Toronto Blue Jays & Adjusted Divisions

Toronto plays in a difficult division. Some have referred to the AL East as the toughest division in professional sports. It's lofty praise, but a little hard to deny. Being a fan of Toronto I get what feels like the unique experience of cheering for a good team that has a hard time making the playoffs. Toronto plays 72 games against Boston, Baltimore, Tampa Bay and the Yankees. The table below illustrates the difficult time Toronto has against the AL East versus the rest of the American League.

Against	Wins	Losses	Win %
AL East	33	39	0.4583
Non-Division	40	32	0.5556

I've put in a little bit of time to create a program that would switch Toronto for another team in the American League. A little bit of fun to see how Toronto would do outside of the East. As of this moment I've used the winning percentage between teams while switching schedules between Toronto and each team in the AL (one at time). I might do an update using runs per a game and the Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball to determine wins; it would be more accurate but I felt that increased accuracy in fantasy land wasn't a priority.

Without going to the trouble of Pythagorean Theorems the adjusted wins for switching divisions are in the below tables. The first table is what would happen if Toronto switched with a team in the West. Toronto was quite close to being AL West champions in three of the scenarios. Switching with Oakland produced a three way race for the division. Switching schedules with Seattle produced the worst result, 3rd place 7.5 games back, which is still a huge improvement over 4th place and 14 games back. 

Switched Team	Adjusted Wins	Place in Div	Games Back
LA Angels	86.1222	2nd	3.2111
Oakland	85.5270	3rd	1.2825
Seattle	82.9476	3rd	7.5190
Texas	83.9221	2nd	3.1921

Now we can look at the Central Division. The change you will notice, if you turn your gaze to the table below, is the added column. The Jays come in second place save for the time they win the division. Detroit had a heck of a ball club and it is not a surprise that they win the division each time they are in it. What is a surprise is the complete lack of parity in the Central. The Jays have a sizable lead on 3rd place in four of the scenarios, and the other the Jays have less then 81 wins.

Switched Team	Adjusted Wins	Place in Div	Games Back	Games Ahead of 3rd
Chicago WSox	84.5778	2nd	9.7556	4.1413
Cleveland	84.8333	2nd	10.1667	7.8413
Detroit	88.2143	1st	(7.1937)	7.5825
Kansas City	86.4270	2nd	9.2397	6.9905
Minnesota	80.8079	2nd	12.8567	2.5937

If the Jays played in the west in 2011 it would have been a dogfight, a battle to the last week to see who could come away with the division. The hypothetical Central would have been a cakewalk for Detroit or the Jays. The 4th place team in the East, would have been a solid 2nd in the Central or in a fight for the division in the West. Oh fantasy land, where dreams come true.