Adjusted Standings 2024

Tuesday, October 01 2024 @ 01:30 PM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

We are more or less agreed that sometimes a team's W-L record doesn't tell their story clear and true.

These days even ESPN's home page includes Runs Scored and Allowed and Run Differential. As if that told the story (after all, a run differential of 100 runs in Dodger Stadium is very, very different from the same thing in Coors Field.)  From a team's Runs Scored and Allowed we extrapolate what we have come to call a team's Pythagorean W-L record. This is based entirely on the relationship between total Runs Scored and Allowed. As I suppose is generally known, there are two fairly common methods of making that calculation: one involves squaring the numbers involved, while the other uses a component, often 1.83, instead. Whichever you use is entirely up to you.

Let me hear no talk of accuracy. Please. Whichever formula you choose generates a fiction, an imaginary W-L record. One fantasy is not more accurate than another. It's all a matter of which one you like best, or which one suits your needs.

It's a step in the right direction, but just a step. I prefer to cut to the chase. The main reason a team's W-L record may not always reflect the team's quality is because of the one-run games. Baseball teams play lots of games that are decided by a single run. And in one-run games, the impact of random chance is sufficient to overcome the impact of team quality. You may not be able to win a game by ten runs thanks to a lucky bounce. But you can definitely win by one-run. And so the effect of one-run games is to drag every team to the centre. It drags everyone towards .500 - it lifts the bad teams and it lowers the good teams. That's what it does. This is a Law.

The better teams actually do play better in one-run games than the bad teams, which is why one can't use a .500 record in one-run games as a team's expected outcome in those games.  And just as important, any single season is much, much too short a sample for any expected result to manifest itself. It would be exactly like assessing a hitter's season on 30 random plate appearances. We need the whole season, we need the 700 plate appearances to have a decent idea. As it happens, that's about how many one-run games it takes for a team's quality to begin to consistently affect that team's record in one-run games. 

But given enough games, an equilibrium between these two forces is reached, between the relentless pull towards .500 and the actual quality of the teams.  The effect is always present, and it's reliable. We can reasonably expect teams of a specific quality to provide a specific level of performance in one-run games. To state it very crudely, the .600 teams will play something like .550 ball in one run games, the .550 teams will play something like .530 ball in one-run games, and so on. At the other extreme, the ..400 teams will play something like .450 ball in one-run games, the 450 teams will play something .480 ball in one-run games. That's what should happen. We know this because we have more than a century of data that tells us so. But in the extremely small sample of a single season, it often doesn't.

So I have a very simple formula to generate a team's expected record in one-run games. Once the sample gets large enough, the formula is quite reliable. I don't need to worry about the blowouts. I don't even have to worry about total Runs Scored and Allowed. Simply adjusting the outcomes of one-run games turns out to be enough to make the actual results match up with the expected results. I take a team's one-run games and multiply by .500; then I take those same games and multiply by a team's winning percentage in the non-one run games. I add those two figures, divide it in half and voila! I have a team's expected outcome in one-run games. I apply that to their season in place of what actually happened in the one-run games, and this is what I get.

Adjusted 2024 Standings.

           ADJUSTED RECORD     NOT 1 RUN GAMES   ACTUAL 1 RUN GAMES    ADJUSTED 1 RUN GAMES        
AL East    W   L   PCT       W   L    PCT      W   L   PCT        W  L    PCT
                                                            
New York    95  67  .586        75  50  .600       19  18  .514        20  17  .541
Baltimore    94  68  .580        77  53  .592       14  18  .438        17  15  .531
Toronto    79  83  .488        55  58  .487       19  30  .388        24  25  .490
Boston    78  84  .481        63  68  .481       18  13  .581        15  16  .484
Tampa Bay    75  87  .463        50  60  .455       30  22  .577        25  27  .481
                                                            
AL Central                                                            
                                                            
Cleveland    90  71   .559       66  50  .569       26  19  .578        24  21  .533
Kansas City   89  73   .549       69  55  .556       17  21  .447        20  18  .526
Detroit    83  79   .512       55  52  .514       31  24  .564        28  27  .509
Minnesota    81  81   .500       60  60  .500       22  20  .524        21  21  .500
Chicago    43 119   .265       28  92  .233       13  29  .310        15  27  .357
                                                            
AL West                                                            
                                                            
Houston    95  66   .590       70  46  .603       18  27  .400        25  20  .556
Seattle    87  75   .537       58  49  .542       27  28  .491        29  26  .527
Texas    74  88   .457       52  64  .448       26  20  .565        22  24  .478
Oakland    65  97   .401       41  67  .380       28  26  .519        24  30  .444
Los Angeles   62 100   .383       41  73  .360       22  26  .458        21  27  .438
                                                          
NL East                                                            
                                                            
Philadelphia  96  66   .593       72  47  .605       23  20  .535        24  19  .558
Atlanta    95  67   .586       71  48  .597       18  25  .419        24  19  .558
New York    83  79   .512       61  57  .517       28  16  .636        22  22  .500
Washington    75  87   .463       57  68  .456       14  23  .378        18  19  .486
Miami    57 105   .352       39  80  .328       23  20  .535        18  25  .419
                                                           
NL Central                                                            
                                                            
Milwaukee    94  68   .580       65  44  .596       28  25  .528        29  24  .547
Chicago    87  75   .537       60  51  .541       23  28  .451        27  24  .529
Cincinnati    84  78   .519       62  57  .521       15  28  .349        22  21  .512
St. Louis    79  83   .488       54  57  .486       29  22  .569        25  26  .490
Pittsburgh    75  87   .463       51  61  .455       25  25  .500        24  26  .480
                                                            
NL West                                                            
                                                            
Los Angeles   98  64   .605       77  47  .621       21  17  .553        21  17  .553
San Diego    93  69   .574       71  50  .587       22  19  .537        22  19  .537
Arizona    87  75   .537       63  53  .543       26  20  .565        24  22  .522
San Francisco 80  82   .494       56  58  .491       24  24  .500        24  24  .500
Colorado    54 108   .333       35  80  .304       26  21  .553        19  28  .404
The AL East mostly sees some rearrangement of the non-contenders - yes, the 2024 Blue Jays weren't just bad. They were also unlucky. This seems fine to me - I wouldn't want them to waste their good luck on a bad team, and I can recall several years when dreadful misfortune in the close games more or less ruined the entire year.

Things are a little more to the point in the AL Central  No team in the majors played more one-run games than the Detroit Tigers  (55, tied with Seattle), and no team in the majors won more of them (31) than Tigers. They're a very big reason they're still playing in October, and the Mariners aren't. Seattle lost four games in the standings to Detroit in the one-run games, and finished one game behind them.

Besides the Mariners, the AL West features a couple of teams whose fortunate results in one-run games disguised a little - but just a little - what was in fact a pretty crummy season. That would be the former champion Texas Rangers, and the former Oakland A's. Those two teams, along with Tampa Bay, all did much better in the close games than in the rest. All ended up with WL records that flatter them (whereas with Kansas City and Baltimore, the situation is reversed. Those were better teams than their records indicate.)

The NL East is very interesting! What was this final weekend about? The Atlanta Braves were pretty clearly a much better team than the New York Mets. But the Braves did a lousy job of winning the close games, which turned out to be a Mets specialty.

In the NL Central, the Cubs and the Reds were both snakebit in the close games, and Reds manager David Bell has already walked the plank. Their luck will probably even out next year, the new manager will get all the credit, and win an award.

The NL West follows the form chart quite nicely. But with the Mets exposed as the fluke they were, the final NL Wild Card comes down to Arizona or the Cubs, who both finish at 87-75 in my Brave New World. Had that happened, Arizona would get the final spot. The two teams split the season series, but the Diamondbacks win the next tie-breaker - their divisional record was much better than Chicago's.

And next it will be the return of Snakes and Ladders!

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