Snakes and Ladders: Updated!

Sunday, September 30 2007 @ 07:30 PM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

Back in March, I asked all of you to foresee which teams would improve by 10 games in 2006, and which would decline by 10 games.

The 2007 results are in (tomorrow's playoff notwithstanding.) So here are our Snakes and Ladders teams from 2007:

2007
Ladders (6) - Chicago Cubs (+19), Cleveland (+18), Arizona (+14), Colorado (+13), Boston (+10), Seattle (+10)
Snakes (3) - Chicago White Sox (-18), Minnesota (-17), Oakland (-17)

Remarkably, only three teams tumbled down the Snakes, the lowest figure since... oh, further back than I can be bothered to check. It was close. The expansion cousins from New York and Houston both staved off inclusion by a single game - each ended up 9 games worse than they were in 2006. Cincinnati slipped by 8 games, Detroit by 7, the Dodgers by 6, Texas by 5.

And now we can examine the comments, hidden these many months, and discover Who Saw it All Coming!

The rest of the original piece follows, providing the previous ten years of Snakes and Ladders.

2006
Ladders (4) - Detroit (+24), L.A. Dodgers (+17), N.Y. Mets (+14), Minnesota (+13)
Snakes (5) - St. Louis (-17), Cleveland (-15), Chicago Cubs (-13), Atlanta (-11), Washington (-10)

2005
Ladders (7) - Arizona (+26), Chicago White Sox (+16), Milwaukee (+14), Washington (+14), Cleveland (+13), Toronto (+13), N.Y. Mets (+12)
Snakes (4) - Texas (-10), Chicago Cubs (-10), San Francisco (-16), L.A. Dodgers (-22)

2004
Ladders (6) - Detroit (+29), San Diego (+23), St. Louis (+20), Texas (+18), Anaheim (+15), Cleveland (+12)
Snakes (5) - Montreal (-16), Toronto (-19), Kansas City (-25), Seattle (-30), Arizona (-33)

2003
Ladders (4) - Kansas City (+21), Chicago Cubs (+21), Milwaukee (+12), Florida (+12)
Snakes (4) - Detroit (-12), St. Louis (-12), Arizona (-14), Anaheim (-22)

2002
Ladders (6) - Anaheim (+24), Montreal (+15), Atlanta (+13), Cincinnati (+12), Boston (+11), Pittsburgh (+10)
Snakes (6) - Detroit (-11), Milwaukee (-12), San Diego (-13), Cleveland (-17), Chicago Cubs (-21), Seattle (-23)

2001
Ladders (6) - Seattle (+25), Chicago Cubs (+23), Houston (+21), Philadelphia (+21), Minnesota (+16), Oakland (+11)
Snakes (6) - Baltimore (-11), Chicago White Sox (-12), Kansas City (-12), N.Y. Mets (-12), Detroit (-13), Cincinnati (-19)

2000
Ladders (9) - Chicago White Sox (+20), St. Louis (+20), Florida (+15), Kansas City (+13), Anaheim (+12), Seattle (+12), San Francisco (+11), Colorado (+10), Detroit (+10)
Snakes (6) - N.Y. Yankees (-11), Cincinnati (-11), Philadelphia (-12), Arizona (-15), Texas (-24), Houston (-25)

1999
Ladders (4) - Arizona (+35), Cincinnati (+19), Oakland (+13), Florida (+10)
Snakes (4) - Anaheim (-15), N.Y. Yankees (-16), Chicago Cubs (-23), San Diego (-24),

1998
Ladders (8) - Chicago Cubs (+22), San Diego (+22), N.Y, Yankees (+18), Houston (+18), Boston (+14), Toronto (+12), Texas (+11), St. Louis (+10)
Snakes (6) - Pittsburgh (-10), Montreal (-13), Detroit (-14), Seattle (-14), Baltimore (-19), Florida (-38)

1997
Ladders (6) - Detroit (-26), San Francisco (+22), N.Y. Mets (+17), Anaheim (+14), Florida (+12), Baltimore (+10)
Snakes (7) - Minnesota (-10), Montreal (-10), Cleveland (-13), Oakland (-13), Texas (-13), St. Louis (-15), San Diego (-15)

The bolded teams, of course, are your World Series champions. While it seems reasonable enough to find five teams winning it all who had improved by 10+ games that season, it's somewhat startling that three of the last ten world series champions were among that season's handful of teams who declined by ten or more games.

Hmmm. I seem to notice the same teams over and over again, going up and down, up and down. How often do the teams play this old board game? This calls for a Data Table!

Team              Ladders!    Snakes!    Seasons

Detroit                4          4        8
Chicago Cubs           3          4        7
Anaheim                4          2        6
St. Louis              3          3        6
Montreal/Washington    2          4        6
Arizona                2          3        5
Cleveland              2          3        5
San Diego              2          3        5
Seattle                2          3        5
Texas                  2          3        5
Florida                3          1        4
NY Mets                3          1        4 
Cincinnati             2          2        4
Kansas City            2          2        4
Milwaukee              2          2        4
Chicago White Sox      2          1        3
Houston                2          1        3
Milwaukee              2          1        3
Oakland                2          1        3
San Francisco          2          1        3
Toronto                2          1        3
Baltimore              1          2        3
NY Yankees             1          2        3
Boston                 2          0        2
Atlanta                1          1        2
LA Dodgers             1          1        2
Philadelphia           1          1        2
Pittsburgh             1          1        2
Colorado               1          0        1
Tampa Bay              0          0        0

Tampa Bay has never played Snakes and Ladders! They and Arizona have only been around for nine of these ten seasons. The Devil Rays, of course, have been a model of consistency over that time...

And no one likes playing our game more than the Tigers. This alone almost makes me want to predict an 83-79 season for them.

We note that everybody, except the Devil Rays, has enjoyed a 10 game bump from one season to the next; and everybody except Colorado, Boston, and those amazing Devil Rays has taken a 10 game slide at some point or another.

It makes a certain amount of sense that things that leap into the air quite frequently fall back to earth, and they who fall down often pick themselves up. As Alex said the other day, in a phrase I plan to steal so relentlessly that everyone will think it's mine, Regression to the Mean is a Cruel Mistress. What is far less common are teams leaping into the air, and then leaping once again. There are exactly four instances of that: Seattle (2000-2001), Florida (1999-2000), Cleveland (2004-2005), and the New York Mets (2005-2006).

The Mets will need 107 wins to make it three 10+ game improvements in a row. That's a feat which has been accomplished exactly once in the last hundred years - by the Boston Red Sox of 1907-1909. The 1982-84 Twins and 1995-97 Marlins each improved their win total by 10+ games all three years, but in each case this was entirely because the first of the three seasons immediately followed a season that had been drastically shortened by a work stoppage. Their actual winning percentages tell a different tale, and I have Disqualified them.

Those old Red Sox, starring the famous Rough Bill Carrigan (Liam's great-uncle, he's quite famous around my house) are not the only team to achieve this trifecta, by the way - the 1884-86 Phillies also pulled off three straight 10+ game improvements, and they did it playing a 112 game schedule which makes it even more remarkable.

The saddest story, one would think, is a team that tumbles by 10 or more games and then tumbles again. Hello, Cubs fans (2005-2006)! And we do have a team of recent vintage that has pulled off this depressing feat three years running - that would be the Detroit Tigers of 2001-2003. The Cubs and Tigers are not alone in their dismay in recent years. They are joined by Montreal (1997-1998) and Arizona (2003-2004). And by the New York Yankees of 1999-2000. Yes, the back-to-back World Series winners. Of course, when you're following a 114 win World Series champion, you can come a long way down the mountain and still be higher than most of the other guys...

So yes, Cubs fans, the Tigers are here to tell you that three in a row is possible. In fact, the Cubs have done it before. Now it was quite a long time ago, I admit - 1899 through 1901, to be precise - and the schedule was more than a little erratic. The Cubs won 75, 65, and 53 games in those three seasons. However they played 148, 140, and 139 games, so I suppose it shouldn't count. If we give them those 8 extra games in 1900, they'd surely have won one of them. Even though they were Cubs...

But nothing, nothing can diminish the unique accomplishment of the Philadelphia Athletics of the Great Depression. Age cannot wither, nor custom stale what happened when Connie Mack was forced to sell off his good players. From 1932 through 1935, the A's won 94, 79, 68, and 58 games.

Now that's slipping down snakes into yesterday's news...

Anyway - history tells us that each year at least four teams will climb the ladder and another four will slide down the snake.

Tell me who.

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