Tough Road to ASB

I will have to preface this by saying I'm overjoyed that the Phils have spent more time in 1st place this year than they have pretty much in the past decade combined.  That being said, we could have a tough road between now an the All Star Break.  If we take a look at our schedule to this point and take into account the winning % of our opponents, we can get a weighted opponent's winning %, which is different than the overall opponent's winning % (out of 60 games, the more that are against worse teams, the easier the schedule), which gives us a kind of strenght of schedule to this point:

So, over our first 60 games (where we went 35 and 25), not only does our opposition have an overall record of .490, but they weighted % by the number of times we played them is slightly lower at .481, meaning we played the worst teams more often.  So against a weighted schedule of .481, we were able to win about 58% of the time.

Now if we take a look at the remainder of the schedule between tonight's game against Cincy and the ASB, it's a little more difficult.

So, if we take a look at the ramaining 36 games, our opponent's winning % has moved to .541 (a .051 increase), and a weighted % of .544 (a .063 increase).  Notice over these 36 games, the weighted % is higher than just the total % (and we are playing the better teams more often so this makes sense). 

It's a give that there are many other things that come into play (ie. injuries to key players like David Ortiz), but I'm just pointing out that the remainder of our schedule until the ASB will probably be much more difficult.