Joe Girardi - AL Manager of the Year?

Measuring 2013 Team Efficiency

By Jim Wheeler,  December 11, 2013


Several years ago, Tom Tippett would regularly pen an article discussing the most recently
concluded MLB season aimed at discovering which team was the most efficient in scoring and
preventing runs along with creating wins. This is my attempt to resurrect these articles.  Most of the
thought and boilerplate of this article belongs to Tom Tippett and not myself. I am merely trying to
keep the flame lit.

Every few seasons it seems like a special team comes from out of nowhere to rocket into the
playoffs.  In 2006, it was the Arizona Diamondbacks zooming into the NL playoff picture.  In
2012, it was the Buck Showalter led Baltimore Orioles who won an amazing 93 games as opposed
to a Pythagorean prediction of 82 wins.  In 2013, the winner of getting the most of nothing, is none
other than the Joe Girardi led New York Yankees.  With 85 victories, the Yankees bettered their
projected Pythagorean win total by 7 games, the highest American League team total. The Yankees
were the best in the American League at winning one run games picking up 30 wins and 16 defeats
in those nail-bitter contests.  Of course having a bullpen of Mariano Rivera and David Robertson is
a huge plus.  Yet Girardi managed to squeeze out 7 extra victories with a team of castoffs, minor
league replacements, and a lineup basically without Derek Jeter all season. Our DMB projections
verify how difficult it will be to keep your replay New York Yankees in the pennant race. So if you
like challenges, give the 2013 Yankees a spin.

In a nutshell, you win games by outscoring your opponents, so the connection between runs and
wins is very strong, even though every season produces a few teams that win more or less than
you'd expect given their run differential. To explore the relationship between runs and wins, we'll
use the Pythagorean method that was developed by Bill James.

You score runs by putting together hits, walks, steals, and other offensive events, and you prevent
runs by holding the other team to a minimum of those things. In most cases, there's a direct
relationship between runs and the underlying events that produce runs.

We use the term efficiency to represent the ability to turn events into runs and runs into wins. An
efficient team is one that produces more wins than expected given its run margin, produces more
runs than expected given its offensive events, or allows fewer runs than expected given the hits and
walks produced by their opponents.

In the 2007 edition of this article, we showed that teams that are unusually efficient (or inefficient)
have exhibited a very strong tendency to revert back to the norm the next year. That's good news
for some teams and bad news for others. If you'd like to find out who falls into which category,
read on.

Converting runs into wins

The Bill James Pythagorean method, a well-established formula based on the idea that a team's
winning percentage is tightly coupled with runs scored and runs allowed. Bill's formula is quite
simple ... take the square of runs scored and divide it by the sum of the squares of runs scored and
runs allowed (RF = runs for, RA = runs allowed):

                                RF ** 2
  Projected winning pct =  -----------------
                           RF ** 2 + RA ** 2

In 2013, for instance, 17 of 30 teams finished with win-loss records within three games of their
projected records, and 26 of 30 teams finished within five games. Since 1962, when the 162-game
schedule was first used in both leagues, no team had ever been more than 12 games better than their
Pythagorean projection

But 50 years of baseball history tells us that such large deviations are unusual and tend not to be
repeated the following year. In other words, the 2014 Yankees must dramatically improve their run
margin in 2014 if they are to come close to matching this year's win total. The same is true of the
2014 Philadelphia Phillies, who finished with 8 more wins than expected, one of the few stats
where they led all of Major League Baseball.

The teams that most underperformed their Pythagorean records were the Tigers with 7 fewer wins,
along with the Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, both with 6 fewer expected wins. Interesting
enough, all three of these teams were in the playoffs and Boston and St. Louis met in the World
Series.

Converting offensive events into runs

Just as there is a strong relationship between runs and wins, it's almost always true that the more
hits and walks you produce, the more runs you'll score. Sometimes, of course, a productive team
comes up short on the scoreboard because they didn't hit in the clutch, didn't run the bases well, or
hit line drives right at people in key situations. But this relationship holds up most of the time.

To shed some light on this relationship, we need a way to take batting stats and turn them into a
measure of overall offensive production. There are several good options here, including Runs
Created (Bill James), Batting Runs (Pete Palmer), Equivalent Average (Clay Davenport), OPS (on-
base average plus slugging average), and Base Runs (David Smyth).

For this exercise, we'll use the sum of total bases and walks, or TBW for short. TBW is not a
perfect measure, but it does have a few things going for it. It captures the most important things a
team does to produce runs -- singles, extra-base hits, and walks -- and it's easy to figure without a
computer.

As with other statistics, a team's TBW total can be significantly influenced by its home park. For
that reason, we focus on the difference between the TBW produced by a team's hitters and the
TBW allowed by its pitchers. This effectively removes the park from the equation and helps us
identify teams that out produced their opponents.

The following table shows the offensive and defensive TBW figures for the 2012 American
League, along with the difference between these two figures and each team's league rank based on
those differences. It also shows runs for and against, the run differential, and the rankings based on
run differential. Finally, because we're trying to trace a path from TBW to runs to wins, it lists the
team's win total and league rank for the year.

The 2013 American League

                         TBW                   Runs               Wins
Team             Off   Def  Diff Rank    Off  Def  Diff Rank    Num Rank
Boston          3102  2691   411    2    853  656   197    1     97    1
Tampa Bay       2847  2570   277    4    700  646    54    6     92    5
Baltimore       2838  2844    -6    8    745  709    36    8     85    8
New York (A)    2514  2733  -219   12    650  671   -21   10     85    9
Toronto         2784  2890  -106   10    712  756   -44   11     74   11

Detroit         3022  2530   492    1    796  624   172    2     93    3
Cleveland       2802  2663   139    5    745  662    83    5     92    4
Kansas City     2523  2586   -63    9    648  601    47    7     86    7
Minnesota       2647  2923  -276   14    614  788  -174   14     66   13
Chicago (A)     2515  2779  -264   13    598  723  -125   12     63   14

Oakland         2885  2523   362    3    767  625   142    3     96    2
Texas           2763  2638   125    6    730  636    94    4     91    6
Los Angeles (A) 2839  2837     2    7    733  737    -4    9     78   10
Seattle         2694  2836  -142   11    624  754  -130   13     71   12
Houston         2475  3115  -640   15    610  848  -238   15     51   15


The AL East produced very expected results. The Red Sox finished first in Runs Differential (RD)
and 2nd in Total Bases+Walks (TBW).  Yet while winning 97 games, they would be expected to
have won 102 games. The Red Sox were just .500 in one run games at 21Wins and 21 Losses, so
perhaps some better luck in those games would have added a few more victories to their win totals.
Tampa Bay bettered their expected wins by plus 4m mainly due to their efficiency in TBW with a
positive differential of 277.  Of course we have already discussed the Yankees.  With a Runs
Differential of -21, they ranked 10th in the American League. Their TBW differential also was a
negative 219 which also placed them in 12th place in the AL. Neither stat bodes well for Yankees
fans in 2014. Unless they can make up the huge differences in TBW and Runs, it might be next to
impossible for them to improve in the 2014 season.  The Orioles who were last seasons poster
child for expected wins, remained competitive in 2013.  But as history tells us, it is difficult to
repeat the success in one runs games that led to the Orioles plus 11 wins over their actual victories.
The Toronto Blue Jays, despite a huge increase in payroll, were 10th in TBW and 11th in Runs
leading to a dismal -2 Pythagorean win total.

In the AL Central, the Tigers were 1st in TBW and 2nd in Runs, yet still finished with 7 fewer wins
than expected. With a very weak bullpen, the Tigers were just 20W and 26L in one run games, a
very poor record for a 1st Place team.  Meanwhile, the Cleveland Indians, came out of nowhere
finishing 5th in both TBW and Runs differential. Overall the Tribe matches up very well with
numbers wise Tampa Bay. The Royals, with a -63 differential in TBW still managed to come with
one of their expected wins. Meanwhile, the Twins, despite placing 14th out of 15 in TBD and Runs,
bettered their expectations by winning 5 more games than they should have. The White Sox were
nothing special this season and struggled all year, checking in with 3 fewer wins than hoped for.

Over in the AL West, only the Seattle Mariners bettered their expected win total and did so by 5
games. Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics were extremely efficient in both TWB and Runs, placing
3rd in each category. Ironically, like all of the AL Division winning teams, the As won one fewer
games than expected. The Rangers, Angels, and Astros all were off their pace for Pythagorean
victories.  Houston did finish last in TBW, last in Runs, and last in actual Wins.  No surprise there!

The 2013 National League

                         TBW                   Runs               Wins
Team             Off   Def  Diff Rank    Off  Def  Diff Rank    Num Rank
Atlanta         2741  2824   -83    8    685  695   -10    6     96    2
Washington      2625  2488   137    5    656  626    30    5     86    6
New York (N)    2547  2666  -119   11    619  684   -65   11     74    9t
Philadelphia    2511  2807  -296   14    610  749  -139   15     73   13
Miami           2255  2631  -376   15    513  646  -133   14     62   15

St. Louis       2712  2488   224    2    783  596   187    1     97    1
Pittsburgh      2641  2378   263    1    634  577    57    4     94    3
Cincinnati      2734  2541   193    4    698  589   109    2     90    5
Milwaukee       2583  2641   -58    6    640  687   -47    8     74    9t
Chicago (N)     2595  2719  -124   12    602  689   -87   13     66   14

Los Angeles (N) 2652  2441   211    3    649  582    67    3     92    4
Arizona         2741  2824   -83    9    685  695   -10    7     81    7
San Diego       2552  2746  -194   13    618  700   -82   12     76    8t
San Francisco   2586  2663   -77    7    629  691   -62   10     76    8t
Colorado        2770  2882  -112   10    706  760   -54    9     74    9t


In the NL East, Atlanta got off to a hot start and never had any real challenges during the season as
they finished 1st in the NL in TBW and 2nd in the NL in Runs. Washington fell off their 2012 pace
to 6th ranked in TBW and Runs.  In 2012 they had the best ranking in the NL for both categories.
Somehow the Phillies managed to better their expected win total by 8 games in 2013. This despite
being ranked 14th in TBW and worst in the NL in Runs.   The Mets and Marlins both had
unspectacular totals, posting negative values in TBW and Runs.  However, both teams were within
1 win of their expected total.

The NL Central produced 3 playoff teams in 2013. The Cardinals, Pirates and Reds were all within
the top 5 NL teams in TBW and Runs. The Cardinals were the most efficient NL team in Runs
scored differential.  Yet they still were 6 games on the wrong side of their expected wins. On the
other hand, the Pirates were 2nd in the league in TBW efficiency and this led to 5 more wins than
expected.  With the Reds winning 5 less games than expected, it is no surprise that this cost
manager Dusty Baker his job. Injuries and suspension plagued the Milwaukee Brewers leading to
one fewer expected win. The Cubs appear to be treading water before going under, bringing up the
rear of the NL Central. The good news is that their efficiency in TBW and RUNS is still better than
the Phillies and Marlins.

The Los Angeles Dodgers scored a perfect 4 ranking in TBW, Runs, and Actual Wins to lead the
NL West. They had no other real challengers as all the remaining teams posted negative efficiency
records.
