The Stats That Matter Most (May 15, 2008)

Many moons ago, trendsetting sabermetrician Bill James demonstrated a relationship between runs scored, runs allowed and wins which, because of the necessity of squaring the elements, he dubbed the Pythagorean Theorem (of baseball).  The formula is that the square of runs scored divided by the sum of the square of runs scored and the square of runs allowed equals a team's expected winning percentage.  From there, you simply multiply the winning percentage and games played and you have a projected win total.  The measure works remarkably well, and, obviously, the more games a team plays, the better the relationship ordinarily is.

Here are the numbers through games of May 14:

Orioles Comments:  With a more or less irrelevant WDIFF of +1, the Orioles are essentially right where they belong in the standings.  They're very close to break even in R/OR and a couple of games above .500 in the standings.  They rank 11th, barely, in the AL in R/G, literally thousandth's of a run better than 12th place Seattle and more than a quarter of a run below the American League average.  They rank seventh, also barely, in OR/G, a hundredth of a run behind sixth place Kansas City and even less than that ahead of eighth place New York, a bit more than 1/10 of a run better than the AL average.  They are a solid sixth in the league in ERA, however--more than 1/10 of a run ahead of both the Royals and Yankees.  The O's have allowed 10 unearned runs to date, double the total of Kansas City and New York.  The Orioles are fourth in the circuit in opponent's batting average.

AL Comments:  Scoring is down in the AL thus far this year--way down.  Note that the average AL team is scoring .28 runs per game less than the average NL team, which is virtually unheard of in the DH era.  I've been following this run scoring trend for about three weeks now, since I first sensed that scoring was off some time during the second half of April and what's interesting is that, to date, the trend hasn't been arrested.  In fact, in the past couple of weeks, the per game scoring rate has actually declined slightly.  It's not surprising that run scoring would be down in the first quarter of the season.  The typical trend is for scoring to pick up as the season goes by (as the weather becomes warmer and drier).  What is surprising is just how far below expectations scoring is.  By slightly past this point in May last season, the average AL team was scoring a bit more than 4.7 runs per game.  By the beginning of June in 2006, the AL scoring average was just above five runs per game.  On the morning of May 5, 2005, the average AL club was scoring 4.63 runs per game.  Since I've been doing these Stats that Matter Most installments--eight-plus years now--this is the lowest scoring mark I've ever seen for the American League.  No question--scoring is significantly off in the American League this year, at least so far.  We'll have to wait and see to what degree it picks up as the season unfolds, but it's worth keeping this in mind when evaluating individual and team performances.  Note that only one club--Boston--is scoring five runs per game (and just barely at 5.02); two teams in the league (Kansas City and Toronto) are well below four runs per game and a couple of others (Seattle and Baltimore) are hovering just above that mark.

Another interesting note about the AL thus far is how relatively tightly packed all the RDIFF numbers are.  The team with the largest positive RDIFF is Oakland, at +36 runs (0.88 per game).  The team with the worst RDIFF is Detroit, -32 runs (-0.80 per game).  If the current rate were to continue for the rest of the season, the A's would lead the league with a RDIFF of +143; the Tigers would bring up the rear at -130.  These are good (and bad) totals, but not nearly as good (or bad) as we typically see at season's end from the best/worst.  Five of the 14 teams in the league are within seven runs either way of the break even mark.  Contrast this range with what's happening in the National League thus far where none of the 16 teams is within seven runs of break even (though three are within ten runs).

There aren't any real eyebrow-raising WDIFFs to comment upon in the AL either.  No team is off by more than three wins either way.  Cleveland and Chicago are both three wins below their Pythagorean projections and Los Angeles is three wins above, but that's it.

NL Comments:  As tight as the AL is, the NL looks like a league of clear haves and have nots.  The Cubs, Diamondbacks and Braves--in that order--have, by far, the best RDIFFs in the league.  The Astros, of all teams, have the fourth best RDIFF in the National League and they're 20 runs behind the third place Braves.  All three are far better than league average in runs allowed (the Braves probably have the best balance of any team in the group, ranking third in runs and first in runs allowed).  The Cubs and Diamondbacks are outscoring--by far--the top team in the AL (Boston).  And try this one on for size.  Here's a per game scoring ranking of the top 11 teams in baseball, regardless of league:

That's right--nine of the ten top scoring teams in the major leagues thus far this season reside in the National League.  What's going on?  Is the pitching in the AL that good?  Is the hitting in the NL that good?  AL hitting bad?  NL pitching bad?  We've got interleague play coming up soon, so we should begin to find out.

The worst NL WDIFF is held by Atlanta (-4), almost entirely a function of the team's horrible record in one-run games.  No one else in the league is off by more than two wins either way.

The back end of the NL is as dreadful as the front end is impressive.  The Padres--arguably the most disappointing team in baseball--and the Giants (who were supposed to be horrible) have been absolutely awful.  Both are headed for seasons where they may bump up against the dreaded -200 run mark.  The Nationals and Rockies haven't been much better.  The Rockies have allowed the most runs per game in the league; they might blame it on Coors Field but then the offense has to come to grips with the fact that it's scoring a quarter of run below the league average.  San Diego and San Francisco are in a league of their own, for all practical purposes, when it comes to scoring runs.  They're the only NL teams scoring  below four runs per game and, for good measure, both are scoring below 3.5 runs per contest.  Washington is the third lowest scoring team in the league, just above four per game, but they're also one of only four clubs in the 16-team circuit allowing more than five runs per game--not a good combination.  All four of these teams have PW% marks below .400.

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