Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
August 04, 2005
Losing Early, Winning Late

Early today, I said I'd try to look at how unusual is the Athletics comeback. The A's reached their low point at 49 games. They were 17-32, a .347 winning percentage. They are now at .565, a .218 point increase. Since 1974, I measured the biggest differences between a team's final winning percentage and it's winning percentage after 49 games.

* = Strike Year
TeamRecord after 49 GamesRecord, End of SeasonWPct Difference
1994 Athletics*13-3651-63.182
1987 Padres11-3865-97.177
1974 Pirates18-3188-74.176
1988 Padres17-3283-78.169
2002 Athletics23-26103-59.166

This seems to be a specialty of the A's and Padres. It should be noted that if the Athletics and Astros can maintain their current winning percentages through the end of the year, they'd be 1 and 2 on this list.

I'm not sure this is the best way to do this study. Maybe I should compare winning percentage through 49 with winning percentage after. Let me know what you think, it's easy to figure differently.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:45 PM | Standings | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Since we know the low point and the possible high point for winning pct. during the season. I think that is the stat we should be looking at.

I would exclude the winning pct from the first 10 or 20 games but after that I think it would be a fair judgement.

Posted by: Rob M at August 4, 2005 11:29 PM

An alternate method would be to look at the difference in wpct between (1) the team's best 50-game stretch, and (2) team's worst 50-game stretch. Unlike the current method, this wouldn't bias you toward initially losing teams, and it would find teams that go from horrible to great anywhere in the season.

Posted by: Jason at August 5, 2005 05:38 AM

It would be better to look at the low water games below .500 compared to final games above .500. It's really not fair to use 49 games because that is the particular low water point for Oakland but not other teams.

Posted by: Jim at August 5, 2005 01:16 PM

I think you should compare the WP% of before & after.

Posted by: Devon at August 5, 2005 03:39 PM

Jim stole my idea. Use most games below .500 as the bottom point and final games above .500 as the high point.

Posted by: Vince at August 5, 2005 05:32 PM
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