Possible Outcomes for the Cascadia Cup

Five of the Cascadia Cup's nine games have now been played and the Timbers are on top of the standings. A recent article by Sounder at Heart listed Portland's odds of winning at 92% thanks to a series of simulations they ran predicting the remainder of the season.

The current table from the Cascadia Cup website:

Team	Points	Played	W	L	D	GF	GA	GD
	7	3	2	0	1	5	3	2
	4	3	1	1	1	5	4	1
	2	4	0	2	2	4	7	-3

After the jump I am just going to give a breakdown of the remaining possible outcomes for the cup.

Remaining games:

• Seattle at Portland
• Seattle at Vancouver
• Portland at Seattle
• Portland at Vancouver

Possibilities:

According to my breakdown, 60 of the possible 81 outcomes of the four remaining games result in a Timbers win either outright or by the first tiebreaker: head to head points (74%). Five of the possible outcomes give Portland the chance to win on goal differential. Vancouver cannot win outright, but could come out on top due to goal differential in 3 scenarios.

However, if the Timbers fail to win at home against Seattle the number of outcomes in which the Timbers win the Cascadia Cup is 33 out of 54 (61%).

If they lose to Seattle at home the number of outcomes for the Timbers to win the Cascadia Cup is 12 out of 27 (44%) and if they tie it is 21 of 27 (77%). Of course if the Timbers win against Seattle they lock up the Cascadia Cup (100%).

All of this doesn't really take a lot of things into consideration but it does paint a pretty clear picture: the Timbers need to take at least a point off of Seattle or the whole thing will be thrown wide open.