I'm looking at the mlb.com stats, and Chicago is tenth in the league in total runs on the road and fifth in runs per game on the road. Maybe the stats are wrong, but they don't seem to support Marchman's conclusions.

As to the above comment, the Sox were last in actual runs scored on the road before last night's blowout at KC. But you think the author would note that the Sox had played about 7 fewer road games than the league leaders when he mentioned the stat to support his argument. Actually, you would just think he would use runs scored per game.

I think the Sox offense hovers right around league average and anyone would have a hard time making the case that they are the worst in the league.

The grubby numbers from mlb.com:

Home: 4.92 r/g, sixth in the AL
Away: 4.85 r/g, fifth in the AL
Total: 4.89 r/g, fifth in the AL

Last night's blowout did affect the standings a little, but Marchman really goofed by using total runs instead of runs per game. The Sox aren't knocked much off-center by their home park.

Chicago has an okay offense, far from worst in the league and certainly good enough to support a fine pitchiong staff.

By the way, the Sox road average before last night's blowout was 4.64 r/g. Hardly terrible by this year's AL standards (average 4.80 r/g) and again not supportive of Marchman's argument.

The nasty explanation is that Marchman was consciously fiddling with statistics to "prove" a point. The nice explanation is that he just didn't bother to look at runs per game.

By the way, I shouldn't be so hard on Marchman. The 4.80 r/g figuire I gave above was for all games in the AL. For away games AL teams are averaging 4.74 r/g.

So the Sox' 4.64 r/g away-game average before last night was only the tiniest shade below league average. Marchman's argument didn't hold water when it was written, and it really doesn't hold water now.

Overall (before yesterday's game) the White Sox were 11th out of 14 AL teams in AEQR per game at 4.59 (Adjusted Equivalent Runs Scored per game...a number which, like Pythag record is more predictive of future performance than actual runs scored...it accounts for quality of opposition pitching, park effects, etc. and applies it to EQR). Their actual runs scored vs their AEQR was 465 to 446, which suggests either poor quality opposition pitching, a good park, good luck, or some combination thereof has helped them score more than they are likely to keep up. According to their AEQR vs AEQR against as applied to the Pythag record, they are 11.7 games above what their scoring/pitching performance should have been. Basically, they, like the Nationals in the NL, are playing way above their head. They basically have a mediocre offense but pretty outstanding pitching (good for the 4th best in the AL). Now, of course you can say that Guillen has leveraged his players well, and that the team has made their luck, and I'd be happy to concede that this is almost certainly true. No matter how much you apply AEQR/AEQR against, they're still definitely a .530 team, which is perfectly respectable.

By the way, all those figures came from the Baseball Prospectus stats pages. If you want a better idea of how EQR is calculated, they have a glossary there...

While I like a lot of BP's stuff, I have to question how anybody can be so sure a mere 4% offensive "overachievement" by the Sox is real or just an artifact of all BP's adjustments. At any rate, even after all the knockdown adjustments, Chicago doesn't have the worst offense in the league.

Even if the 4% overachievement is real and not just a statistical artifact, it shouldn't be impossible for Chicago to keep it up. After all, most of the season is gone and it looks like Chicago will clinch a postseason berth very early. So they might only have 45 or so meaningful games left in the regular season. I don't think it's impossible the Sox' offense could "overachieve" by 4% for a month-and-a-half of games.

And come to think about it, the Sox kept up the "overachievement" last night in KC, after BP's numbers.

In my job I adjust numbers all the time. But I'm always leery of adjusting reality out of existence. So I do reasonableness checks to make sure I'm not way off-center compared to the actual numbers, and I provide ranges around point estimates.

BP's estimate for the Sox' offensive "overachievement" comes down to about one run every five games. That estimate may be dead-center perfect. But it could also be just a product of all the adjustments and not reflect anything in the real baseball world. The Sox could be scoring just about as many runs as they "should" score. That's why I get a little nervous about zillions of adjustments, especially when they produce relatively small effects.

Oh, I agree with David that the stats pages should provide r/g figures. It's not hard to dump the numbers into Excel and figure the scoring rates, but I'm lazy.

One more lick at this subject and then I'll leave it alone...

I don't have any trouble saying that Derrek Lee is hitting over his head this season, or exceeding his talent level, or overachieving, or however you want to put it.

After all, Lee's OPS this year is 36% above his career number. It's 32% above his previous best season.

These are big differences. I would be surprised if Lee could keep this up for the rest of the season. (One reason I"m not real optimistic about the Cubs.)

I would be very, very surprised if Lee suddenly started turning out 1.100+ OPS seasons like clockwork.

But when BP tells me the White Sox are overachieving on offense by 4%, I'm not nearly so convinced. Maybe the Sox are hitting over the heads, or maybe BP is just over-adjusting the data and taking away a few runs they shouldn't take away. We're only talking about one run every five games. At any rate, I'm much less certain about the predictive power of the estimate.

I guess I'd say that baseball is a game of small effects. For example, the difference between the best and worst team in terms of ability to convert balls in play into outs is 5.3% (Oakland's the best, Colorado's the worst....that amounts to allowing between one and two additional baserunners per game...and that's the best versus the worst). So that 4% difference brings them from the 5th best offense in actual RS/G down to 11th in AEQRS/G. They COULD be scoring as many runs as they should. But as Pythag records have a track record of being better predictors of future performance, so too do AEQRS and AEQRA for team hitting and pitching. Chicago is overindexing across all three: Pythag for Actual RS/RA, actual RS vs AEQR and actual RA vs AEQRA against. Based on those three figures, I'd be delighted to wager that the Sox don't finish the season a .660 team, but rather regress somewhat during their remaining games. So with their .660 in the bank across 100 or so games and say .550 for their remainder based on their peripheral stats for the season to date (give them some bonus for managing, continued luck, and defense), and they'll win 100 games, good for a .618 clip.

I think it's almost a lock that Chicago won't finish at .660 because they're likely to have so many meaningless games at the end of the season. They're twelve up in the division, after all, so they could easily clinch a postseason berth with a dozen, fifteen or more nothing games, where winning is irrelevant and the team is only trying to stay sharp, set up the rotation, etc.

What I don't think is impossible at all is that the team could continue a 4% offensive "overachievement" - if it really exists - for the remainder of their meaningful games. Hey, they took a big step in that direction with the fourteen-run blowout of KC right after BP published their numbers. That was way overachieving, even given the quality of the opposition.

Well, I shouldn't say that winning would become completely irrelevant if and when Chicago clinches the postseason. They might still play to get home-field advantage, or to avoid a particular team.

But I think more and more people are believing the conventional wisdom that the postseason is something of a crapshoot. Wild card teams have won the Series three straight years. So my guess is that more and more baseball people think, once you're in, you've got as good a chance as anybody else, regardless of home-field advantage or other incidentals.

Chicago has a 32-14 road record.

I guess when they start regressing, that'll mean their meaningful games must be done. Cool.