The Lineup Card

Apparently I wasn't the only one eyeing the expected wins ledger now that we're a quarter of the way through the season. In case you missed it, I wrote a piece for the site about the Pythagorean formula, noting that the Cubs were having horrendous luck compared to the Brewers, who are running away with the NL Central.

David Gassko over at The Hardball Times had an excellent piece this week as well, examining whether outliers in the Pythagorean formula were really just an example of bad luck, or if there's some common traits between teams that perform better or worse than their expected record in dramatic fashion.

Specifically, here is what the results tell us: Teams with balanced lineups outperform their Pythagorean records; one point of balance is worth 1.62 wins above what we would expect. For 95% of all teams, this impact will be limited to +/- 0.05 wins. Each “leveraged win” will add .48 games per season above what is expected. For 95% of all teams, the impact of this category will be within +/- 2.67 wins. For each 1,000 games managed, the manager adds 0.25 wins per season above what is expected of the team. For 95% of all teams, the impact of this category will be within +/- 0.61 wins. In all, using this formula, we would predict 95% of all teams to be within +/- 2.74 wins of their Pythagorean record, with the rest of the variance (95% of all teams land within +/- 7.46 wins of their expected record) explained by luck or factors I have not considered. Nonetheless, in a game in which teams pay $5 million per win on the free agent market, this knowledge is a huge deal. It confirms the importance of a good bullpen and suggests the importance of a good manager. And perhaps most importantly, it tells us how important it is to never consider a question closed, especially if the best suggested explanation is luck. In the search for the truth, not every question has an easy answer.

There's a lot of math in there, but what Gassko is intimating is that while, yes, luck is a big factor, lineup balance, a good manager and a good bullpen can help (or hinder) a team in exceeding its expected record.

I'm not so sure I buy the manager effect, indeed, Gassko's study shows that to be the most negligible impact of the three is the manager (+/- 0.25 wins per 1,000 games?), but I did recognize the impact of a good bullpen in my column (and indeed I think this is where a lot of the Cubs' problems are coming from):

Of course, it hasn’t been all good fortune. Historically, the teams that have beaten their expected records by large margins tend to have very strong bullpens, the opposite holding true for teams with poor bullpens. The theory goes good relievers help a team win an inordinate number of close games, thus covering up a weak run differential. (The Torre-era Yankees with Mariano Rivera closing games are an excellent example of this phenomenon.) So far the Brewers’ relief corps has been outstanding, while the Cubs’ has been wholly awful. Lo and behold, Milwaukee is 7-5 and Chicago is 2-10 in one-run games this season.

A cursory look at the Cubs' bullpen stats doesn't paint a pretty picture: 10th in the NL in ERA (4.00); ninth in opponents' OPS (.727); ninth in WHIP (1.39); only one reliever with a WXRL (expected wins added) over one.

I admit I had never pondered the balanced lineup phenomenon before, but intuitively it makes sense. If your team is well-balanced up and down the order, it stands to reason that they'll be less prone to extended offensive funks as opposed to a team that's relying on one or two offensive players for the bulk of their production.

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