...is that garbage-time blowouts distort them.
Dayn Perry touches on a caveat to the Oakland A's 2008 season, distinguishing between the Oakland and Anaheim records in 1-run and 2-run games, but the real reason A's have an inflated run differential:
13-2
11-2
14-2
15-1
(admittedly there's also a 0-12 floating in there)
I wonder whether projections would be more accurate if blowouts were capped to something like a seven-run margin.
See also Matt Welch's rebuttal to a similar piece predicting doom for the Angels.
"According to the PECOTA-Adjusted Playoff Odds Report, Oakland has a robust 63.4 percent chance of making the postseason. By comparison the Angels have just a 36.5 percent chance of making it. That's a function of Oakland's significantly better run differential. As for the divide between run margin and record, the usual explanations seem not to apply. Usually such discrepancies are traceable back to each team's record in one-run games, but the A's are 10-10 in one-run affairs, and the Angels are 13-9. That's a difference, but not a big one. Two-run games? In those, the A's are 6-10, but the Angels are a whopping 17-4. Is such a disparity in two-run records mostly a function of luck, as we've come to believe about one-run records? Or is it indicative of a skill? The logic of scale suggests that it's more of a skill than one-run outcomes, but measurably less than records in five-run games. Color me flummoxed."
Posted by Matt Bruce at June 23, 2008 03:59 PM