The two teams that reach the World Series must each have a team season
average well above.500. My question is: What is statistically the
latest calendar date that a team may have a .550 average and still be
a contender for the Series? At this cutoff date, we can eliminate all
teams below .550 as probable contenders.

knowitall22..

Thanks for your question.  As has been discussed in the comments
below, determining when a team can officially be considered out of the
playoffs, typically, can't truly be determined until late in the
season outside of the very bottom feeders of the various leagues. 
However, students at the IC Berkeley Industrial Engineering and
Operations Research have, in their Remote Interactive Optimization
Testbed, come up with an application that takes the remaining games
left and determines all possible scenarios to help take some of the
guesswork out.  You can find the information at
http://riot.ieor.berkeley.edu/~baseball/baseball_main.html as well as
download a 33 page paper which explains their calculations at
Baseball, Optimization and the World Wide Web,
http://riot.ieor.berkeley.edu/~dorit/pub/baseball.html

Thanks again for your very interesting question and if you need any
additional clarification, please let me know.

Regards,

-THV

Search Strategy:
formula eliminate baseball teams playoffs

tar heel v-ga is exceptionally talented and versatile

knowitall, 

That is not necessarily true that a .500 record is required to reach
the World Series.  With the Wildcard playoff spot, it is possible to
have less than a .500 record and get in.  Also, depending and the
strenth of the team's division, it may not take a .500 record to win
the Division, which guarantees a playoff spot, which means that the
team can reach the WS.  Regarding a date, with rain outs and other
cancellations, the regular season schedule really doesn't have a
definitive end date that is known until a couple of weeks before hand.

Regards,

-THV

tar heel v: You are of course absolutely correct about not needing a
.500 average to reach the WS. I'm not a well-informed baseball fan; I
was generalizing. It seems intuitively to me there must be some point
in the year wherein you could eliminate most teams, and I don't mean
the week before the Series. The bookies could improve their odds with
some such system. If not a .550 average, some number should do. Of
course, the wild card system disrupts previous statistics.
knowitall22-ga

When a team is more games out of playoff contention than they have
games left to play is when they are eliminated.  Example

Team A is in first place and is ahead of Team B by 6 games

Team A: 50-25
Team B: 44-31

There are only 5 games left to play in the season and Team B cannot
get into the playoffs with a wildcard.  Team B cannot make the
playoffs as the best record they can have is 59-31 if they win the
last 5 games and the worst record Team A can have is 50-30 if they
lose the last 5 games.

Other than that, there is no surefire method of determining when a
team is guaranteed to be in or out of the playoffs.  Just ask Boston
Red Sox fans :)

Regards,

-THV

The New York Mets reached the World Series in 1973 with a .509 record,
and the Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987 with a .525
record.

tar heel v: I fully understand the conditions under which a team is
eliminated from contention. What I am asking: Is there any early
warning signal which tells us: This team can't make it, based on
probabilities? I also understand anything can happen, which keeps
baseball fans charged up. It seems to me that considering the
tremendous mass of statistics, for which baseball is famous, there
must be a clue in there somewhere to the likely probability of
narrowing it down to a few real contenders. If I'm wrong, it isn't the
first time.
Thanks,
knowitall22-ga

Regarding actual winning percentages, I don't think it's possible to
establish a firm and meaningful statistical cutoff, as there are too
many ways for teams with weak records to make the playoffs.

You could probably come up with a statistic regarding distance behind
the division front-runner, but I wouldn't try that at this time, as
there aren't enough years of data with wild cards to create a
dependable statistical framework.

In another three or four years, the bookies will probably have all the
algorithms worked out. But coming up with a formula now is very risky,
kind of like extrapolating Lucent Technology's 2000 total return based
on returns of the three previous years. It doesn't take a math major
to understand what happened to investors who took that statistical
leap.

V

Closest thing I have found:

http://riot.ieor.berkeley.edu/~baseball/detail_calc.html

tarheelv:
  Hi! I accept your last comment (1/3/03) as an answer. Re-post it as an answer.
Your erudition and diligence are awesome.
Thanks,
knowitall22