Games above .500 is wins minus losses. A team at 60-40 is twenty games above .500, and its line on the chart sits at +20. The figure is not divided by two. A team at 40-60 is twenty games below .500 and sits at -20. That one number is the vertical axis of every MLB, NFL, NBA and WNBA chart on this site, and a standings chart draws each team's line from it day by day.
Take the wins, subtract the losses, and keep the sign. 60-40 is +20. 55-45 is +10. 50-50 is 0. 45-55 is -10. The number moves by exactly one with every game: a win adds one, a loss takes one away. It is the same arithmetic in every era and for every team, which is what lets a 1904 pennant race and this year's wild card chase be read on one scale.
The halving belongs to a different figure. Games behind, explained below, divides by two, and that is why some people, and some answer engines, halve games above .500 as well. Nothing on this axis is halved: a 60-40 team is +20, not +10.
The zero line is a .500 record, as many wins as losses. A team above the line has a winning record, a team below it a losing one, and the distance from the line says by how much. Because the axis counts games rather than a percentage, every team sits on one comparable scale however many games it has played: a 10-5 start and a 60-55 finish are both +5, even though one is a .667 team and the other a .522 team.
On the 1951 NL pennant race chart, the close of play on August 11 has the Brooklyn Dodgers at 70-36 and the New York Giants at 59-51. Brooklyn's line sits at +34 and New York's at +8, 26 apart on the chart. The standings table for the same day says the Giants were 13 games behind, which is that gap halved. The two lines meet at the end of the season: the Giants finish 98-59, at +39, and the Dodgers 97-60, at +37, two apart on the chart and one game behind, with the playoff games counted in both records.
Games above .500 measures one team against an even record. Games behind measures the gap between two teams, and it is half the distance between their two lines on this chart. The standings table works it out as the leader's wins minus the trailer's wins, plus the trailer's losses minus the leader's losses, divided by two. That division by two is where the halving belongs, and it never applies to a single team's games above .500.
| August 11, 1951 | Record | Games above .500 | Games behind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brooklyn Dodgers | 70-36 | +34 | - |
| New York Giants | 59-51 | +8 | 13 |
A tie moves the line neither up nor down. Ties count in the record, so the chart's tooltip and the standings table show a team at 8-8-1, and they count in winning percentage, where the NFL scores a tie as half a win. On this axis a tie is a game played that was neither won nor lost, so 8-8-1 sits on the zero line beside 8-8. Ties are rare, which is why the NFL chart reads the same way as the other three.
Hockey standings are kept in points, two for a win and one for an overtime or shootout loss, so wins minus losses would misdescribe them. The NHL chart plots standings points minus games played instead. A team with 50 points through 40 games sits at +10. The zero line is a team earning exactly one point per game. A win moves the line up one, a loss that earns a point leaves it where it is, a loss that earns none moves it down one, and in the seasons that had ties, a tie left it where it was too.
Football standings are kept in points as well, three for a win and one for a draw, so the three soccer charts plot points minus games played. A draw pays one point, so the zero line is the pace of a side drawing every match. A win moves the line up two, a draw leaves it where it is, and a loss moves it down one. A club with 50 points through 30 matches sits at +20. MLS awarded points differently from 1996 to 1999, when a level match went to a shootout; those seasons are charted from the points the league actually awarded, on the same arithmetic.
Zero is average, the number is a real distance in games or points, and every team in a league sits on one scale whether it has played 10 games or 150. That is what lets one axis hold a whole race. The three scales are stated together, beside every other disclosure about the numbers, on the data notes page.