The Delight of the Unexpected

It’s good news to at most one person if the EFL pennant race ends early.  And even that one person, I can tell you with some confidence, will have mixed feelings.

Still, he’ll be happier than sad. He is, after all, a fallen human being, and a name on a trophy is forever, even if one goes years and years between trophy sightings. 

But his happiness will be tempered.  Even he has enough empathy to wish everyone could win. But he usually is more utilitarian than empathetic, and understands the highest utilitarian outcome of an EFL pennant race comes when someone wins their first title. Not only would a first-time winner be the happiest winner, everyone else in this league (I am proud to say) would be happy for the first-time winner, even the guy who finishes second.  

The Balk have not seized their opportunity to get their first EFL championship, and anyway the line forms behind the Pears and Kangaroos, the remaining original franchises without an EFL championship — Pears probably first in line considering their remaining life expectancy is beginning to impinge on their EFL hopes.  Since we are down to two teams with viable chances, both of whom have already won, the utilitarian calculus will not be skewed by a first-timer bonus. 

But there is another potential utilitarian boost in play: unexpectedness.  Consider these standings: 

One of these teams is not like the others: the Mariners.  No one tabbed them as a potential post-season team.  They have run a massive negative run differential all season. They don’t have any leading stars.  Their biggest prospect has been kind of a bust so far.  

But here they are, 1 game out of the second wild card, 2 games out of the FIRST wild card, and closer to first place in their division than the Tornados are to first place in the EFL. 

The sabermetricians recently boosted the M’s to their highest odds of reaching the wild card all season: 9.8%.  The A’s, with whom they are tied in the standings, are given a 17% chance, and all the other teams in those standings are at  45.5% or higher. Even so, most discussions of post-season odds either treat the M’s dismissively, or ignore them altogether.

Which of those teams — and their fans — would be the happiest to squeeze into the second wild card?  The one that is the most unexpected. Fans of other teams — say, hypothetically, the Red Sox, who’ve lost Chris Sale again, by the way — would still prefer their team to win, but would probably make the Mariners their second choice, both because it’s been so long, but especially because it would be such a wild surprise.

So let’s all root for the Mariners!  And let’s look for the pleasant surprises in the EFL, to mine them for their utility.