Originally Posted by
notin
You're overthinking it.
It's games to be played minus games ahead of nearest opponent plus one.
The Sox have 158 games to be played. Typically it is applied to a team in the lead and not a last place team, but the Sox "lead" is "minus 2 games", on Balitmore and Toronto. So the real Magic Number is 161. 158 - (-2) +1.
But for catching the Evil Empire, the Magic Number is actually 158 - (-1) + 1 or 160. In both cases, it's larger than the games to be played because the Sox need other teams to lose games (which obviously will happen for a bunch of reasons, the most prominent one being reality.)
All those scenarios about other teams are all built in to the formula, or will be as they affect the lead portion of the formula. Also, most important, Magic Numbers calculated on April 6th for 1-3 teams are done for comedic purposes only...