THE PANIC NUMBER

So the Indians have begun the season with an unfortunately miserable start. But the nice thing about the start of the season is it's a small sample size when it comes to gauging a team's overall performance. Teams that start poorly can rebound to be champions, and teams that start well can end of being the Kansas City Royals. (Hence why I haven't thrown myself off the Tobin Bridge due to poor performance of my beloved Red Sox.) Anyways, Jeff Passan is out of mind for writing off the Indians already.

So before burying the Indians with more than 95 percent of their season to play, allow us to present a few facts: Over the past 25 full seasons, 45 teams in Major League Baseball have begun their seasons 1-6 or worse. Of those 45, eight have finished the year with a better-than-average record. And of those eight, only one – the 2007 Philadelphia Phillies – made the postseason. In which they were promptly swept.

See why we call 1-6 the Panic Number?

It gets uglier when looking at the full seasons of the wild-card era. Since 1996, only three teams have finished above .500 after starting 1-6: the ’04, ’06 and ’07 Phillies, who seem to have a knack for reversing ugly starts.

The Indians, on the other hand, have started 1-6 twice since 1982. They went 60-102 the first time, 61-101 the second.

This is certainly an interesting theory, but it confuses correlation with causation. In other words, the two ideas are certainly related (since, well, bad teams tend to lose games), but there is no way to prove that this 1 - 6 definitively caused the team's whole season to go down the toilet. And why is The Panic Number (TM) 1 - 6? Isn't that a little bit arbitrary?

Furthermore, if 1 - 6 is really so damaging to a team that, for whatever reason, it will doom them to another 155 games of futility, wouldn't that mean it ANY team that hit The Panic Number (TM) during the course of the season suffer the same fate as the 45 referenced above? (In other words, what's the difference between going 1 - 6 in games 1 - 7 and winning game 1 and then going 1 - 6 in games 2 - 8?) If this is true, then the benchmark for any team that goes 1 - 6 is the aforementioned 2007 Philadelphia Phillies that won 89 regular season games and got swept in the post-season. Thus we can assume that it would be very difficult for a team to achieve any higher than this.

Except that assumption is TOTALLY WRONG. Check out this list of teams from the past five years alone that have had at least 1 stretch of 1 - 6 and made it past the high water mark of the 2007 Phillies. (All of the following teams made the playoffs.)

2008

Tampa Bay Rays: 97 – 65, 1 – 6 from July 6 -12
Chicago Cubs: 97 – 64, 1 – 6 from Aug 29 – Sept. 5
Philidelphia Philles: 92 – 67, 1 – 6 from June 16 – 24
Milwaukee Brewers: 90 – 72, 1 – 6 from May 1 – 8, July 25 – 31 and Aug. 9 – 16

2007

Boston Red Sox: 96 – 66, 1 – 6 from May 30th – June 6th
Los Angeles Angels: 96 - 66, 1 – 6 from April 11 – 17
New York Yankees: 94 – 68, 1 – 6 from April 19th – 26th, May 22nd – 29th, June 20th – 27th
Arizona Diamonbacks: 90 – 72, 1 – 6 from April 17 – 24th
Colorado Rockies: 90 – 73, 1 – 6 from June 21st – 27th

2006

New York Mets: 97 – 65, 1 -6 from Sept 20 – 26
Minnesota Twins: 96 – 66, 1 -6 from April 16th – 23
Oakland Athletics: 93 – 69, 1 – 6 from May 19th – 25th

2005

Chicago White Sox: 99 – 63, 1 – 6 from Aug 10 – 19, Sept. 9 – 15
New York Yankees: 95 – 67, 1 – 6 from April 10 – 17, May 27 – June 3
Boston Red Sox: 95 – 67, 1 – 6 from July 9 – 18

2004

New York Yankees: 101 – 61, 1 – 6 from Aug 15 – 22
Atlanta Braves: 96 – 66, 1 – 6 from May 5 – 12, June 16 – 23
Los Angeles Dodgers: 93 – 69, 1 -6 from May 12 – 19, June 20 – 26
Houston Astros: 92 – 70, 1 – 6 from June 11 - 17
Minnesota Twins: 92 – 70, 1 – 6 from Aug 5 - 11
Anahiem Angels: 92 – 70, 1 – 6 from June 27 – Jul 4

I think we can safely conclude The Panic Number is a little silly. Although now I'm going to spend the rest of the season following the Indians in the hope the don't become part of this.