No tie-breakers in the blog

Thanks to hatt for allowing me to contribute to his blog. While I was a little peeved about my S2 Final Power Rankings snub (as if a second-straight tie-breaker loss wasn't painful enough!), time has healed my wounds and I feel good about my squad and fired up for GAP S3.

For my first set of posts, I want to recap some stats from our first two seasons. Here is hatt's overall franchise W/L he posted in the forum. I added RS and RA, along with Pythagorean Winning Percentage:

Rk Tm. WPct .W. .L. .RS. .RA. Pyth
1. Oak .694 225- 99 2436 1535 .716
2. SF. .614 199-125 1802 1433 .613
3. Atl .602 195-129 1805 1414 .620
4. Sea .593 192-132 1824 1553 .580
5. TB. .580 188-136 1703 1438 .584
5. KC. .580 188-136 2236 1750 .620
5. NYM .580 188-136 1487 1263 .581
8. Cle .571 185-139 1863 1557 .589
9. Det .559 181-143 1914 1603 .588
10 Ana .555 180-144 1908 1798 .530
11 Mil .549 178-146 1870 1642 .565
12 Fla .540 175-149 1582 1448 .544
13 CWS .537 174-150 1931 1715 .559
14 Hou .534 173-151 1868 1740 .535
15 StL .528 171-153 1602 1501 .533
16 Pit .522 169-155 1771 1578 .557
17 ChC .519 168-156 1829 1679 .543
18 Tex .515 167-157 2035 1834 .552
19 Mem .494 160-164 1870 1747 .534
19 Az. .494 160-164 1640 1666 .492
21 LA. .475 154-170 1572 1597 .492
22 Cin .457 148-176 1579 1767 .444
23 Bal .451 146-178 1668 1839 .451
23 Cha .451 146-178 1496 1670 .445
25 Bos .448 145-179 1821 2407 .364
26 Phi .417 135-189 1468 1769 .408
27 Tor .401 130-194 1630 1997 .400
28 SD. .398 129-195 1361 1777 .370
29 Min .386 125-199 1763 2037 .428
30 NYY .373 121-193 1849 2258 .401
31 Was .346 112-212 1415 2140 .304
32 Van .238 .77-247 1510 2956 .207

It is really amazing how accurate the Pythagorean formula is. Of 32 teams, 11 are within 10 percentage points. I was hoping to find out that my Royals weren't the unluckiest team in the GAP. Sure enough, there are the hard-luck Twins at -42. (The Royals and the Blues are both -40.)

On the other end of the spectrum, the Red Sox appear to have vibrating horseshoes jammed 19 feet up their asses. They are 84 percentage points better than expected. No other team is more than 42. Odd. Too bad they are wasting all their luck during these non-contending years.

I can't be sure if it is all just dumb luck. The Royals bullpen has always been shaky--could that be the cause for not living up to the expected winning percentage? Does my squad lose more than its share of close games due to weakness closing things out?

I used (like WIS) the standard exponent of 2 in calculating these (more detail below if you are interested).

From baseballreference.com:

Pythagorean winning percentage is an estimate of a team's winning percentage given their runs scored and runs allowed. Developed by Bill James, it can tell you when teams were a bit lucky or unlucky. It is calculated by

(Runs Scored)^1.83
----------------------------------------
(Runs Scored)^1.83 + (Runs Allowed)^1.83

The traditional formula uses an exponent of two, but this has proven to be a little more accurate.