Revisiting Win Expectancy
For those of you who follow the blog regularly, we did a post on Pythagorean win expectancy found here with a few weeks to go in the season. Pythagorean win expectancy uses a team’s run differential to determine how many wins they should have had. The adjusted standings from then to the end of the season didn’t change much, except the Rays knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs instead of the Red Sox.
The final regular season Pythagorean adjusted standings are below. Sorry Red Sox fans, your enormous run differential should have yielded about 9 more wins, safely putting you in the playoffs. Yankees fans, it might have made it easier if you had performed according to the 3rd order indicator because you wouldn’t have made the playoffs, saving you the pain of losing game 5 at home with A-Rod weakly striking out for the last out. The Dodgers would have played postseason games this week.
How did your team fare in comparison with their adjusted record? My Royals would have been a game out of second place in the AL Central! Sad, I know, but fans of bad teams get excited about any small positive thing.