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May 4, 2004 |
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In-season Report Card: The
First Quarter Once again, it's time to break out the slide rules and do some sabermetric number crunching on the league standings and take a look at the league's under- and over-achievers over the first 40 or so games -- which amounts (yes, already) to about a quarter of the 2004 season. Pythagorean Baseball The Pythagorean
Theorem isn't just for triangles. Initially developed by Bill
James, it can be used to determine what a
team's
record "should" be, based on how many runs they score and how many runs
they allow. Over the course of a few thousand games, a team's won-loss
record will almost always correspond to its Pythagorean Winning
Percentage, which is determined by the square of a team's runs for
divided by the square of a team's runs against plus
the square of runs for: RF^2/(RA^2+RF^2). However, the smaller sample size of
just 40 or so games played means most teams will perform a
couple games better or worse than their Pythagorean Winning Percentage.
Old-school baseball watchers say the difference between the expected
and actual winning percentages can be explained by intangibles like
team chemistry, clutch hitting or plain ol' hustle. But the
sabermetricians chalk the difference up to luck -- which usually evens
out
over the course of a long season. In theory, a team that is one or two
wins ahead of its Pythagorean Performance over the first quarter can
expect to give those games back sometime before the end of the year;
the same goes for teams that are "owed" wins.
The numbers say unluckiest team over
the first quarter was a team that, most of the
other owners will agree, doesn't need any luck: The Arkansas
Golden Falcons.
The defending DMBL champions are 21-21 and tied for 8th place, but
their +32 run-differential says they should have the fifth-best
record in baseball at 24-18, just 2 games out of 1st-place overall! The
second-biggest underachiever are the Philadelphia
Endzone Animals, who have the league's fifth-worst record at 16-23.
Their -18 run-differential says they should be about two games better
than that, at 18-21 -- which would move them up one place in the
standings, from 10th to 9th overall. When it comes to performing better than the numbers expected, the Harrison Rats were one of three teams that posted an actual record that was two games better than what it "should" have been. Instead of breaking even over the first quarter at 20-20, the Rats' run-scored differential says they should be more like 18-22 -- dropping them from a tie for eighth place all the way back to 10th place. The two other teams that are two games luckier than the formula says they should be are the Columbia Rattlesnakes and the Phoenix Dragons. Each team would drop one place in the overall standings. Interestingly enough, Pythagoras also
tells us that top four teams and the bottom four teams are all one game
off from where the numbers say they should be! At the top of the
standings, the Vancouver Iron Fist, the Newark Sugar Bears, the Carolina
Mudcats and the Stanhope Mighty Men are
each one win better than expected; at the back of the pack, the Hillsborough Destroyers, the Honolulu
Sharks, the Hoboken Cutters and the Brooklyn Bean Counters are each one win worse. The Pythagorean Standings for the
four teams on top and the four on the bottom aren't much different from
the actual ones, however. The order in the basement is exactly the
same, and at the top it is only slightly shuffled, with Newark and
Vancouver tied for first, followed by Carolina a half-game back and
Stanhope a half-game behind them. The only team that performed exactly as the numbers predicted over the first-half were the 7th-place Tijuana Banditos. But with all the shuffling going on among the other teams, the Banditos would slip from 7th place to 8th, even with the same .513 winning percentage. One Is the Loneliest Number Don't like looking to the ancient
Greeks for baseball analysis? No problem! Another way to look at a
team's performance is how they do in one-run
games. In addition to his
pioneering work in applying the Pythagorean Theorem to predicting a
team's winning percentage, Bill James also has
another theory that a team's winning percentage in
one-run games should roughly correspond to its Pythagorean Winning
Percentage -- a team that has a Pythagorean winning
percentage of .600 should win about 60 percent of its one-run games.
But, of course, it doesn't always work that way. The difference between
a team's expected and actual one-run records could be explained by
managerial tactics, clutch hitting, tough pitching, a deeper bench or
bullpen, a blown call by an umpire... or just dumb luck. We looked at how many one-run games
each team had been in over the first quarter, then multiplied those
games by the team's Pythagorean Winning Percentage to come up with the
team's expected performance in one-run games. Then we compared it to
their actual performance in those contests. Because a team can't get
half a win, we rounded the results to the closest whole number.
The Hoboken
Cutters have the league's second-worst record, but they rank fifth
when it comes to one-run games, taking five out of nine this season --
two more than predicted by their Pythagorean Won-Loss Percentage. Three
other teams are one win better than expected: The Columbia
Rattlesnakes, who have the league's best record (11-5) in one-run
games; the The Phoenix Dragons,
who rank second (6-3); and the Hillsborough
Destroyers, who -- even at 6-7 in one-run games -- are a game
better than they "should" be. Four other teams -- the Vancouver Iron Fist, Harrison
Rats, Tijuana Banditos and Westwood Deductions -- are in line with their
predicted performance, while the league's other six teams are one win
worse than the formula expected them to be. Did You Know? We're not sure
what this means, but it's interesting: Columbia, the team with the best
record in one-run
games, also has played the most one-run
games. The Rattlesnakes won or lost by just one run in 16 of their
first 42
games this season -- or roughly 38 percent of their games! The league
average is about 25 percent so far this season... The Mudcats (36%),
Sugar Bears (31%), Banditos (30%) and Destroyers (30%) also have been
in a lot of close games over the first quarter. Conversely, the Rats
have played in just five one-run games (12.5%), followed by the Mighty
Men (15%) and Endzone Animals (18%). So What Does It Mean? Looking at Pythagorean Winning
Percentage and One-Run Winning Percentage from the first-quarter, we
can make some predictions about how the rest of the season will go,
assuming luck evens out over the course of 162 games. The unluckiest team over the first
quarter: The Arkansas Golden Falcons, who were
four games worse than would be expected based on the numbers. Other
underachievers: The Philadelphia Endzone Animals
(-3), the Honolulu Sharks (-2) and the Westwood Deductions (-1). The luckiest teams were the Columbia Rattlesnakes and the Phoenix
Dragons, who were each three games better than their expected
records. The Harrison Rats (+2), Hoboken
Cutters (+1) and Vancouver Iron Fist (+1)
have also been playing over their heads, in theory, over the first
quarter. Breaking even: The Carolina Mudcats, Hillsborough
Destroyers, Newark Sugar Bears, Stanhope Mighty Men and Tijuana
Banditos are all just about where the numbers say they should be.
Interestingly enough, the Banditos were a perfect "0" -- dead on with
estimates from both the Pythagorean Winning Percentage and One-Run
Winning Percentage formulas. Cecil Fielder was the first selection in the DMBL's inaugural draft in 1991. Since then he's enjoyed a solid career as a member of seven DMBL teams. He is now retired and serves as the color man for the Columbia Rattlesnakes radio team. Click Here for past articles. |
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