This little exercise really crystalized for me how much luck really is involved in this game.
I'm assuming that Yahoo sets the schedule randomly, in which case of all of the thousands and thousands of possible ways to arrange an 11 game schedule for a 12 team league where everyone plays everyone else once, the one we wound up with was no more or less likely to be our schedule than one in which DB could be 2-9 instead of 8-3, or one in which JG could be 10-1 instead of 3-8.
The flaw in my argument, of course, is that the top three scorers in the league have the best W-L records, which is as it should be, and it's easy to understand why.
If there are, let's say for simplicity, 1000 possible combinations for our schedule, there's only maybe a handful that will yield a 2-9 record for DB, who's second in the league in scoring. There would probably be several hundred that would leave him at, let's say, 7-4 or better.
Same for JG. Most of the 1000 scheduling possibilities would probably leave him at about 4-7 or worse, since he's next to last in scoring.
I just picked schedules that suited my argument.
The chances of DB being 2-9 are not the same as the chances of him being 8-3.
But still........
IM, for example, is 6-5 with 607 points scored. JG is 3-8, with only 20 fewer points. Without even looking, I'd bet that IM has won a bunch of close games when scoring relatively few points. Strictly the luck of scheduling for him.
