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Sept. 27, 2004 |
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Season Report Card: The Fourth
Quarter! Let's take a break from this amazing
post-season action to figure out how we got here -- by taking a look
back at the season's final 40
games. In earlier editions, we've reviewed the third quarter,
the first
half and the first quarter; in a later edition, we'll compare the
first half to the second half, as well as review the season.
The Fourth Quarter We isolated
the fourth quarter statistics to see how
teams performed down the stretch, roughly games 120 through 162 -- and
don't forget Game 163 for the two teams that tied for 6th place!
The top home team down the stretch
were the Sharks, who went 12-5 (.706 HW%) to close out their home
schedule. That wasn't just the best home record, but also the best
home-road differential (+.228), as they were only able to go 11-12
(.478 RW%) away from the 50th state. The Banditos (.591 HW%, .400 RW%),
Mighty Men (.684 HW%, .500 RW%) and Endzone Animals (.524 HW%, .455
RW%) also enjoyed a distinct home-field advantage over the fourth
quarter. The Destroyers (.400 HW%, .263 RW%) and Rattlesnakes (.421
HW%, .333 RW%) were merely less inept at home... The worst home teams
down the stretch were the Dragons, who went 6-15 (.286 HW%) in Phoenix,
but went 10-8 (.556 RW%) on the road, a -.270 home-road differential.
Other teams that did distinctly better in other people's buildings were
Vancouver (.375 HW%, .556 RW%), Arkansas (.526 HW%, .667 RW%) and
Hoboken (.474 HW%, .550 RW%). The Sugar Bears didn't care where
they played; the Crunch With Punch posted identical 11-9 records at
home and on the road. Hey, would you
want to play in Newark? Other teams that
didn't care if their meals were home-cooked or take-out were the
Mudcats (.632 HW%, .619 RW%), the Deductions (.409 HW%, .400 RW%) and
the Rats (.545 HW%, .579 RW%). Pythagorean Baseball We also used the Pythagorean
Theorem to see who was lucky and who was good over the fourth
quarter. The theorem (runs scored squared divided by runs scored
squared plus
runs allowed squared) is a pretty good estimate of a team's winning
percentage, given a few thousand games. But when you're talking about a
smaller sample size -- like 40 games or so -- sometimes the best team
doesn't win. Whether it's caused by random chance (a lucky bounce, a
blown call, a gust of wind) or "intangibles" (hustle, team chemistry,
clutch hitting), the Pythagorean Theorem lets us compare a team's
actual record to how many games they "should" have won. Teams that have
more actual wins than Pythagorean wins are called overachievers; the
unlucky ones that didn't are considered underachievers.
According to the theorem, the
unluckiest teams over the fourth quarter were the Newark
Sugar Bears, the Philadelphia
Endzone Animals and the Westwood Deductions,
who were each 3 wins worse than their run differential predicted.
The Animals were consistently unlucky all season long, finishing behind
their Pythagorean Win total in each of the season's four quarters;
Westwood underachieved in every quarter except the third, while Newark
finished better than expected in the first two quarters, and worse than
expected in the last two. The other underachievers in the fourth
quarter were the Columbia Rattlesnakes, 2 wins
behind, followed by the Carolina Mudcats and
the Tijuana Banditos, each 1 win worse. The luckiest team over the fourth
quarter was the Honolulu Sharks, who jumped
from 6th place to 5th place in the standings after winning 23 out of 40
games down the stretch. However, Pythagoras says their fifth-worst -12
run differential over the final quarter should have only translated
into a 19-21 record over that stretch, 4 wins worse than what they
actually did. Interestingly enough, if you take away those four
wins from the Sharks, they finish the season at 79-83 -- which would
have made it a three-way tie
for 6th place! The other fourth-quarter overachievers were the Arkansas Golden Falcons and the Stanhope Mighty Men, each 3 wins worse than
projected; the Harrison Rats at +2; and the Hoboken Cutters at +1. Three teams -- the Hillsborough Destroyers, Phoenix
Dragons and Vancouver Iron Fist -- all finished exactly
where the formula thought they would. Two teams reached the playoffs
employing polar opposite methods: The Banditos scored the most runs in
the fourth quarter (240 RS), while giving up the third-most runs (226
RA), for a fifth-best +5 run differential; the Mudcats gave up the
fewest runs (136 RA) but had the fifth-worst offense (188 RS), but it
was still enough to post the league's best run differential (+52). The Endzone Animals (235 RS), Sugar
Bears (232 RS), Iron Fist (228 RS) and Rats (227 RS) followed the
Banditos to round out the top five in runs scored; at the back of the
pack were the Destroyers (156 RS), Rattlesnakes (158 RS), Dragons and
Sharks (tied with 186 RS), and then the Mudcats. The leaders in fewest
runs allowed, ranking behind those same Mudcats, were the Rattlesnakes
(179 RA), Newark and Arkansas (tied at 184 RA), and Honolulu (198 RA);
the most runs were given up by Vancouver (248 RA), followed by Phoenix
(228 RA), Tijuana (226 RA), Harrison (222 RA) and Hillsborough (218
RA). The leaders in the all-important stat of run differential were
Carolina (+52), Newark (+48), Philly (+24), Arkansas (+16) and Tijuana
(-14); the worst were Hillsborough (-62), Phoenix (-42), Columbia
(-21), Vancouver (-20) and Honolulu (-12). One Is Enough Another way to look at a
team's true performance is to see 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, a deep bench, a great bullpen... 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.
Either by luck or skill, the Honolulu Sharks again come out on top of the
list, coming up with three "extra" wins in one-run games over the final
quarter. Other teams
enjoying a one-run bonus were the Arkansas Golden
Falcons and Stanhope Mighty Men, each two
wins better than expected, followed by the Harrison
Rats, Phoenix Dragons and Vancouver Iron Fist, all tied at +1. As usual, the Philadelphia
Endzone Animals get screwed again. Pythagoras says they should have
gone 8-6 in one-run games; instead, they went 5-9. Tied with Philly at
three games under expectations were the Carolina
Mudcats and Newark Sugar Bears, followed
by the Westwood Deductions (-2) and Columbia Rattlesnakes (-1). The Hillsborough Destroyers, Hoboken Cutters and Tijuana Banditos performed in line with their Pythagorean Winning Percentage in one-run games. Fourth Quarter Dividends Finally, we compared each team's fourth quarter performance to how they performed over the first three quarters, in order to determine which teams picked it up during the stretch, and which teams wilted in the August heat.
The orange columns show the team's record
in the season's fourth-quarter; the green columns show the team's runs
scored, runs allowed, run differential and Pythagorean Winning
Percentage, (runs scored squared, divided by runs scored squared plus
runs allowed squared); the red column shows the team's winning
percentage prior to the start of the fourth quarter; and the blue
column shows the team's Pythagorean Winning Percentage prior to the
start of the fourth quarter. The white columns, "Diff," show how much
better (+) or worse (-) the team performed over the fourth quarter. The biggest surprise of the final six
weeks of the season were the Harrison
Rats, who started the fourth quarter with a 52-69 season record
(.430 W%), but played .561 baseball (23-18) in their final 41 games. If
they'd played at the same level down the stretch as they had the rest
of the year (.430 W%), they'd have gone a mirror-image 18-23 down the
stretch. Thus, they were five wins better than they had been, the best
improvement of any team in baseball. The Rats were followed by two
other "H" teams -- the Hoboken Cutters and Honolulu Sharks, who each improved by three wins
during the fourth quarter. Other teams were strong finishes were the Arkansas Golden Falcons,
Carolina Mudcats, Philadelphia Endzone Animals and Tijuana
Banditos, all one win better than they had been. The only team that didn't improve or decline over the fourth quarter were the Stanhope Mighty Men, who maintained their .587 winning percentage -- which was a little surprising, actually, considering the team's Pythagorean Winning Percentage dropped off dramatically during the fourth quarter. We'll talk more about that below. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the
Columbia Rattlesnakes choked
harder than anybody down the stretch. The Rattlesnakes started the
fourth quarter with a fifth-best 65-61 record (.516), but went 14-23
(.378) to close out the season -- the league's second-worst record over
the final six weeks. If they'd maintained their .516 W%, they'd have
closed out the season going 19-18, which would have resulted in an
84-win season -- good enough for 4th place! Instead, they were
five wins worse than their season-to-date pace, finishing in a
sixth-place tie with the tenacious Banditos, who knocked them off in a
one-game playoff to deny Columbia, once again, its first-ever
post-season appearance... The other slackers were the Hillsborough Destroyers (-3), Newark
Sugar Bears (-3), Phoenix Dragons (-1) and
Vancouver Iron Fist (-1). What's Newark doing on that list?
Were the Sugar Bears really tailing off in the fourth quarter --
perhaps on "cruise control" en route to their ninth-straight playoff
appearance? Some would argue that the Crunch With Punch simply couldn't
keep up their league-best pace (.623) over the first three quarters of
the season, so some drop-off was expected. But a look at the numbers
suggests the Sugar Bears' performance didn't decline at all over the
fourth quarter -- they were just unusually unlucky over those final 40
games. Comparing their overall
records to their
fourth quarter statistics, we can see that the Sugar Bears' .614
Pythagorean Winning Percentage down the stretch was just about where it
had been in the 120 prior games (.624), so it wasn't a decline in
production that did the Sugar Bears in. Indeed, they were the only team
to post almost the same exact Pythagorean Winning Percentage in the
fourth quarter as they had over the previous three quarters. Newark's
woeful record in one-run games (3-6) was another sign of their
fourth-quarter bad luck. The aforementioned Mighty Men
actually had the biggest drop-off in Pythagorean Winning Percentage
over the fourth quarter. The Mighty Men posted a sixth-best .522 PW%
over the fourth quarter, a steep decline from their second-best .623
PW% over the first three-quarters -- a difference of about four wins.
In other words, it was quite an accomplishment that this team was able
to tread water over the fourth quarter! Other big dippers in PW% over
the final six weeks were Arkansas and Hillsborough, both three wins
worse than their previous performance; Columbia at -2; and Honolulu,
Phoenix and Vancouver, all at -1. The biggest improvement in
fourth-quarter PW% is a three-way tie between the Mudcats, Rats and
Cutters, all four Pythagorean Wins better than their previous
performance. Philadelphia and Westwood each improved by two wins, while
Tijuana improved by one.
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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