Improving South Korea's crystal ball for baseball postseason clinching and elimination

We develop mathematical programming models to calculate enhanced “magic numbers” for determining playoff elimination and clinches in the Korean Baseball Organization. These magic numbers are disseminated on a website for fans seeking accurate updates on their team’s postseason prospects. The website has received attention from Korean sports writers and fans alike. Sports media outlets often report on whether professional teams have clinched a playoff berth or, conversely, have been eliminated from one. Although the U.S. media have reported such results for years, particularly for Major League Baseball, no such equivalent outlets backed by rigorous mathematical models exist in South Korea. Motivated by the hiatus in most international professional sports (with a notable exception being Korean baseball) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, we derive inspiration for the generation of so-called magic numbers by modifying an existing set of integer-programming optimization models that had been developed for U.S. Major League Baseball; the modifications tailor these models to the Korean Baseball Organization League by considering unique rules such as the fact that a game can end in a draw. Our results, which are new to Korean media, have generated interest among Korean baseball fans curious about up-to-date, precise information regarding whether their team still has a chance of qualifying for postseason play or whether it has been eliminated. Funding: This work was made possible, in part, by a generous donation from Columbia University and supported by award number 2227548 from the National Science Foundation, Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI).