You have heard it said, “those who live by sword, die by the sword”, but I say unto you “those who get ahead by beating up on MLB teams having bad days, fall behind by getting beat up by MLB teams having good days.” Which means about the same thing, I think, and is so much catchier I am confident it will replace the sword thing in popular consciousness soon.
There were two 10 – 0 blowouts in MLB yesterday: the Mets over the Nationals, and the Mariners over the Orioles. Also, the Yankees beat the Angels 9 – 1. Each of these outcomes skewed our standings. Or unskewed them, depending on your perspective.
The Yankees’ romp moved their rs/ra ratio from 2 – 4 (portending a .200 winning percentage) to 11 – 5 (portending an .829 winning percentage. The Balk started the day with a weekly raw winning percentage of .931, adjusted by NY’s 2/4 ratio to .982. Today the DC raw winning percentage for the week slid to .884, based on scoring and allowing 1.6 runs on the day. That’s a 0.098 slide for the week, based on the Balk’s own efforts. But when you add in the Yankees’ sudden surge, the Balk weekly winning percentage crashes all the way to .613. That’s enough to help cause a 0.9 game collapse in the season standings.
Balkan outcries of injustice at the hands of the Evil Empire would be more convincing if DC hadn’t been floating along on a 0.027 subsidy created by their relative good luck in facing MLB teams who were struggling on the days they played the Balk. The one-day collapse only repaid about half that subsidy, shrinking it to today’s 0.013. So not only did the arc of the universe bend toward justice yesterday, it still has a little more bending to do. Whether all at once like today, or gradually over several days, the remaining splinter in Balkan eyes is liable to being removed.
The Balkan crash into second place lifted the Wolverines into first. The W’s did not look yesterday like a team deserving to be in first place (no pitching; .196, .288, .217 sub-replacement hitting) but their raw winning percentage for the week is still .656. It might seem ironic that the W’s benefit this morning from a struggling Royals team. The Royals lost 3 – 8 yesterday to the White Sox, bringing their raw winning percentage down to .143. Against that abysmal record the Wolverine .656 soars to .919 on the week, giving them the boost they needed to take full advantage of the Balkan collapse.
Doesn’t this just set the W’s up for their own fall? Not yet. Old Detroit is still burdened with a 0.009 disadvantage from having faced MLB teams playing slightly better than .500 on the days they played the W’s.
The Mets altered the fortunes of two EFL teams when they shellacked the Nationals 10 – 0. On one hand they helped the Drive speed up their efforts to go cold turkey to overcome their dependence on the kindness of MLB opponents. Yesterday the Drive’s 25 – 25 (.503) record included a subsidy of 0.132 percentage points in MLB charity. Today the Drive’s 25 – 26 (.498) record is only being subsidized 0.113 by MLB charity. That’s a 0.019 drop — 14.4% — in a single day! But Kaline’s winning percentage only dropped 0.005 or about 1%! How did they do that?
They did it by having a great day on the field. Their seven active hitters accumulated 30 plate appearances, thumping out a .346, .419, .462 slash line. They only got 2.7 innings of pitching, but it was shutout pitching, and they already had stored up 24 great innings on Sunday. The weekly ERA is just 2.02 at this point, with enough innings to coast for two more days if need be.
Once again the Drive provide us a marvelous example of integrity and good management. They saw they had a problem, they set out to fix it, and their preparations were so good they could withstand a 10-0 shellacking by their MLB opponents without taking on much damage to their season record.
The other team affected by the Mets blowout was Salem. The Seraphim have been vying lately with the Dragons for recognition as the team most disadvantaged by our head-to-head matchups. Yesterday Salem carried a handicap of 0.086 on its winning percentage because of facing more than their fair share of MLB teams having good days. But Salem is facing the Nationals this week, a team with more than their fair share of bad days. The Nats compliantly took on another no good, very bad, horrible day (losing 0 – 10) and the Salem disadvantage… grew to 0.087?!?!?.
Ok, this I don’t understand. I get it that when a team is winning at a 1.000 rate, it is entirely unaffected by what the other team does. The 1.000 team always wins, even if the other team’s predicted winning percentage is .999. And the Seraphim have a .914 raw winning percentage, which gets boosted to .986 by facing the raw-winning-percentage-this-week .134 Nationals. So any change SHOULD be very slight. But shouldn’t the change HAVE to be toward narrowing the disadvantage the Seraphim are suffering under our system?
There might be an error somewhere in the weekly results spreadsheet. I haven’t found it yet. If anyone has a clue, let me know.
I wonder if this is a clue: the Seraphim STOMPED yesterday. Their 11 batters amassed 46 PA, smashing an incredible .372, .413, 1.111 as a team, Alejandro Kirk leading the way with two homers and a single in four plate appearances (3.000 OPS). And Michael Wacha and Collin McHugh combined to pitch 6.7 shutout innings.
Does God look down on a performance like that and say “Those Seraphim, they’re too good for mere mortals. Let us saddle them with a little unmerited handicap. Lo! We can insert a Divine Justice penalty here, hidden in the folds of Ron’s spreadsheet. He will never find it.”
Finally we come to the Mariners’ lovely 10 – 0 win. It was over the Orioles, granted, but the O’s came into the game with an ever-so-slightly better record than the M’s (21-29 v. 20-28). And it was in Baltimore.
No EFL team is scheduled to play the Orioles this season. But the Portland Rosebuds are up against the Mariners. And they took just the kind of hit we would expect when their MLB opponents scored 10 unanswered runs: the Rosebuds enjoyed a .046 boost to their winning percentage through yesterday, but only a 0.004 boost through today. Unlike the Seraphim, or the Drive, the Rosebuds were not ready for this. They had three starting pitchers, going 4, 5, and 6 innings. They surrendered 2, 3, and 4 earned runs, respectively, coming to 15 innings, 9 earned runs, and a cumbersome 5.40 ERA. Max Kepler returned to action after a long lay-off, going 3 for 4 with a double and a walk, slashing .750, .800, 1.000. But the rest of the team struggled (6 for 39) albeit with 7 more walks, for a Kepler-less line of .154, 297, .256.
All this left the Rosebuds with a (-2) Win, 3 Loss day, a nightmare outcome under the new AND the old system.