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July 26, 2004 |
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In-season Report Card:
Three-Quarters 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 120 or so games of the 2004 season.
The Third Quarter
First, let's take a look at who's hot and who's not by isolating the
third quarter statistics so we can see how teams have performed since
the All-Star Break, roughly games 80 through 120. 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 120-odd 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.
According to the theorem, the unluckiest teams over the third quarter were the Philadelphia Endzone Animals and the Stanhope Mighty Men, who were each four wins worse than their run differential predicted. The Animals have ranked among the league's unluckiest teams at both the quarter-season and half-season milemarkers as well. The Mighty Men were actually a game better than their run-differential after the first 40 games of the season, but have seen a five-game swing over the next 80. Four more wins would jump the 9th-place Animals three spots in the standings and into a playoff berth at one game under .500. If the Mites could have those four wins, they'd jump two spots in the standings and be just one game out of the league's best record... The formula says Hillsborough Destroyers should be 2 games better than their league-worst 50-73 record, which would put them into 13th place; other unlucky teams are the Tijuana Banditos, the Vancouver Iron Fist and the Westwood Deductions, all a rather insignificant 1 game worse than their run-differential. Two teams played significantly better than theorem expected, including -- for the second straight quarter -- the Hoboken Cutters. The Cutters, a game behind the theorem's prediction for the first quarter, have more than made up for it over the next 80 games of the season. The Cutters are tied for the league's worst run differential (-115), thanks to the league's second-worst offense (514 RF) and fifth-worst defense (629 RA). But they rank 10th with a 54-69 record, 5 games better than the theorem predicts. If they were 49-74, they'd have a one-game lead for the league's worst record. The league's other overachiever were the Carolina Mudcats, who also were 5 games better than the formula. Without those 5 wins, they'd drop from 3rd place to 4th. The 'Cats have been getting the breaks all season, finishing at +1, +2 and +2 over each 40-game chunk of the season so far... The next luckiest team, the Harrison Rats, are 2 wins better than Pythagoras would guess. The Rats, tied with the Cutters with a -115 run differential, would drop from an 11th-place tie into sole possession of 13th place... Four teams were one win ahead of their differential: The Newark Sugar Bears, Arkansas Golden Falcons, Columbia Rattlesnakes and Phoenix Dragons. The only team to play right where the formula said they would were the Honolulu Sharks. 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 three quarters of the season, 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.
Once again, the Hoboken Cutters rank as one of the league's luckiest teams. The Cutters have the DMBL's third-worst record, but they have the league's best record in one-run games -- an incredible 20-11 (.645)! That's 8 games better than predicted, twice as many "lucky wins" as any other team. The Harrison Rats and Phoenix Dragons are 4 games better, followed by the Columbia Rattlesnakes at +3 and the Honolulu Sharks at +2. The Philadelphia
Endzone Animals get screwed again. The formula predicts they should
win about half their one-run games, but instead they're a league-worst
10-19 (.345). Actually, the Endzone Animals were even worse (7-15) in
one-run games at the All-Star Break, so over the last 40 games or so,
they've played truer to their run-differential by going 3-4. The team
with the worst record in one-run games over the third quarter of the
season were the Arkansas Golden Falcons, who
went 3-5 (.375) over that stretch, 11-14 (.440) overall. The Golden
Falcons' Pythagorean Winning Percentage suggests they should be more
like 15-10 in one-run games, a swing of four games. Other teams that
aren't winning the close ones as often as they should are the Newark Sugar Bears (-3), Stanhope
Mighty Men (-2) and Vancouver Iron Fist (-2);
teams that are one win worse than expected in one-run games are the Tijuana Banditos, Westwood
Deductions and Hillsborough Destroyers. The Carolina
Mudcats were the only team in line with their
predicted performance in one-run games. Breaking It Down Putting the Pythagorean Winning Percentage and One-Run Winning Percentage together, we can determine which teams got the breaks over the first 120 games of the season. The luckiest team so far this year
have been the Hoboken Cutters, who
are a whopping 13 games better than their numbers -- with eight "extra"
wins in one-run games, and five wins more than predicted by their runs
scored/allowed differential. Take away those eight wins and they'd be
at 46-77 -- by far, the worst record in baseball. Other overachievers: Harrison Rats
(+6), Carolina Mudcats
(+5), Phoenix Dragons
(+5), Columbia Rattlesnakes
(+4), Honolulu Sharks
(+2),. The unluckiest team was the Philadelphia Endzone Animals, who finished the
third quarter 8 wins worse than the numbers would suggest, coming up 4
wins short in each the Pythagorean and One-Run formulas. In fact, the
Endzone Animals -- currently in 9th place, 9 games under .500 and
3½
games out of 6th place -- should be more like 63-56, with a
1½-game
lead over 5th place! Of course, "should be" doesn't count in the
standings. The next unluckiest team was the Stanhope
Mighty Men (-6), who are four wins worse than their Pythagorean
performance and two wins off their expected record in one-run games...
The Arkansas Golden Falcons
(-3), Hillsborough Destroyers
(-3), Vancouver Iron Fist
(-3), Newark Sugar Bears
(-2), Tijuana Banditos
(-2) and Westwood Deductions
(-2) also are owed wins by the baseball gods. In theory, luck evens out over the
course of the season. Looking at the numbers, we can expect the
"unlucky" teams to play better over the final quarter of the season,
and the "lucky" teams to fade a little... at least, in theory. But who knows? Injuries,
free-agent signings, lineup or rotation changes all bring an element of
unpredictability into a baseball season -- as do blown calls by
umpires, wind-blown pop ups and bad hops over infielders' hitters.
These
games aren't played on paper, but on the fields of the DMBL. So let's
put down our calculators and play ball!
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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