mathematically eliminated

Wednesday night, the Giants were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. This wasn't a shock to anyone. Informally, the Giants were eliminated from playoff contention on December 6th, 2006, after they signed Dave Roberts, Rich Aurilia, and Pedro Feliz over the course of two days.

The phrase "mathematically eliminated" is very commonly used, but not all that useful, because, what other kind of elimination would anyone be talking about?

"The Giants just got eliminated from the playoffs."
"What happened? Did the team plane crash? Did they receive a post-season ban for recruiting violations?"
"No, neither of those. They've simply lost too many games to be able to overtake the current division leader."
"Oh, mathematically eliminated. Whew."

For you calculus whizzes out there, to understand the complex mathematical elimination process requires...subtraction. Me, I'm going to refer to the Giants' loss as mercifully eliminating them from the playoffs.