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September 4, 2008

Prospectus Today

Looking for an Advantage

by Joe Sheehan

With last night's 5-4 loss to the Blue Jays, the Twins fell out of a first-place tie with the White Sox in the AL Central, leaving them a game behind with 24 to play. That one-game edge doesn't seem like much, but when you look at the various playoff predictors, you see that the systems don't give the Twins much chance to make it up, and virtually no chance to catch the Red Sox for the AL wild-card slot.

                     Division   Wild Card
Playoff Odds           32.0%       0.6%
PECOTA Playoff Odds    32.1%       0.5%
ELO Playoff Odds       51.9%       1.2%

Why does a one-game edge with about three weeks left translate to a nearly 2:1 advantage for the White Sox in two of the three methodologies? Well, for one thing, the White Sox have been the better team to date. Their 78-61 record is an accurate reflection of their performance in 2008; the Adjusted Standings show that their third-order record, factoring in run differential, underlying performance, and opposition, is 77-62—just one game off—largely because they've allowed about 13 fewer runs that expected.

The Twins, on the other hand, have a third-order record of 71-68, a mark that places them behind the Indians within their own division. The Twins have a whopping +70 run differential, in line with their actual record, but that differential is almost entirely driven by the fantastic job they've done hitting with runners in scoring position. Based on their statistics, the Twins project to have scored 646 runs; they're 61 runs ahead of that pace, the biggest positive gap in baseball. A team that has batted .279/.339/.410 overall has jacked that to .311/.386/.456 with runners in scoring position. The improvement shows across the board: a higher BABIP, higher isolated power, and higher unintentional walk rate.

Most research has shown that hitting in the clutch is not a skill, for individuals or for teams, over and above hitting in all situations. So while the runs and the wins created by the Twins' performance with runners in scoring position have been banked, the most likely scenario for the last 24 games is that the Twins will hit with RISP what they hit as a whole, and therefore play more like a .500 team, rather than a .550 one. Last year's team, with largely the same personnel, hit .276/.347/.412 with runners in scoring position, a slight improvement on its .264/.330/.391 performance overall. Despite the persistent idea that the Twins have a skill in this area, the most likely reason for the split is variance.

The White Sox have no such statistical gremlins in their record—they are what we think they are. The success that the fly-ball tossing starting rotation had suppressing home runs in the season's first two months has largely corrected itself. After allowing 33 long balls in April and May combined, the Sox gave up 35, 30, and 27 in the next three months. This was expected, but again, the wins banked by the results early on are theirs to keep, like the first-level prize on a game show. Offensively, the White Sox have improved on last year's disastrous, and no doubt anomalous, performance on balls in play, with a middle of the pack batting average (.265) and excellent power: second in the AL in slugging, first in homers and isolated power. Just as was the case with the Ozzieball team of '05, there's no actual sheen of smallball here, either; the Sox are 13^th in the AL in steals and have laid down just 23 sac bunts all year long.