team, you have to beat the other wild card team just to make the final 8. That means you have a 50% chance of having an 8 or 9% chance at the championship. Or, in other words, a 4 or 5% chance at a championship.

It would be far better for most teams to keep young players with a future and maximize their number of future playoff opportunities than to trade them to give themselves a 1 in 40 better chance of a championship this year.

That is the beauty of math in the real world.

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The question is, then, why do teams do this? Mainly, I think it’s because it’s a strategy that used to work better but teams have not adjusted their expectations for the fact that it’s counterproductive now. Back when baseball had 4 divisions and only 4 teams made the baseball playoffs, it was far more useful than today. Twice as useful, in fact, because the baseball playoffs had one fewer round where a team might be defeated. Go back another generation to when each league had but one division and only two teams reached the baseball playoffs each year, and the effectiveness of the tactic doubles yet again.

There is also the fact that teams gain significant financial rewards for making the playoffs today, and those rewards increase the deeper in the baseball playoffs they go. Which leads to the one situation where, in my view, teams should consider trading potential future talent for players who are proven in the present. That is when the team faces the choice of winning its division or not making the baseball playoffs at all. A team that misses the playoffs has, by definition, a zero percent chance of winning a championship, and that team will miss out on the financial gains of a postseason appearance as well. This is the one situation where the jump in benefits may justify the risk of diminishing a team’s future opportunities.

Given the overwhelming importance of statistics in baseball here in 2018, I find it strange that so many teams still follow such outdated strategies when it comes to assessing the benefits of trading with the postseason in mind.

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