Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 04, 2008
Spinning Snakes

AZ Snakepit tries to convince us that Colorado was the lucky team in 2007.

Basically, the 2007 Rockies were a .500 team who got insanely hot for a spell - but even so, required help from just about everyone else in the division to reach the playoffs. Sure, there is something to be said for making your own luck and riding it as far as possible [I would never claim the 2001 D-backs were the best team in baseball that year] - but when you get dealt a royal flush in poker, it doesn't make you a good player. If any one of the following had not unfolded exactly the way they did, the Rockies would have finished third, and we would probably not be having this conversation.

I wonder if he forgot that Arizona was outscored by their opponents, while the Rockies outscored their competition by 102 runs, the largest difference in the NL.


Posted by David Pinto at 03:43 PM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Yeah, the Pythagorean for 90-72 Arizona was 79-83, so they were 11 over.

The Pythagorean for 90-73 Colorado was 91-72, so they were 1 under.

Posted by: Mike S> at January 4, 2008 07:42 PM

Congratulations for being, oh, the ten millionth person to point that out this year...yawn. ;-) The sole object of baseball is to win games, and AZ was better at that than any other NL team - though under Bob Melvin we are now +19 over Pythag in three years, so claiming it as "luck" seems a cheap cop-out.

As well as having the best record in the National League, Arizona were consistently good, being .500 or above every month during the season. They didn't need to go 14-1 in the final two weeks, against teams who had given up [LA], imploded [SD] or were putting out their B-roster [AZ] in order to reach the playoffs.

Posted by: Jim McLennan at January 6, 2008 04:49 PM

I thought they were both lucky but having seen the Rox in the WS it would be pretty tough to imagine how they could have won 21 of 22 against anybody especially without Cook.

Posted by: Bandit at January 7, 2008 10:21 AM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?