Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
September 05, 2002
Run Differential:

Two of my readers who are Red Sox fans wrote today with a question. (Actually, neither of them knew the other was going to ask me; they each thought they had their own stat person! :-)) The basic question is, how often does a team that leads the league in run differential (runs-opponents runs) not make the playoffs? I looked from 1901 to 2001 at the two leagues (202 seasons), and found that it happened in 44 of those league seasons. Here's the list of who didn't make it:


Team Year Place
Indians 1904 4
White Sox 1905 2
Indians 1906 3
Indians 1908 2
Giants 1908 2
Athletics 1909 2
White Sox 1915 3
White Sox 1916 2
Giants 1920 2
Browns 1922 2
Athletics 1928 2
Senators 1930 2
Yankees 1931 2
Giants 1934 2
Cubs 1936 2
Yankees 1945 4
Cardinals 1947 2
Red Sox 1949 2
Red Sox 1950 3
Dodgers 1950 2
Dodgers 1951 2
Yankees 1954 2
Braves 1956 2
Indians 1959 2
Braves 1959 2
White Sox 1960 3
Giants 1961 3
Cardinals 1963 2
Reds 1964 2
Reds 1965 4
Pirates 1966 3
Cubs 1969 2
Cubs 1970 2
Brewers 1978 3
Orioles 1980 2
Yankees 1981 3
Dodgers 1981 2
Expos 1982 3
Braves 1983 2
Yankees 1985 2
Blue Jays 1987 2
Mets 1987 2
Mets 1990 2
Brewers 1992 2

So it hasn't happened since the move to three divisions, which makes sense. The Red Sox are not leading in run differential this year, but they are real close. They are also 2nd in if ranked by the Pythagorean method (a different way of measuring the same thing).


Posted by David Pinto at 09:01 PM | Baseball