Royals vs. NL Central

by Rowyal on Aug 31, 2007 1:24 PM EDT Comment 5 comments

So my roommate, being a huge Cubs fan, has been following their series against the Brewers pretty closely. Tired of hearing him talk about how awesome they've been playing, I reminded him that they play in a joke of a division and would be in no better than fourth place in the AL Central. Not surprisingly, this led to some Royals bashing. Which brings me to the point of this diary.

Does anyone have any stats to back up the fact that the Royals and Cubs of this year are actually far closer in quality of play than their win-loss records would otherwise indicate? Strength of schedules, common opponents, etc. Or, any defensible projections of what the Royals' record would be if they played in the NL Central and the Cubs' in the AL Central would be pretty helpful.

0 recs | Comment 5 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Here's the best I can do

The Cubs are probably the best team in the NL Central, which makes this difficult - however, it is pretty easy to show that they are closer than they appear. Because of small sample sizes it is pretty tough to make a case based on common opponents.

Most projections are built on Runs Scored and Runs Against - since my analysis is going to be crude and quick anyway, I'm going to go with the oldest version of the "Pythagorean formula."

But first, an adjustment for league. The AL as a whole has scored 180 runs more than it has given up, or 12 6/7 per team. I'm going to split this about evenly and assume the Royals would have scored 7 extra and given up 6 fewer runs in a neutral league. It's only 11 1/9 per national league team, so I'll give the Cubs six fewer runs, giving up five extra.

After this correction we get a Pythagorean win percentage of:
Royals - .480 ~ 63-69
Cubs - .532 ~ 70-62

So seven games back, which is pretty close. For reference:
Twins - .529 ~ 69-63, so they and the Cubs would be duking it out for third.

by Moose Tacos on Aug 31, 2007 1:53 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

by the way

I just realized that my league adjustment was done in entirely the wrong way. So sue me, I've been drinking. Anyway, if somebody else wants to the real adjustment in would just entail scaling the run differential over the course of 114 games, which is how many games we have played against the AL (I think), and doing some normalization.

I think this has the effect of closing the gap further.

by Moose Tacos on Aug 31, 2007 1:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Let's also add that all but 3 AL teams

Have winning records against the NL in interleague play.

That's a pretty heavy indictment of the NL, and as we know, the NL Central's the worst division of them all, whereas the AL Central may be the best.

by marbotty on Aug 31, 2007 1:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

right you are

However, an (admittedly crude) check shows the AL Central 4 games below .500 as a division, which is not good for our claim.

by Moose Tacos on Aug 31, 2007 2:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

54%

thats the percentage of interleague games american league teams won against the nl. you can argue that it's enough to show the al's superiority, and i'd agree the al is superior (obviously), but its really not like varsity against jv.

by byebyebalboni on Aug 31, 2007 5:28 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs