My Santa Fe team is currently on pace to lose the division, despite the fact our Pythagorean win/loss is 100 points better than the division leader. This seems fairly amazing to me. Can anybody else find a similar example of mathematical clusterfuckery?

keep the answers coming. love it.

The last place team in my division was also projected to be first based on pythag w/l. That team was, in fact, the only team in the division with an expected w/l above .500, if my memory serves me correctly.

how many games into the season are you? 

He's playing near .700 ball, as is his opponent.  He's only one game off the division lead.

He also is scoring a ridiculously high number of runs in an extreme hitters park, which is artificially inflating his expected win percentage, while his division rival does appear to be over achieving somewhat.

There's really nothing to see here.  Expected win percentage is not an exact science as a predictor of reality.  You're always going to have outliers for whatever reasons.  You just happen to have two opposite outliers here battling for a division title, one that's more explainable than the other.

I don't feel like a hitters' park alters the mathematics. It's about ratios. Outscoring the opponents 300-200 is the same as 600-400 is 900-600. In fact, theoretically, you wouldn't have fluke 1 run ball games when your differential is higher. Granted, you win some games 20-0, but take away those 20 and your ratio might still be 1.495/1.

I'm not saying there's any injustice. I'm saying this is mathematically super anomalous, and until you can show me multiple examples similar to this one, I will emphatically disagree and say: mhm. There most certainly is something to see here.

So, essentially, you're looking for an example where one team, trailing by a game or two, has an EXP .100 points higher than the team they're trailing?

Because, if that's it, I'm sure an example of that won't be hard to find.   Just a quick glance in Mantle, I see several teams trailing with .050-.060 better EXP.

Here, INSANITY!!!

Team	Owner	W-L	PCT	GB	Division	1-Run Games	Extra Inning	Spring Training	RS	RA	Exp PCT
Fargo Screaming Eagles	wallygator	40-23	.635	-	6-4	3-9	3-2	10-8	386	275	.660
Rochester Hustlers	gtrilby123	33-30	.524	7.0	5-5	8-5	2-2	8-10	295	292	.505
Portland Thick, Luscious Beaver Pelts	kcden *	33-30	.524	7.0	6-4	7-11	1-2	5-13	302	234	.615
Trenton Slumlords	circe98	30-33	.476	10.0	3-7	10-13	1-2	7-11	303	304	.498

S35 in Coop.  New Orleans had a .010 better EXP than Charleston, but finished 13 GB.  El Paso had a .071 better EXP than Mexico City and finished 2 GB behind them.

 

Team	Owner	W-L	PCT	GB	Division	1-Run Games	Extra Inning	Spring Training	RS	RA	Exp PCT
Charleston Charge	MikeT23 *	96-66	.593	-	18-12	24-18	9-8	5-13	767	661	.569
New Orleans Flash & Flood	bjharder *	83-79	.512	13.0	14-16	22-27	15-6	12-6	845	715	.579
Mexico City Mystery?	tecwrg *	82-80	.506	14.0	12-18	18-22	8-10	10-8	663	696	.478
El Paso Li'l Elpers	Ahsowhat *	80-82	.494	16.0	16-14	20-27	10-7	8-10	755	683	.547

Bottom line: EXP vs PCT anomalies happen all the time.  In the long run, there is a statistical correlation when looking at thousands of data points. But in looking at individual examples, you will often find outliers, sometimes significant outliers.  Your division just happens to have two of them.

We're at .107 difference right now. Back to tied, albeit.

MikeT, I was hoping for larger sample sizes. Say, 100 games into the season at least.

I'm not saying this is the first time this has ever happened, just fascinating that over 162 games (think we're at 130-ish now) there can still be such a disparity. But if anybody can find anything .110 or better, I'll be amazed.

There are a lot of factors that affect that number and make it somewhat inaccurate as well.  It would be better severed being split up by each pitcher.  To use an extreme to make my point, if you have 4 pitchers with an ERA of 1.00 and your fifth man's ERA is 21.00 the formula thinks you give up 5 runs a game and if your team only avg's 4 runs, it's going to say you're an under .500 club when really you're going to be closer to a .700 club winning most of the games your first 4 guys pitch.  I know it's not "realistic", I make it that way to make my point obvious.  ie-if your staff has 2-3 studs and 2-3 duds, it will throw off the balance somewhat vs a team with more balanced rotation.

Posted by ab90 on 7/26/2015 11:30:00 AM (view original):
We're at .107 difference right now. Back to tied, albeit.

MikeT, I was hoping for larger sample sizes. Say, 100 games into the season at least.

To be fair, I only looked for 8 seconds. 

kcden's team name is outstanding FWIW.