# Over .500--Baseball **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 29, 2007, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351 "2007-08-29T12:55:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![db4530](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@db4530](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/db4530)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/1 "2007-08-29T12:55:49Z")
Right now, the Chicago Cubs have a record of 67 wins and 63 losses. This is considered to be 4 games over .500. The way I understand it, the “.500” refers to the team’s winning percentage (which currently stands at .515). Here is the question: If the Chicago Cubs finish the season with a record of 84 wins and 78 losses, would they be 3 games over .500 or 6 games over .500? I had a contentious argument about this issue yesterday, so I will set forth both arguments (without telling which argument I made) and let the Teeming Millions show me the right path: 1. Currently, the Cubs’ record has the team with 4 more wins than losses, and they are 4 games over .500. Applying the same logic, if their wins outnumber their losses by 6 at the end of the season, they will be 6 games over .500. 2. While the wins currently outnumbering the losses by 4 games necessarily means that they are 4 games over .500, at the end of the season there will be no additional games to play and the total number of games is 162. As a result, winning 81 games would be a record of .500, and winning 84 games would be 3 games over .500. Any help that the TM can provide is appreciated. Links to show that I am not the only person in the world who thinks the way I do would be great. Have a great day. db ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/2 "2007-08-29T13:02:42Z")
[QUOTE=db4530] If the Chicago Cubs finish the season with a record of 84 wins and 78 losses, would they be 3 games over .500 or 6 games over .500? [/quote] They will be 6 games over .500, as they will have won 6 more games than they lost, which is the definition of the term “over .500” (.500 being the breakeven point of having an exactly even number of wins/losses). **Currently, the Cubs’ record has the team with 4 more wins than losses, and they are 4 games over .500. Applying the same logic, if their wins outnumber their losses by 6 at the end of the season, they will be 6 games over .500.** Yes. **While the wins currently outnumbering the losses by 4 games necessarily means that they are 4 games over .500, at the end of the season there will be no additional games to play and the total number of games is 162. As a result, winning 81 games would be a record of .500, and winning 84 games would be 3 games over .500.** No, because it’s a zero-sum total: the number of games they will play in a season is fixed (162), and for “games above .500” states within the season, the number of games they’ve already played in the season is fixed. For every game they win over 81 (or whatever the “halfway mark” of the number of games they’ve already played is), the number of games they’ve lost is reduced by one as well. You can see this easily if you just work out a table like this: … 79-83: 4 games under .500 80-82: 2 games under .500 81-81: .500 record 82-80: 2 games over .500 83-79: 4 games over .500 … You can never have an odd number of “games above .500” at the end of a season or after playing an even number of games. (Excepting the rare cases where a rained out game is not made up due to not mattering for the final season standings, in which case you may have a team playing 161 or even 159 games for the season.) ---
**Author:** ![db4530](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@db4530](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/db4530)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/3 "2007-08-29T13:19:53Z")
[QUOTE=robardin] They will be 6 games over .500, as they will have won 6 more games than they lost, which is the definition of the term “over .500” (.500 being the breakeven point of having an exactly even number of wins/losses). [/QUOTE] Thanks for your response Robardin. It is much appreciated. I have two follow-up questions: 1. Do you know of any links that back-up your answer? 2. The way I understand what you are saying (and I am not saying that I disagree with you), the “.500” in the phrase “over .500” or “under .500” is synonymous with “games lost.” For example, “6 games over .500” is the same as saying “won 6 games more than were lost,” and “6 games under .500” is the same as saying “won 6 games fewer than were lost.” Am I understanding you correctly? ---
**Author:** ![Puzzler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d07c76/32.png) [@Puzzler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Puzzler)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/4 "2007-08-29T13:38:53Z")
Take a look [here](http://thesportseconomist.com/archive/2005_05_01__arch_file.htm). The end-of-season LA Clippers home games were 27-14 or 13 above 0.500. > [@](#): > > The Los Angeles Clippers have already announced that they are raising the prices of most of the tickets to their games. They didn’t make the playoffs and they didn’t have a winning season, but **they were 13 games above 0.500 at home** and they finished the season 3 games above the Lakers in the Pacific Division! > > The Clippers, confident they’re poised to make a serious run for the playoffs next season, have raised ticket prices in eight of 10 seating areas in Staples Center, an increase of as much as 20% in the prime locations. … > > A spokesman for the Clippers, **whose 27-14 home record last season** was their best in 12 years, said the team has received few complaints about the price increases. The club has taken 400 new orders for season tickets since the 2004-05 season ended last month, spokesman Joe Safety said. > > The Clippers were 37-45 and 10th in the Western Conference, eight games out of the final playoff spot and ahead of the Lakers for the first time in 12 years and only the third time in the Clippers’ 21 seasons in Los Angeles. Bolding added. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/5 "2007-08-29T13:46:22Z")
[QUOTE=db4530] 1. Do you know of any links that back-up your answer? [/QUOTE] The expression “X games over .500” is just an idiom … it’s not an official thing that would be codified anywhere. And as an idiom, it certainly need not be subject to any kind of mathematical or logical rigor. The best you’ll do is to come up with a preponderance of usages in written/online media, to establish the issue one way or another. **Samclem** is usually pretty good with that kind of thing. Having said all that … **Robardin** is very much on the money. EDIT: I see **Puzzler** found one usage already that backs up **Robardin**. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/6 "2007-08-29T13:53:19Z")
The easiest way to “back up my answer” is just to look up the win-loss record of any team at the time any reference to their being over/under .500. You will find that it always equals wins minus losses. It is interesting though, I cannot turn up a formal definition of this term anywhere – people just sort of take it for granted that it is already understood or obvious. I agree that it is not the most intuitive measure of a team’s success during a season, since it doesn’t correlate to winning percentage in an obvious way. Being 20 games over .500 at the end of the season translates into 92 wins (92-72) for a .568 winning percentage, about the minimum threshold for being “a good team”, while being 20 games over .500 at about the halfway mark (50-30) represents a kick-ass .625 winning percentage. Perversely, that’s exactly why the measurement is used, especially in baseball which has a very long season: if a team is “X games over .500” at any point in the season, if they go the rest of the season winning and losing the same number of games, they will finish at X games over .500 as well. So if at the end of the season you’d like to be 20 games over .500 (to finish with 92 wins, the usual target for a playoff baseball team’s record), and you’re presently at 20 games over .500, you “only” have to play .500 ball the rest of the way (i.e., well below the pace you’ve been winning so far) to do so. In games with shorter seasons you generally find fans talking strictly about the number of wins (i.e., in the NFL). It’s only when you’re trying to get a feel for how much “slack” your team has in terms of reaching a season-long win/loss goal that “games over .500” becomes useful. (And of course, in September, the real numbers to watch are games ahead/behind first place/wild-card berth.) ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/7 "2007-08-29T13:56:07Z")
Another site to go with **Puzzler’s** : [Mets (62-47) move 15 games over .500 for first time since June](http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=270803116) FWIW, [Same question asked on another forum](http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin2/showthread.php?t=154143). And [a brief discussion over on the Freakonomics blog](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/the-oakland-as-are-three-games-above-500/): > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Dr. Levitt, > > Isn’t the “games over .500″ statistic the most widely misused stat in baseball? First of all, if a team is 51-45, as Oakland is now, they are not actually six games over .500. They have played 96 games, so .500 would be 48-48…which makes them 3 games over .500. Also, the value of “games over .500″ changes throughout the season. Being 3 games over .500 at the start of the season ranslates to a much better winning percentage than being 3 games over .500 at the end of the season. Although as a Yankee fan, I’ll take any wins I can get. > > — Posted by Anonymous > > > [@](#): > > > > I agree about the games above .500 and below .500, it is confusing since they refer to 2 different things depending on the context. > > When a team is 6 games above .500 it means that if they lose the next 6 games they will still be .500. If a team is 6 games ahead of another team, the leading team would have to lose 6 games AND the trailing team would also have to win 6 games for them to be tied. > > Another way to think about the team that is 6 games above .500: if just 3 games (not 6) were different in their outcomes (a win being changed to a loss), they would be .500. > > Comparing a team to its mythical self, is similar to division rivals playing each other, every win is balanced by an equal and opposite loss. (no single game can lead to a record of .500, it’s all or nothing.) > > — Posted by Anonymous > > > [@](#): > > > > Please give up on making sense of games over .500. It is the conventional way of referring to a teams standing relative to .500. In may be inarticulate, or even mathematically wrong, but it is the way baseball fans have been talking about the matter for over 100 years. Try to talk about something more important, like whether Mr. Beane can unearth some undervalued assets again. > > — Posted by Anonymous ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/8 "2007-08-29T14:20:38Z")
Another way: if you finish the season 84-78, your baseline is really 78, not 81. That is. . .let’s say you were 78-78 at one point. You’re at .500. You win one game. You’re one game over .500 (79-78) You win 6 games. You’re 6 games over .500. (84-78) Sometimes, a team won’t make up a rain game. They can finish the season 81-80. Only a crazy person would call that half a game over .500. ---
**Author:** ![brad\_d](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@brad\_d](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brad_d)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/9 "2007-08-29T15:36:48Z")
Suppose the Angels finish the season 81-81, and the Rangers 83-79 (numbers completely made up): It sounds like we have:[ul][_]The Angels are at .500[_]The Rangers are _4 games above .500_The Rangers are _2 games ahead of the Angels_.[/ul]Right? If so, I can see why some would have issues with the terminology. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/10 "2007-08-29T15:39:38Z")
What confuses people about this nomenclature is that if, say, the Red Sox finish the season 82-80 and the Yankees finish 81-81, it’s said that the Sox are 2 games above .500. But it’s also said that the Sox are 1 game ahead of the Yankees, who are a .500 club! In other words, the meaning of ‘games above’ and ‘games below’ is different depending on whether you’re referring to the .500 mark or another team. Specifically, if you are x games above or below .500, you are x/2 games ahead or behind a hypothetical .500 team. edit: damn you, brad\_d, posting while the SDMB is being non-responsive to me. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/11 "2007-08-29T15:41:19Z")
Semantic Debate Warning: The Red Sox are currently 80-52 (28 over), the Yankees 73-59 (14 over), but that is not a 14 game lead, but rather a 7 game lead. Thus for the Red Sox they are actually 28 half-games over .500. That is in terms of divisional (wild-card) leads, but it is also true that they’ve won 28 games more than they’ve lost. Thus the use of the terms “half-game” & “full game” are very much dependent on the context. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/12 "2007-08-29T15:54:55Z")
[QUOTE=brad\_d] Suppose the Angels finish the season 81-81, and the Rangers 83-79 (numbers completely made up): It sounds like we have:[ul][li]The Angels are _at .500_[_]The Rangers are 4 games above .500[_]The Rangers are _2 games ahead of the Angels_.[/ul]Right? If so, I can see why some would have issues with the terminology.[/li][/QUOTE] That’s it in a nutshell: “X games over .500” does not mean “X wins over par” where par = breakeven for the season. It means “X games more won than lost”, and the reference point to “.500” (50%) is the number of total losses as a baseline, not the total games played. I used to be very confused about this too, until my epiphany one day (ha, in retrospect I do have something to contribute to that thread about having an epiphany…) as to why this was at all useful, and why it is in particular used by baseball fans: it gives some idea as to how much “slack” your team has for the rest of the season in terms of meeting a target number of wins/losses (as I wrote in an earlier post to this thread). ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/13 "2007-08-29T16:17:26Z")
Yes, the reason it is said that you are “x games over .500” is that that represents the number of games you could lose before you would be AT .500. The “stat” of course becomes less meaningless when you have reached the end of the season, but it’s a convenient way of discussing the overall record in a way that can easily be computed in the mind, without having to divide. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![loneoak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9dc877/32.png) [@loneoak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/loneoak)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/14 "2015-08-13T23:38:46Z")
If a team finishes the season at 111-51 would they be considered 30 games over .500 or 60 games over .500? I had a argument with my brother in-law over this. I know their win percentage would be .685 ---
**Author:** ![D18](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@D18](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D18)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/over-500-baseball/417351/15 "2015-08-13T23:48:18Z")
1.