The Magic Number

After the Boston Red Sox swept the Baltimore Orioles, the magic number for the Sox at the time was 9. After the weekend, the magic number has become 6. Before the sweep of the Orioles, I was always aware of the magic number, I knew what it meant and how it worked, I could just never figure out how to come up with the magic number without already being told what it was. I had some help from some Twitter friends and here's a breakdown of how the magic number works. For explanation purposes I am going to use the current AL wildcard race between the Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers.

The AL Wildcard Race

The misconception that I made was that the magic number was a combination of both Red Sox wins and Rangers loses. So with the magic number being 9 at the time, my assumption was that the number was 18, 9 Boston wins and 9 Texas loses. @Ace2003 was knowledgeable enough to explain:

@SportsFan4 No, the magic # is Red Sox wins, Rangers losses, or a combination of the 2. So even if the Rangers win, if we win it goes down.

Much easier to understand after Richard put it that way. With 14 games left in the season going into Tim Wakefield's start against the Kansas City Royals, we have an 8 game lead on the Rangers in the AL wildcard, making the magic number 6. As Richard explained, that means any combination of Red Sox wins and Rangers losses adding up to 6 and Boston clinches the wildcard. That doesn't mean that Texas has to lose any games at all as @shelly1005 (an avid JD Drew fan) made clear:

@SportsFan4 No, it's 9. If we win 9 games...it doesn't matter what Texas does, we clinch. They can't catch us.

As earlier stated, the magic number at the time was 9. This is just another way to help explain how the magic number works.

The AL East Race

With those same 14 games left in the season, the Boston Red Sox are 5 games behind the New York Yankees in the AL East. The Yankees magic number for the division is 10. Still in double digits, we're still going to wait for that Yankee skid toward the end of the season and take a shot at winning the division before it's all said and done. Let's see how this plays out.

If you have more information that can explain the magic number and how it works, or any other questions about the magic number, feel free to participate in the comments section below.

Thanks to firebrandal for the picture of Johnny Pesky's retied jersey number 6.