A Royal Positive: 2011's Run Differential Improvement

As you can see, the Royal offense has been a tick better in 2011 and the Royal run prevention has been a tick and a half better.

Considering the run environment, it might be fair to say that the improvement has been equally distributed between both halves of the inning. In 2010, the Royals put up 0.21 fewer runs than the MLB average per game, compared to putting up 0.12 more per game than average. That’s an improvement of 0.33 runs per game.

In 2010, the Royals allowed 0.83 more runs per game than MLB average, and this year, are allowing 0.53 more than the average Major League team. That’s an improvement of 0.30 runs per game.

On the other hand, it is worth noting that the run environment change in the AL has not been nearly so dramatic as in the NL. So, if you did this same calculation using AL averages instead of MLB averages, I doubt my point holds up so well…

Suggesting we sign/trade for a frontline starter or two. Has this topic been explored yet?

but in terms of judging a team’s improvement/decline or likely future performance, it suffers from the same problem that won-loss record does: it only reflects observed performance rather than true talent.

That isn’t to say that the Royals team isn’t better this season than last, or that the future isn’t brighter than it has beenin a while. The point is simply that run differential doesn’t necessarily reflect that.

Let’s look at a random team’s “expected” win% according PythagenPat (like Pythag, but is more accurate because it adjusts for the team’s individual run environment) over five consecutive seasons:

.454
.442
.403
.395
.457

Now, if we took those “expected” win percentages a reflections of how, um, “good” the team really was and its trajectory, we’d say that a crappy team for two seasons had two absolute disaster seasons, followed by getting back to its initial level of crappiness. Yawn.

Who is this “random” team? the Royals 2007-2011 (in order above). So if you want to use run differential (understood through Pythag) as barometer for the “state of the team,” you’d have to say that the Royals are basically back where they were for Dayton’s first full season.

I don’t happen to think that’s the case, but looking to run differential isn’t really going to give you hope or faith. The better thing to do is to look at estimations of the team’s true talent now and going forward and stuff. Run differential/Pythag is better applied in other ways.