The Stats That Matter Most

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.

AMERICAN LEAGUE
Team	R	OR	R DIFF	G	R/G	OR/G	DIFF/G	PW%	EXP W	ACT W	W DIFF
Baltimore Orioles	756	868	-112	162	4.67	5.36	-0.69	.431	70	69	-1
Boston Red Sox	867	657	210	162	5.35	4.06	1.30	.635	103	96	-7
Chicago White Sox	693	839	-146	162	4.28	5.18	-0.90	.406	66	72	6
Cleveland Indians	811	704	107	162	5.01	4.35	0.66	.570	92	96	4
Detroit Tigers	887	797	90	162	5.48	4.92	0.56	.553	90	88	-2
Kansas City Royals	706	778	-72	162	4.36	4.80	-0.44	.452	73	69	-4
Los Angeles Angels	822	731	91	162	5.07	4.51	0.56	.558	90	94	4
Minnesota Twins	718	725	-7	162	4.43	4.48	-0.04	.495	80	79	-1
New York Yankees	968	777	191	162	5.98	4.80	1.18	.608	99	94	-5
Oakland Athletics	741	758	-17	162	4.57	4.68	-0.10	.489	79	76	-3
Seattle Mariners	794	813	-19	162	4.90	5.02	-0.12	.488	79	88	9
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	782	944	-162	162	4.83	5.83	-1.00	.407	66	66	0
Texas Rangers	816	844	-28	162	5.04	5.21	-0.17	.483	78	75	-3
Toronto Blue Jays	753	699	54	162	4.65	4.31	0.33	.537	87	83	-4
	11114	10934	180	1134	4.90	4.82

NATIONAL LEAGUE
Team	R	OR	R DIFF	G	R/G	OR/G	DIFF/G	PW%	EXP W	ACT W	W DIFF
Arizona Diamondbacks	712	732	-20	162	4.40	4.52	-0.12	.486	79	90	11
Atlanta Braves	810	733	77	162	5.00	4.52	0.48	.550	89	84	-5
Chicago Cubs	752	690	62	162	4.64	4.26	0.38	.543	88	85	-3
Cincinnati Reds	783	853	-70	162	4.83	5.27	-0.43	.457	74	72	-2
Colorado Rockies	860	758	102	163	5.28	4.65	0.63	.563	92	90	-2
Florida Marlins	790	891	-101	162	4.88	5.50	-0.62	.440	71	71	0
Houston Astros	723	813	-90	162	4.46	5.02	-0.56	.442	72	73	1
Los Angeles Dodgers	735	727	8	162	4.54	4.49	0.05	.505	82	82	0
Milwaukee Brewers	801	776	25	162	4.94	4.79	0.15	.516	84	83	-1
New York Mets	804	750	54	162	4.96	4.63	0.33	.535	87	88	1
Philadelphia Phillies	892	821	71	162	5.51	5.07	0.44	.541	88	89	1
Pittsburgh Pirates	724	846	-122	162	4.47	5.22	-0.75	.423	68	68	0
San Diego Padres	741	666	75	163	4.55	4.09	0.46	.553	90	89	-1
San Francisco Giants	683	720	-37	162	4.22	4.44	-0.23	.474	77	71	-6
St. Louis Cardinals	725	829	-104	162	4.48	5.12	-0.64	.433	70	78	8
Washington Nationals	673	783	-110	162	4.15	4.83	-0.68	.425	69	73	4
	12208	12388	-180	1297	4.71	4.78

Orioles Comments: The Orioles spent the final two months of the season playing so badly that they nearly made up all of the -6 WDIFF that they had posted through July 27; the O's finished with a -1 WDIFF for the season.

Just how bad were those last two months? Well, consider the following. Through their first 101 games, the Orioles were 46-55 with a Win Differential of -6. They had scored 456 runs while allowing 447, for a Run Differential of +9. In their final 61 games, the Orioles were 23-38 with a WDIFF of +5. In other words, from July 28 on, their projected record was 18-43. They scored 300 runs over the final 61 games (4.92 R/G) while allowing 421 runs (6.90 R/G). The Pythagorean Winning Percentage over the final two months was .295. So, for the final two months, the Orioles were outscored by an average of two runs per game. This was, by far, the worst performance in all of Major League Baseball over the final 61 games of the 2007.