It is my custom to examine some odds and ends at the conclusion of the
regular season, once the final game is in the books and I've had a
chance to update my Big Honking Database. I like to play Snakes and
Ladders, I like to check in with Pythagoras...
A digression. The Big Honking Database contains fairly detailed records for each team (runs scored and allowed, at home and away, in one-run games etc) for the last 120 years or so. It's a fairly hefty (2803 row, the columns go to GC) Excel file. It was a chore to assemble it in the first place, and add on to it as various subjects caught my fancy. All this would be much easier if I were starting from scratch today, with all the marvelous upgrades we've seen at at baseball-reference.com, of course. Anyway, the Database had a very close call this year. A couple of months back my hard drive failed. Oh, I'd heard and read many horror stories describing this sort of thing. But it had never happened to me, not in almost 30 years of using computers. Was I prepared? Of course not. I didn't have a backup in place. I lost absolutely everything, everything I'd saved for the last fifteen years (except my music collection, stored on an external hard drive.)
But by the happiest of freak chances, I'd copied the Big Honking Database to my laptop for some reason. So I'm still good to go. And perhaps because the Database had such a narrow escape, I'm inclined to wring more from it than usual this year. Much, much more.
We shall begin by checking in with Pythagoras, ancient Sage of the Desert.
As everyone knows, the number of games a team wins and loses can generally be predicted by the relationship between the runs they score and give up. Elementary, my dear Watson. We are interested, as always, in the teams that don't match up to their Pythagorean expectation. There are two, and only two, reasons this can happen: a) an unusual level of performance in close games in general, one-run games in particular or b) an unusual record in blowouts. The right combination of unusual performance in both of these areas can produce some very, very strange results indeed. What makes this especially interesting is that these two explanations say completely different things about the ball club affected. If a team has an exceptionally good or bad record in one-run games, they've just had a run of strange luck, one way or the other. That is all. The results of one-run games really are as random as a roll of the dice.
In a close game, the impact of random chance is sufficient to overwhelm the impact of overall quality.
My favourite example of that, by the way, comes from 2003. You remember that awful Detroit Tigers team, who went 43-119? They had a better record in one-run games (19-18) than the mighty Atlanta Braves, who finished first and won 101 games that year. Those Braves went just 17-25 in one-run games. That sort of thing happens all the time, and this season was no exception.
Blowouts, however, actually tell us something about a team's quality. You don't lose games by six runs because you keep catching a bad break. It takes genuine ability to make a habit of beating the other team senseless.
Something else I want to cast an eye on. You may recall (and if you don't, you could always pretend) that about a year ago, I introduced a brand new phrase to the Baseball Lexicon: the Pythagorean Swing. Well, it caught on like wildfire, and there's probably no need to explain it to this crowd. But let us take no chances, and save one or two of you the trouble of looking up the explanation from last year. Suppose Team A underperformed it's Pythagorean expectation in 2008 by 3 games. Let us further suppose that this very same team then went out and over-performed its Pythagorean expectation in 2009 by 9 games. That's a 12 game swing to the good, right there without the team doing anything different on the field. And in fact, this particular team really didn't do anything different on the field. Not even a little bit. They scored 1 - yes, one - more run than they had scored in 2008. They allowed 5 more than they had allowed in 2008. Yet their record went from 63-99 to 75-87. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2009 San Diego Padres.
So let's have a look at 2010:
Now, let's play Snakes and Ladders.
Snakes and Ladders is a board game from my distant youth, which was roughly about when I heard Mott the Hoople use it as a metaphor for their own ups and downs ("In '72 we were born to lose/ we slipped down snakes into yesterday's news..."). I use it to identify those teams that improved by 10 games (climbing the ladder) or declined by 10 (slipping down the snakes.) This was a very normal season in the majors: three teams slipped down the snakes, while four of them were climbing the ladders. That's what I've grown accustomed to, having tracked this back for the last couple of decades. The utter insanity of 2009 (eight teams climbed the ladders, ten teams slipped down the snakes) is all behind us, an aberration, a blip, perhaps never to be seen again in our lifetimes
Snakes
Seattle -24
The biggest dropoff in the majors, from an organization that has been badly run for some time now. The Mariners have made an art of fooling themselves. It's what they do. Pythagoras has been messing with them, of course, and they've been unable to see through it. A run of good luck in 2007 and again in 2009 helped them win far more games than they had any right to expect. When their luck returned to normal, as in 2008 and in 2010, they seemed surprised and disappointed. That said, they were legitimately a lot worse this time around. Much of the dropoff in 2008 was simply Pythagoras righting the ship - they had a big Pythagorean Swing of 14 games in 2008 (they overachieved by 9 games in 2007 and underachieved by 5 games in 2008.) But not this time, buddy. There actually wasn't a big Pythagorean Swing at work at all in 2010 - just 6 games in fact. They were 18 games worse on merit, thanks to the most pathetic offense the AL has seen since the first DH strode up to home plate.
LA Angels -17
The Angels had won at least 92 games and the AL West title in five of the last 6 years, and they went 89-73 in the one year they missed out. This year's disaster was mostly on the offense; while offense was down pretty significantly in the AL (about 8 percent, which is a big dropoff), the Angels scored 202 runs fewer than they did the year before. That's a dropoff of more than 20 percent, and that's way too much offense to lose unless the pitchers do likewise to the opposition. That didn't happen (the Angels reduced their Runs Allowed by about 8 percent, roughly the same as the league overall) As for the bats, Torii Hunter and Bobby Abreu held the line, and Hideki Matsui was actually an upgrade on the Vlad Guerrero who played for the Angels. Alas, those three worthies were surrounded by a group of hitters who collectively pulled up to the cliff, looked over the edge, and decided to jump. Obviously, the Kendry Morales injury was a major blow, and losing him in such a stupid fashion may have messed with the team's psyche.
LA Dodgers -15
The Dodgers came by their badness the old-fashioned way: they earned it. They were significantly worse on both sides of the ball this past season. The offensive fall-off was mostly because of big dropoffs from Matt Kemp and Casey Blake, although Manny missing about 90 games was worse than Manny missing about 60. On the mound, the bullpen (which had been simply fabulous in 2009) was very shaky indeed in 2010 (with the exception of Hong-Chi Kuo, who was sensational. He was the only one.)
Ladders
Washington +10
The Nationals and Mets went into the final day of the season, each having won 9 more games than they did in 2009, and facing one another to see which of the two would get honoured with a Snakes and Ladders shout-out. There could be only one. With so much at stake the teams battled on, past nine innings, into the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth... at which point, Jerry Manuel thought - what the hell, they're going to fire my ass tomorrow win or lose - and brought in Oliver Perez. One hit batter and three consecutive walks later, the Nationals had the lead, and Miguel Batista closed it out.
Toronto +10
The Blue Jays climbing the ladder in 2010 had very little to do with the team improving - this was almost entirely a Pythagorean swing. The Jays scored and allowed 43 fewer runs than they did in 2009. In 2009, they underperformed their Pythagorean expectation by 9 games - their 75-87 record was one of the worst records in major league history by a team that scored more runs than it gave up (only seven such teams, in more than 100 years, have had a worse record than the 2009 Jays.) In 2010, their W-L record was an accurate reflection of the runs they scored and gave up. That is all.
Cincinnati +13
The Cincinnati story is essentially a mirror image of the Angels - the Reds posted the biggest offensive improvement in the majors in 2010. With offense down in both leagues, and most teams scoring fewer runs than they year before, the Reds improved their offense by a whopping 117 runs. No one else was even remotely close. The pitching was a little better as well. The Reds had actually had a negative Pythagorean Swing to contend with, but Joey Votto and company were up to the job.
San Diego +15
No team improved their W-L record more than the Padres, but alas- when you spend five the first months of the season leading your division, it still feels like a crushing disappointment when you don't get to play in October. No matter how far you had to come. The Padres 75-87 record in 2009 flattered them, so their improvement this year was even greater than the additional 15 wins suggests. Like the Reds, they have a negative Pythagorean Swing to contend with - they 9 games better than expected in 2009, and this year they were actually 2 games worse. It's the biggest Pythagorean Swing in the majors this year. Most of this improvement came on the pitcher's mound, as the Padres gave up 188 fewer runs than they had in 2009. This was not a product of Petco Field. The park didn't suppress offense nearly as much as it has in the past, although it was still one of the best pitcher's parks in the league. The Padres pitchers allowed 262 runs at home, best in the league (the Giants gave up 274) and 319 on the road, second-best in the league (the Giants led the way with just 309 runs against on the road.)
Finally, a bunch of general observations...
As you probably noticed, offense was down quite a bit in the AL this season. AL teams scored 4.45 runs per game in 2010; they scored 4.82 runs per game in 2009. Doesn't seem like much? Well, offense was at just 92.4% of the 2010 level. And if we look at this in historical terms, we learn to describe offense falling that much as plummeting. It's a great big thing. We simply don't see that big a drop from one year to the next very often at all. Only four times in the DH era have we had a bigger drop in AL offense, and those four years are themselves pretty instructive regarding the circumstances that go along with this type of offensive... collapse. They are:
1981 (the strike year);
1988 (1987 had been the biggest offensive season in the AL in almost 40 years);
1997 (1996, along with...)
2001 (... 2000 were the two highest scoring years in the AL since the 1930s.)
To sum up - besides the fluke of the strike year, we normally only see this size of offensive falloff after a historically great year for the hitters. But 2009 was not a historically great year, not at all - it was a little better than 2008, and not as good as 2006 or 2007. Offensive production plummeted anyway.
Offense was off in the NL as well, just not nearly as much. However, offense has indeed been falling steadily in the NL over the last few years - each year the teams score 97-98% as many runs as they scored the year before.
The quality gap between the two leagues also seems to be narrowing sharply - the NL was just 6 games under .500 this season (1288-1304). If this year's rookie crop is any indication - this year's NL rookie crop was deep, wide and wonderful - it may actually reverse in the next year or two. The NL is no longer the AAAA league. Those days are gone.
NL teams with winning records against the AL: Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Colorado, San Diego.
AL teams with winning records against the NL: Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Texas
The AL team that improved its offense the most in 2010 were the Chicago White Sox, and that was nothing to write home about - the White Sox scored 27 more runs this year than they did in 2009. Detroit and Texas made single digit improvements. Everyone else scored fewer runs.
The most impressive offensive upgrade in the majors in 2010, by a comfortable mile, came in Cincinnati where Dusty Baker's men scored 117 runs more than they did in 2009. The Giants improved by 40 runs, the Cubs by 27. St. Louis and Atlanta made single digit improvements. Everyone else was down. Some of them were a long way down. Six teams lost more than 90 runs of offense in 2010. Leading the pack into the Abyss of Frustration were the LA Angels, of course - as already noted, they had 202 runs of offense vanish into air, into thin air. Yes, they lost more than Seattle (-127) or Baltimore (-128) - the Angels did have a lot more to lose, of course. Cleveland (-127) and Oakland (-96) were the other big losers in the AL. The Dodgers (-113) had the biggest dropoff in the NL.
All this means the pitchers were allowing fewer runs, of course. Naturally this wasn't spread out evenly across the majors. Why would it be? The staff that reduced their runs allowed by the greatest amount were the San Diego Padres, who shaved off a remarkable 188 runs - better than a run per game. Only two NL teams in the last 40 years have made a bigger step forward in reducing runs allowed. Second best in the NL? Surprise - it was the Washington Nationals. There was plenty of room for improvement, of course, but allowing 132 fewer runs constitutes pretty impressive improvement nonetheless. And after them came the New York Mets (-105 runs.) Best in the AL was Oakland (-135 runs), followed by Cleveland (-113) and Tampa (-105). The Nats and Mets represent bad teams getting a little better, which is easier to accomplish than what the Rays or the Twins achieved.
There was one team in the majors who reduced their runs scored and runs allowed by the exact same amount - that would be your Toronto Blue Jays, ladies and gentlemen. In 2009, they scored 798 runs and allowed 771. Reduce each figure by 43 and you have this year's numbers. That dropoff is not as big as the overall AL rate - the Jays offense was a little better relative to the league, the pitching a little worse. Actually, the most significant thing that happened to Toronto is that Pythagoras finally stopped picking on them...
Best place for offense in 2010? That would be Coors Field, of course. Where else? It was a pretty bad year for the humidor. The Rockies scored and allowed 858 runs at home, just 629 on the road, which is an Offensive Factor of 1.36 - Coors also led the majors in 2009 (naturally), but at 1.25. The humidor has done something - back in 2007, when I did my big historical study of Home Field Advantage and historical ballpark effects on scoring, Coors Field came in with an Offensive Factor of 1.45, making it - surprise! - the highest scoring environment ever. I should update that - the last few seasons may have pushed Coors into second place (behind Mile High Stadium, where else.)
The best place to score runs in the AL was Yankee Stadium, which I have at 1.18 - the Yankees scored and allowed 839 runs at home, 713 on the road. The new Toilet just edged out US Cellular in Chicago. This probably doesn't surprise you all that much, but it surprises me quite a bit. First of all, despite all the talk about the ball flying out of the yard, the Yankees actually scored and allowed more runs on the road than they did at home in 2009. And US Cellular, despite being a great home run park, has actually reduced offense overall since it opened for business. Things were strange in the AL in 2010...
How strange? Well, the toughest place to score runs in all of baseball was an American League park. Yes, Petco Field was open for business as usual in San Diego. It has been the toughest place to score runs of any ball park in the history of the game, but this past year it wasn't even the toughest place to score runs in the NL (Offensive Factor of just 0.88, which is still very high for Petco.) But this year, Enron Memorial in Houston had an Offensive Factor of 0.86 to edge out Petco. And that was nothing - the Trop in Tampa Bay had an Offensive Factor of 0.80. The Rays scored and allowed just 645 runs at home, 806 on the road. And this too is downright bizarre - historically, the Trop has actually been the most neutral park in the majors when it comes to effect on runs scoring.
Well, yes, all this is very strange but true - but it's also just weird and random. Bear in mind that 81 games is a very small sample in the life of a ball park.
Anything else I wanted to touch on? Yes - home-road splits.
Normally, the home team wins 54% of the team. That means the normal home field advantage is .080 (.540 as opposed to .460). As it happens, 2010 was a pretty good year for the home team, which was winning about 56 % of the team in both leagues. I wanted to find the biggest split between the home and road record. I normally find it in Denver, home of the greatest Home Field Advantage in major league history - and as usual the Rockies had an enormous Home Field Advantage (they played .642 at home, .383 on the road). But the Rockies did not have the biggest Home Field Advantage in 2010. That distinction goes to the Detroit Tigers in the AL and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL, who each had Home Field Advantages of .284. The Tigers went a nicely symmetrical 52-29 at home, 29-52 on the road. The Pirates didn't even have to play .500 ball at home to post their enormous split, because they happened to be the worst road team in baseball (17-64). Tampa Bay was the best (47-34)
Atlanta was the toughest team to beat in their own house (56-25), while it was always fun to visit Safeco and Wrigley, where the home team went just 35-46. The Cubs were the only team in the majors who had a better record on the road than at home; the Padres had an identical 45-36 record at home and away.
Finally - one-run games, my ancient obsession. (Hopefully this off-season I can actually put together my Big Historical Study of them.) As I've explained many, many times, who wins and who loses a game decided by a single run is largely a matter of Dumb, Random luck. A team that loses 90 games can quite easily have a better record in one run games than a team that wins 90 games. It happens all the time, and this year was no exception. Who had the best record in one-run games in 2010?
Uh.... well... okay, it was the Philadelphia Phillies, who won more games than anyone. They were brilliant in the close games (29-17, .630) and really good in the rest of them (68-48, .586) This is still an unusual result, and hardly devoid of interest, because of the very nature of one-run games. You see, one-run games are one of the mechanisms enforcing the Law of Competitive Balance, dragging all teams towards the .500 mark, elevating the bad ones and pulling down on the good ones. This is a Law, and I'm still looking for a snappy name to give it - the Weaver Tangent, the Durocher Paradox.... Anyway, It is very unusual to find a team that plays .700 ball in one-run games - you are three times as likely likely to find teams that play .700 ball in games decided by more than one run. The same phenomenon exists at the other end of the scale - they have been more teams (more than twice as many) play below .300 in games decided by more than one-run than there have been play that badly in one-run games. The 2010 Phillies, although they fell short of .700 ball in their one-run games, were bucking one of the basic tides of the game...
Ah. But who was the best team in the AL in one-run games?
The Baltimore Orioles. Who else? They played .580 ball in one-run games (29-21). It's a good thing they did, because they played .330 ball (37-75) in the rest of their games. They were pretty lucky to come away with 66 wins. The Texas Rangers were also very good in one-run games, and actually won more of them than anyone else (30-23, .566.) The worst team in the majors in the one-run games were the Detroit Tigers (16-26) .
I think that's all for now...
A digression. The Big Honking Database contains fairly detailed records for each team (runs scored and allowed, at home and away, in one-run games etc) for the last 120 years or so. It's a fairly hefty (2803 row, the columns go to GC) Excel file. It was a chore to assemble it in the first place, and add on to it as various subjects caught my fancy. All this would be much easier if I were starting from scratch today, with all the marvelous upgrades we've seen at at baseball-reference.com, of course. Anyway, the Database had a very close call this year. A couple of months back my hard drive failed. Oh, I'd heard and read many horror stories describing this sort of thing. But it had never happened to me, not in almost 30 years of using computers. Was I prepared? Of course not. I didn't have a backup in place. I lost absolutely everything, everything I'd saved for the last fifteen years (except my music collection, stored on an external hard drive.)
But by the happiest of freak chances, I'd copied the Big Honking Database to my laptop for some reason. So I'm still good to go. And perhaps because the Database had such a narrow escape, I'm inclined to wring more from it than usual this year. Much, much more.
We shall begin by checking in with Pythagoras, ancient Sage of the Desert.
As everyone knows, the number of games a team wins and loses can generally be predicted by the relationship between the runs they score and give up. Elementary, my dear Watson. We are interested, as always, in the teams that don't match up to their Pythagorean expectation. There are two, and only two, reasons this can happen: a) an unusual level of performance in close games in general, one-run games in particular or b) an unusual record in blowouts. The right combination of unusual performance in both of these areas can produce some very, very strange results indeed. What makes this especially interesting is that these two explanations say completely different things about the ball club affected. If a team has an exceptionally good or bad record in one-run games, they've just had a run of strange luck, one way or the other. That is all. The results of one-run games really are as random as a roll of the dice.
In a close game, the impact of random chance is sufficient to overwhelm the impact of overall quality.
My favourite example of that, by the way, comes from 2003. You remember that awful Detroit Tigers team, who went 43-119? They had a better record in one-run games (19-18) than the mighty Atlanta Braves, who finished first and won 101 games that year. Those Braves went just 17-25 in one-run games. That sort of thing happens all the time, and this season was no exception.
Blowouts, however, actually tell us something about a team's quality. You don't lose games by six runs because you keep catching a bad break. It takes genuine ability to make a habit of beating the other team senseless.
Something else I want to cast an eye on. You may recall (and if you don't, you could always pretend) that about a year ago, I introduced a brand new phrase to the Baseball Lexicon: the Pythagorean Swing. Well, it caught on like wildfire, and there's probably no need to explain it to this crowd. But let us take no chances, and save one or two of you the trouble of looking up the explanation from last year. Suppose Team A underperformed it's Pythagorean expectation in 2008 by 3 games. Let us further suppose that this very same team then went out and over-performed its Pythagorean expectation in 2009 by 9 games. That's a 12 game swing to the good, right there without the team doing anything different on the field. And in fact, this particular team really didn't do anything different on the field. Not even a little bit. They scored 1 - yes, one - more run than they had scored in 2008. They allowed 5 more than they had allowed in 2008. Yet their record went from 63-99 to 75-87. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2009 San Diego Padres.
So let's have a look at 2010:
PYTHAGORAS SAYS REAL WORLD Difference FromAs you can see, almost everyone this year was quite close to their Pythagorean Expectation. What a pleasant surprise! And the teams that were farthest from their projections tended to be teams at the bottom of the standings, who actually got pretty7 lucky in the close games and posted better records than we would expect from them - Baltimore, for example. Only one team in the AL was off by more than 5 games - that would be the Oakland A's, who could have reasonably been expected to win about 5 more games than they actually did. As Oakland did just fine in one-run games (23-20), this indicates that they wasted a few runs piling on the other team in blowout wins. On the other hand, we have the Houston Astros, who won 9 more games than they might have been expected to win. The Astros went 21-18 in one-run games, which means they were beaten senseless quite a few times. That's not a good sign. The biggest under-achiever - indeed, the only significant under-achiever - this season was St.Louis. The Cardinals were 6 games under their expectation - they were a slightly disappointing 20-22 in one-run games, which suggests that they, like Oakland, wasted a bunch of runs beating the other team to a pulp.
Pythag. Expectation Pythagorean
Team G Ex W Ex L Pyth Ex RS RA Run Diff | W L PCT RS RA | 2010 2009 | SWING
MIN 162 93 69 .575 781 671 110 | 94 68 .580 781 671 | 1 0 | 1
CHI 162 86 76 .532 751 704 47 | 88 74 .543 751 704 | 2 -1 | 3
DET 162 82 80 .505 751 743 8 | 81 81 .500 751 743 | -1 5 | -6
CLE 162 69 93 .425 646 752 -106 | 69 93 .426 646 752 | 0 -7 | 7
KC 162 63 99 .390 676 845 -169 | 67 95 .414 676 845 | 4 0 | 3
TB 162 98 64 .604 802 649 153 | 96 66 .593 802 649 | -2 -2 | 0
NYY 162 98 64 .606 859 693 166 | 95 67 .586 859 693 | -3 6 | -10
BOS 162 89 73 .547 818 744 74 | 89 73 .549 818 744 | 0 0 | 0
TOR 162 84 78 .518 755 728 27 | 85 77 .525 755 728 | 1 -9 | 10
BAL 162 61 101 .379 613 785 -172 | 66 96 .407 613 785 | 5 -4 | 8
TEX 162 92 70 .568 787 687 100 | 90 72 .556 787 687 | -2 1 | -3
OAK 162 86 76 .529 663 626 37 | 81 81 .500 663 626 | -5 -6 | 1
LAA 162 79 83 .485 681 702 -21 | 80 82 .494 681 702 | 1 4 | -3
SEA 162 57 105 .351 513 698 -185 | 61 101 .377 513 698 | 4 10 | -6
CIN 162 92 70 .571 790 685 105 | 91 71 .562 790 685 | -1 3 | -4
STL 162 92 70 .569 736 641 95 | 86 76 .531 736 641 | -6 -1 | -6
MIL 162 75 87 .465 750 804 -54 | 77 85 .475 750 804 | 2 2 | -1
CHC 162 72 90 .444 685 767 -82 | 75 87 .463 685 767 | 3 -2 | 5
HOU 162 67 95 .413 611 729 -118 | 76 86 .469 611 729 | 9 7 | 2
PIT 162 51 111 .315 587 866 -279 | 57 105 .352 587 866 | 6 -3 | 9
PHI 162 96 66 .593 772 640 132 | 97 65 .599 772 640 | 1 0 | 1
ATL 162 94 68 .579 738 629 109 | 91 71 .562 738 629 | -3 -6 | 3
FLA 162 81 81 .501 719 717 2 | 80 82 .494 719 717 | -1 5 | -7
NYM 162 81 81 .503 656 652 4 | 79 83 .488 656 652 | -2 -1 | -1
WSN 162 71 91 .438 655 742 -87 | 69 93 .426 655 742 | -2 -5 | 3
SF 162 95 67 .588 697 583 114 | 92 70 .568 697 583 | -3 1 | -4
SD 162 92 70 .567 665 581 84 | 90 72 .556 665 581 | -2 9 | -11
COL 162 87 75 .536 770 717 53 | 83 79 .512 770 717 | -4 2 | -5
LAD 162 78 84 .482 667 692 -25 | 80 82 .494 667 692 | 2 -5 | 7
ARI 162 68 94 .421 713 836 -123 | 65 97 .401 713 836 | -3 -4 | 1
Now, let's play Snakes and Ladders.
Snakes and Ladders is a board game from my distant youth, which was roughly about when I heard Mott the Hoople use it as a metaphor for their own ups and downs ("In '72 we were born to lose/ we slipped down snakes into yesterday's news..."). I use it to identify those teams that improved by 10 games (climbing the ladder) or declined by 10 (slipping down the snakes.) This was a very normal season in the majors: three teams slipped down the snakes, while four of them were climbing the ladders. That's what I've grown accustomed to, having tracked this back for the last couple of decades. The utter insanity of 2009 (eight teams climbed the ladders, ten teams slipped down the snakes) is all behind us, an aberration, a blip, perhaps never to be seen again in our lifetimes
Snakes
Seattle -24
The biggest dropoff in the majors, from an organization that has been badly run for some time now. The Mariners have made an art of fooling themselves. It's what they do. Pythagoras has been messing with them, of course, and they've been unable to see through it. A run of good luck in 2007 and again in 2009 helped them win far more games than they had any right to expect. When their luck returned to normal, as in 2008 and in 2010, they seemed surprised and disappointed. That said, they were legitimately a lot worse this time around. Much of the dropoff in 2008 was simply Pythagoras righting the ship - they had a big Pythagorean Swing of 14 games in 2008 (they overachieved by 9 games in 2007 and underachieved by 5 games in 2008.) But not this time, buddy. There actually wasn't a big Pythagorean Swing at work at all in 2010 - just 6 games in fact. They were 18 games worse on merit, thanks to the most pathetic offense the AL has seen since the first DH strode up to home plate.
LA Angels -17
The Angels had won at least 92 games and the AL West title in five of the last 6 years, and they went 89-73 in the one year they missed out. This year's disaster was mostly on the offense; while offense was down pretty significantly in the AL (about 8 percent, which is a big dropoff), the Angels scored 202 runs fewer than they did the year before. That's a dropoff of more than 20 percent, and that's way too much offense to lose unless the pitchers do likewise to the opposition. That didn't happen (the Angels reduced their Runs Allowed by about 8 percent, roughly the same as the league overall) As for the bats, Torii Hunter and Bobby Abreu held the line, and Hideki Matsui was actually an upgrade on the Vlad Guerrero who played for the Angels. Alas, those three worthies were surrounded by a group of hitters who collectively pulled up to the cliff, looked over the edge, and decided to jump. Obviously, the Kendry Morales injury was a major blow, and losing him in such a stupid fashion may have messed with the team's psyche.
LA Dodgers -15
The Dodgers came by their badness the old-fashioned way: they earned it. They were significantly worse on both sides of the ball this past season. The offensive fall-off was mostly because of big dropoffs from Matt Kemp and Casey Blake, although Manny missing about 90 games was worse than Manny missing about 60. On the mound, the bullpen (which had been simply fabulous in 2009) was very shaky indeed in 2010 (with the exception of Hong-Chi Kuo, who was sensational. He was the only one.)
Ladders
Washington +10
The Nationals and Mets went into the final day of the season, each having won 9 more games than they did in 2009, and facing one another to see which of the two would get honoured with a Snakes and Ladders shout-out. There could be only one. With so much at stake the teams battled on, past nine innings, into the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth... at which point, Jerry Manuel thought - what the hell, they're going to fire my ass tomorrow win or lose - and brought in Oliver Perez. One hit batter and three consecutive walks later, the Nationals had the lead, and Miguel Batista closed it out.
Toronto +10
The Blue Jays climbing the ladder in 2010 had very little to do with the team improving - this was almost entirely a Pythagorean swing. The Jays scored and allowed 43 fewer runs than they did in 2009. In 2009, they underperformed their Pythagorean expectation by 9 games - their 75-87 record was one of the worst records in major league history by a team that scored more runs than it gave up (only seven such teams, in more than 100 years, have had a worse record than the 2009 Jays.) In 2010, their W-L record was an accurate reflection of the runs they scored and gave up. That is all.
Cincinnati +13
The Cincinnati story is essentially a mirror image of the Angels - the Reds posted the biggest offensive improvement in the majors in 2010. With offense down in both leagues, and most teams scoring fewer runs than they year before, the Reds improved their offense by a whopping 117 runs. No one else was even remotely close. The pitching was a little better as well. The Reds had actually had a negative Pythagorean Swing to contend with, but Joey Votto and company were up to the job.
San Diego +15
No team improved their W-L record more than the Padres, but alas- when you spend five the first months of the season leading your division, it still feels like a crushing disappointment when you don't get to play in October. No matter how far you had to come. The Padres 75-87 record in 2009 flattered them, so their improvement this year was even greater than the additional 15 wins suggests. Like the Reds, they have a negative Pythagorean Swing to contend with - they 9 games better than expected in 2009, and this year they were actually 2 games worse. It's the biggest Pythagorean Swing in the majors this year. Most of this improvement came on the pitcher's mound, as the Padres gave up 188 fewer runs than they had in 2009. This was not a product of Petco Field. The park didn't suppress offense nearly as much as it has in the past, although it was still one of the best pitcher's parks in the league. The Padres pitchers allowed 262 runs at home, best in the league (the Giants gave up 274) and 319 on the road, second-best in the league (the Giants led the way with just 309 runs against on the road.)
Finally, a bunch of general observations...
As you probably noticed, offense was down quite a bit in the AL this season. AL teams scored 4.45 runs per game in 2010; they scored 4.82 runs per game in 2009. Doesn't seem like much? Well, offense was at just 92.4% of the 2010 level. And if we look at this in historical terms, we learn to describe offense falling that much as plummeting. It's a great big thing. We simply don't see that big a drop from one year to the next very often at all. Only four times in the DH era have we had a bigger drop in AL offense, and those four years are themselves pretty instructive regarding the circumstances that go along with this type of offensive... collapse. They are:
1981 (the strike year);
1988 (1987 had been the biggest offensive season in the AL in almost 40 years);
1997 (1996, along with...)
2001 (... 2000 were the two highest scoring years in the AL since the 1930s.)
To sum up - besides the fluke of the strike year, we normally only see this size of offensive falloff after a historically great year for the hitters. But 2009 was not a historically great year, not at all - it was a little better than 2008, and not as good as 2006 or 2007. Offensive production plummeted anyway.
Offense was off in the NL as well, just not nearly as much. However, offense has indeed been falling steadily in the NL over the last few years - each year the teams score 97-98% as many runs as they scored the year before.
The quality gap between the two leagues also seems to be narrowing sharply - the NL was just 6 games under .500 this season (1288-1304). If this year's rookie crop is any indication - this year's NL rookie crop was deep, wide and wonderful - it may actually reverse in the next year or two. The NL is no longer the AAAA league. Those days are gone.
NL teams with winning records against the AL: Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Colorado, San Diego.
AL teams with winning records against the NL: Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Texas
The AL team that improved its offense the most in 2010 were the Chicago White Sox, and that was nothing to write home about - the White Sox scored 27 more runs this year than they did in 2009. Detroit and Texas made single digit improvements. Everyone else scored fewer runs.
The most impressive offensive upgrade in the majors in 2010, by a comfortable mile, came in Cincinnati where Dusty Baker's men scored 117 runs more than they did in 2009. The Giants improved by 40 runs, the Cubs by 27. St. Louis and Atlanta made single digit improvements. Everyone else was down. Some of them were a long way down. Six teams lost more than 90 runs of offense in 2010. Leading the pack into the Abyss of Frustration were the LA Angels, of course - as already noted, they had 202 runs of offense vanish into air, into thin air. Yes, they lost more than Seattle (-127) or Baltimore (-128) - the Angels did have a lot more to lose, of course. Cleveland (-127) and Oakland (-96) were the other big losers in the AL. The Dodgers (-113) had the biggest dropoff in the NL.
All this means the pitchers were allowing fewer runs, of course. Naturally this wasn't spread out evenly across the majors. Why would it be? The staff that reduced their runs allowed by the greatest amount were the San Diego Padres, who shaved off a remarkable 188 runs - better than a run per game. Only two NL teams in the last 40 years have made a bigger step forward in reducing runs allowed. Second best in the NL? Surprise - it was the Washington Nationals. There was plenty of room for improvement, of course, but allowing 132 fewer runs constitutes pretty impressive improvement nonetheless. And after them came the New York Mets (-105 runs.) Best in the AL was Oakland (-135 runs), followed by Cleveland (-113) and Tampa (-105). The Nats and Mets represent bad teams getting a little better, which is easier to accomplish than what the Rays or the Twins achieved.
There was one team in the majors who reduced their runs scored and runs allowed by the exact same amount - that would be your Toronto Blue Jays, ladies and gentlemen. In 2009, they scored 798 runs and allowed 771. Reduce each figure by 43 and you have this year's numbers. That dropoff is not as big as the overall AL rate - the Jays offense was a little better relative to the league, the pitching a little worse. Actually, the most significant thing that happened to Toronto is that Pythagoras finally stopped picking on them...
Best place for offense in 2010? That would be Coors Field, of course. Where else? It was a pretty bad year for the humidor. The Rockies scored and allowed 858 runs at home, just 629 on the road, which is an Offensive Factor of 1.36 - Coors also led the majors in 2009 (naturally), but at 1.25. The humidor has done something - back in 2007, when I did my big historical study of Home Field Advantage and historical ballpark effects on scoring, Coors Field came in with an Offensive Factor of 1.45, making it - surprise! - the highest scoring environment ever. I should update that - the last few seasons may have pushed Coors into second place (behind Mile High Stadium, where else.)
The best place to score runs in the AL was Yankee Stadium, which I have at 1.18 - the Yankees scored and allowed 839 runs at home, 713 on the road. The new Toilet just edged out US Cellular in Chicago. This probably doesn't surprise you all that much, but it surprises me quite a bit. First of all, despite all the talk about the ball flying out of the yard, the Yankees actually scored and allowed more runs on the road than they did at home in 2009. And US Cellular, despite being a great home run park, has actually reduced offense overall since it opened for business. Things were strange in the AL in 2010...
How strange? Well, the toughest place to score runs in all of baseball was an American League park. Yes, Petco Field was open for business as usual in San Diego. It has been the toughest place to score runs of any ball park in the history of the game, but this past year it wasn't even the toughest place to score runs in the NL (Offensive Factor of just 0.88, which is still very high for Petco.) But this year, Enron Memorial in Houston had an Offensive Factor of 0.86 to edge out Petco. And that was nothing - the Trop in Tampa Bay had an Offensive Factor of 0.80. The Rays scored and allowed just 645 runs at home, 806 on the road. And this too is downright bizarre - historically, the Trop has actually been the most neutral park in the majors when it comes to effect on runs scoring.
Runs
Scored & Allowed Offensive
Home Road Factor
COL 858 629 1.36
NYY 839 713 1.18
CHC 783 669 1.17
CHI 774 681 1.14
BAL 736 662 1.11
TEX 769 705 1.09
BOS 812 750 1.08
TOR 735 748 1.06
ARI 793 756 1.05
FLA 733 703 1.04
PIT 736 717 1.03
ATL 686 681 1.01
CIN 740 735 1.01
MIL 779 775 1.01
PHI 729 683 0.99
DET 740 754 0.98
WSN 686 711 0.96
MIN 712 740 0.96
OAK 630 659 0.96
KC 763 805 0.95
CLE 680 718 0.95
SF 621 659 0.94
LAD 658 701 0.94
STL 666 711 0.94
NYM 616 692 0.89
SD 584 662 0.88
LAA 641 742 0.86
HOU 621 719 0.86
SEA 543 668 0.81
TB 645 806 0.80
Well, yes, all this is very strange but true - but it's also just weird and random. Bear in mind that 81 games is a very small sample in the life of a ball park.
Anything else I wanted to touch on? Yes - home-road splits.
Normally, the home team wins 54% of the team. That means the normal home field advantage is .080 (.540 as opposed to .460). As it happens, 2010 was a pretty good year for the home team, which was winning about 56 % of the team in both leagues. I wanted to find the biggest split between the home and road record. I normally find it in Denver, home of the greatest Home Field Advantage in major league history - and as usual the Rockies had an enormous Home Field Advantage (they played .642 at home, .383 on the road). But the Rockies did not have the biggest Home Field Advantage in 2010. That distinction goes to the Detroit Tigers in the AL and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL, who each had Home Field Advantages of .284. The Tigers went a nicely symmetrical 52-29 at home, 29-52 on the road. The Pirates didn't even have to play .500 ball at home to post their enormous split, because they happened to be the worst road team in baseball (17-64). Tampa Bay was the best (47-34)
Atlanta was the toughest team to beat in their own house (56-25), while it was always fun to visit Safeco and Wrigley, where the home team went just 35-46. The Cubs were the only team in the majors who had a better record on the road than at home; the Padres had an identical 45-36 record at home and away.
Home Away
W L Pct RS RA W L Pct RS RA Split
DET 52 29 .642 411 329 | 29 52 .358 340 414 .284
PIT 40 41 .494 333 403 | 17 64 .210 254 463 .284
ATL 56 25 .691 391 295 | 35 46 .432 347 334 .259
COL 52 29 .642 479 379 | 31 50 .383 291 338 .259
STL 52 29 .642 386 280 | 34 47 .420 350 361 .222
NYM 47 34 .580 334 282 | 32 49 .395 322 370 .185
ARI 40 41 .494 384 409 | 25 56 .309 329 427 .185
OAK 47 34 .580 354 276 | 34 47 .420 309 350 .160
WSN 41 40 .506 327 359 | 28 53 .346 328 383 .160
TEX 51 30 .630 430 339 | 39 42 .481 357 348 .148
MIN 53 28 .654 399 313 | 41 40 .506 382 358 .148
LAD 45 36 .556 322 336 | 35 46 .432 345 356 .123
KC 38 43 .469 360 403 | 28 53 .346 333 472 .123
SEA 35 46 .432 239 304 | 26 55 .321 274 394 .111
NYY 52 29 .642 473 366 | 43 38 .531 386 327 .111
TOR 45 33 .577 387 348 | 40 44 .476 368 380 .101
BAL 37 44 .457 322 414 | 29 52 .358 291 371 .099
HOU 42 39 .519 297 324 | 34 47 .420 314 405 .099
PHI 54 30 .643 410 319 | 43 35 .551 362 321 .092
CIN 49 32 .605 399 341 | 42 39 .519 391 344 .086
CLE 38 43 .469 326 354 | 31 50 .383 320 398 .086
LAA 43 38 .531 319 322 | 37 44 .457 362 380 .074
SF 49 32 .605 347 274 | 43 38 .531 350 309 .074
MIL 40 41 .494 365 414 | 37 44 .457 385 390 .037
BOS 46 35 .568 419 393 | 43 38 .531 399 351 .037
FLA 41 40 .506 365 368 | 39 42 .481 354 349 .025
CHI 45 36 .556 403 371 | 43 38 .531 348 333 .025
TB 49 32 .605 351 294 | 47 34 .580 451 355 .025
SD 45 36 .556 322 262 | 45 36 .556 343 319 .000
CHC 35 46 .432 352 431 | 40 41 .494 333 336 -.062
Finally - one-run games, my ancient obsession. (Hopefully this off-season I can actually put together my Big Historical Study of them.) As I've explained many, many times, who wins and who loses a game decided by a single run is largely a matter of Dumb, Random luck. A team that loses 90 games can quite easily have a better record in one run games than a team that wins 90 games. It happens all the time, and this year was no exception. Who had the best record in one-run games in 2010?
Uh.... well... okay, it was the Philadelphia Phillies, who won more games than anyone. They were brilliant in the close games (29-17, .630) and really good in the rest of them (68-48, .586) This is still an unusual result, and hardly devoid of interest, because of the very nature of one-run games. You see, one-run games are one of the mechanisms enforcing the Law of Competitive Balance, dragging all teams towards the .500 mark, elevating the bad ones and pulling down on the good ones. This is a Law, and I'm still looking for a snappy name to give it - the Weaver Tangent, the Durocher Paradox.... Anyway, It is very unusual to find a team that plays .700 ball in one-run games - you are three times as likely likely to find teams that play .700 ball in games decided by more than one run. The same phenomenon exists at the other end of the scale - they have been more teams (more than twice as many) play below .300 in games decided by more than one-run than there have been play that badly in one-run games. The 2010 Phillies, although they fell short of .700 ball in their one-run games, were bucking one of the basic tides of the game...
Ah. But who was the best team in the AL in one-run games?
The Baltimore Orioles. Who else? They played .580 ball in one-run games (29-21). It's a good thing they did, because they played .330 ball (37-75) in the rest of their games. They were pretty lucky to come away with 66 wins. The Texas Rangers were also very good in one-run games, and actually won more of them than anyone else (30-23, .566.) The worst team in the majors in the one-run games were the Detroit Tigers (16-26) .
ONE-RUN GAMES
W L Pct
PHI 29 17 .630
BAL 29 21 .580
CHI 28 21 .571
TEX 30 23 .566
SD 28 22 .560
MIN 24 20 .545
HOU 21 18 .538
SF 28 24 .538
OAK 23 20 .535
MIL 26 23 .531
CLE 23 21 .523
LAD 26 24 .520
TB 29 27 .518
NYY 20 19 .513
ATL 23 22 .511
CIN 27 27 .500
LAA 24 25 .490
COL 28 30 .483
STL 20 22 .476
KC 27 30 .474
TOR 24 28 .462
BOS 22 26 .458
NYM 25 30 .455
PIT 20 24 .455
ARI 19 23 .452
FLA 23 28 .451
SEA 21 28 .429
WSN 20 28 .417
CHC 22 32 .407
DET 16 26 .381
I think that's all for now...
