One of our new profiles is something called the “Record by Runs Scored and Allowed”, which gives, for example, each team’s won-lost record when they score six runs, when they allow six runs, when they score five, when they allow five, etc. I have been studying these records and have learned, for example, that
· The Rangers were 2-6 when they scored six runs,
· The Angels were 10-7 when they allowed six runs,
· The Red Sox were 25-0 when they scored ten or more runs, and 2-5 when they allowed ten or more, both records being the best in the major leagues,
· Every team in baseball had a winning record when they scored 7 runs except the Reds (7-7) and Giants (2-4),
· Every team had a losing record when they allowed 7 runs except the Rockies (6-4),
· Every team without exception had a winning record when they scored 8 and a losing record when they allowed 8.
· The Blue Jays won twelve games in which they scored only two runs—more than the combined total of the Pirates, Phillies, Marlins, Diamondbacks, Yankees, Royals, White Sox, Brewers and Braves. All of those teams, taken together, won only eleven games in which they scored two runs.
· (Saving the best for last) Baltimore was a mind-boggling 3-22 when they scored four runs. A lot of teams were over .500 when they scored four. . .the Giants were 16-15, the Angels 13-5, the Indians 11-6. Three and twenty-two—given enough runs to win.
I was trying to sort out of this data some way to count “pitchers wins”, “pitchers losses”, “batting wins”, “batting losses”, “combined wins” and “combined losses”. The idea is simple: if you win a game 2-1, that’s a game that your pitching won for you. If you win 8-5, that’s a game that your offense has won for you. If you lose 11-2, that’s a combined loss; nobody did good.
Unfortunately there appears to be no way to make it work that is fair to both pitchers and hitters, so I’m moving on. I was looking at “three to five records”—records when you score three to five runs, records when you allow three to five. The theory is that these games are indicative of something because those are games that the team had a chance to win. If you score one or two runs in a game, you’re going to lose 90% of the time. If you give up six, seven, eight runs, you’re going to lose the great majority of the time. If you keep it in the range of three to five, you have a chance to win that game. The Diamondbacks were 20-10 when they allowed four runs. The Padres were 9-11. Take those games out of it, and the Padres win the division in a walk.
A “three to five” game is any game in which a team scores three to five runs, or any game in which they allow three to five runs. The best teams at baseball at keeping the opposition at bay when they scored three to five runs were:
1. Angels 33-23 .589
2. Arizona 43-31 .581
3. Indians 33-24 .579
4. Mets 31-25 .554
5. Padres 36-34 .514
It’s a pretty interesting list. The Angels, we are told often, are the best team in baseball at playing small ball. They don’t score the most runs total, but that’s not always what it’s about; it’s also about scoring runs when you need a run to win the game. This chart suggests that the Angels did in fact have that ability.
And the Diamondbacks. . well, that, of course, was one of the defining stories of the season: the Diamondbacks finding just enough runs to survive. 43 times they scored 3 to 5 runs—but made it work.
On the other end were:
1. Baltimore 19-40 .322
2. Tampa Bay 19-39 .328
3. Reds 23-41 .359
4. Blue Jays 23-40 .365
5. Marlins 25-43 .368
Fish and birds; don’t want to be a fish or a bird in this category. The Blue Jays were fantastic at winning with two runs—did that twelve times—but stunk at holding on when they had three to five. Sometimes you just can’t figure. It’s not a .500 category, by the way. The overall winning percentage for teams which scored three to five runs was .450; for teams which allowed three to five runs, .550.
The best teams in baseball at winning when they allowed three to five runs were mostly the teams with the best offenses:
1. Seattle 35-18 .660
2. Cleveland 48-25 .658
3. Yankees 35-20 .636
4. Red Sox 36-21 .632
5. Marlins 42-25 .627
Brewers 42-25 .627
The Indians had 73 games in which they allowed three to five runs—tying Toronto for the most in the majors—and won almost two-thirds of those games. On the other end:
1. Giants 30-39 .435
2. Nationals 32-37 .464
3. Astros 26-30 .464
4. Orioles 28-32 .467
5. Royals 32-35 .478
Except for the Cubs, it’s a fairly safe generalization that if you can’t find a way to win when your pitching allows only three to five runs, you can’t win. The Cubs won the National League Central despite going 27-28 when they allowed three to five runs. The other seven teams that made the playoffs all had winning percentages of .585 or better in this group.
Combining these two, the best teams in baseball in three-to-five games were:
1. Cleveland Native Americans 81 49 .623
2. Los Angeles Winged Spirits 68 44 .607
3. Arizona Venom Squirters 81 55 .596
4. Seattle Seafarers 68 50 .576
5. New York Carpetbaggers 55 43 .561
While the worst were:
1. Baltimore Small Colorful Birds 47 72 .395
2. Houston Space Cadets 54 72 .429
3. Toronto Squawkers 59 77 .434
4. San Francisco Pituitary Cases 63 82 .434
5. Pittsburgh Bloodthirty Cutthroats 56 72 .438
Those are not “true” won-lost records, by the way, because a team can both score and allow three to five runs in a game, so some games are double-counted. Also those are not the teams’ true nicknames.
The overall winning percentage of teams in three-to-five games is .500; this is true by definition, since a game in which one team scores three to five is always a game in which the other team allows three to five, thus is both a win and a loss. There really were only a handful of teams in 2007 which had meaningful disparities between their three-to-five winning percentage and their overall winning percentage. Those included:
The Diamondbacks. Three-to-five games also tend to be close games; this is one of the reasons to pay some little attention to the category. The Diamondbacks won their division because they won the close games.
The Red Sox. The Red Sox were an appalling 23-32 in games in which they scored 3 to 5 runs, just missing the worst-in-baseball list, although they were pretty good when they allowed 3 to 5. Overall their winning percentage was more than a hundred points worse in 3 to 5 games than it was overall, a fact that could easily have kept them out of the playoffs if just a few games had broken differently.
As a Red Sox observer, I know what many of those games were. They were what we called the Groundhog Day Games, because we kept playing the same game over and over. The team would be facing some pitcher of great promise but relatively modest accomplishment--Robinson Tejeda, or Andy Sonnanstine, or Ryan Feierabend—and would score a run or two in the first but leave the bases loaded, squander a scoring chance in the second, another in the third, ground into a double play in the fourth, fall into a 5-1 hole and rally late to lose 6-4. This went on for what seemed like months. The disparity between their three-to-five winning percentage and their overall winning percentage was easily the largest in baseball.
The White Sox. The White Sox were the opposite; they were really good in three-to-five games; they just couldn’t compete when the game got ragged. The White Sox were 33-32 when they scored three to five runs, 35-29 when they allowed three to five, overall 68-61. Which would mean that they were 4-29 in other games, except, of course, that that’s not exactly true because of that double-counting thing.
The Tigers. The Tigers were 57-60 in three-to-five games, but finished fourteen games over .500 overall.
The Blue Jays. The Jays poor performance in three-to-five games, perhaps related to the loss of their closer early in the season, essentially kept them from being competitive in the division. They were eighteen games under .500 in three-to-five games, twenty-two games over .500 otherwise, once more ignoring that double-counting problem.