It Happens to the Best of Them by Maple Street Press

It Happens to the Best of Them How Long Do Good Teams Play Mediocre Baseball?

by Michael Richmond

Michael Richmond is an astronomer at the Rochester Institute of Technology who studies variable stars and supernovae. He remembers vividly hearing the radio call of Game Four of the 2004 World Series while observing a lunar eclipse. On cloudy nights, he turns his attention from the skies to the diamond.

“I hate to be overly negative, as I don’t think they’re this bad, but they’re really not very good either.” “An unsustainably hot start based on guys having unrealistic seasons caught up to them fairly quickly and as constructed this is hardly a playoff team let alone the best.” “If you don’t feel queasy, you’re either nuts or whistling past the graveyard. There is now, with 60 games left, a bona fide race for the DIVISION.” “This team is painfully average.” These refrains (culled from a search on Sons of Sam Horn) echoed throughout the fan base as the ghosts of 1978 and the specter of a dwindling lead over the Yankees came to the front of many fans’ consciousness. In the end, the Red Sox proved emphatically that they were a bona fide playoff team, and a World Series champion. But for several months, they certainly did look vulnerable. Was that extended stretch of .500 play just a fluke? Or are long streaks of mediocrity typical of even the best baseball teams? Let’s find out by looking back over many years of baseball history to see just how long similar streaks last. We’ll define any stretch of continuous games which contain an equal number of wins and losses as a sign of mediocre performance, and ask the question, “What was a team’s longest stretch of mediocrity over the course of an entire season?” Since this is a counting statistic, like the number of home runs or wins, it’s only fair to compare teams that played seasons of equal length. Therefore, we must restrict the analysis to the period from 1962 (when both leagues switched to seasons of 162 games) to 2007, and exclude the three strike-shortened seasons of 1981, 1994, and 1995.

ur most recent memory of the 2007 Red Sox is the triumphant parade through the city of Boston to celebrate the franchise’s second World Series victory in four years. As we look back now, we recall the team’s torrid start, jumping out to the front of the AL East on April 18 and never relinquishing the lead, and their strong postseason finish, sweeping the Rockies four games to none. But you wouldn’t have heard glowing reviews of the 2007 season had you surveyed Red Sox Nation during the summer. After getting off to that hot start, the Boston lead over the Yankees had dwindled from 14.5 games on May 29 to 9.5 games by the All-Star break (with a sweep at the hands of the Tigers leading into the break raising caution flags throughout New England). By the end of July the lead was down to seven games as the Red Sox continued to struggle through a period of mediocrity. Everyone remembers the complaints. They seemed to be everywhere—on the radio, in the bars, at the office, and on message boards across the Internet:

It Happens to the Best of Them

Longest stretch with 0.500 record

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

.300

.400 .500 .600 Winning percentage at end of season

Thanks to the excellent resources available at Retrosheet.org and Baseball-reference.com, we can compile gameby-game results for both American League and National League teams over that period. With the application of just a little brute force, we can work out the longest stretch of .500 play for each team. The results are easiest to see in graphical form. Figure 1 shows the longest stretch of mediocrity (on the vertical axis) as a function of a team’s final winning percentage (on the horizontal axis). The result is a a nice, symmetric distribution. Notice that the longest possible “mediocre streak” is 162 games—one full season—for teams which finish with a record of 81-81. Teams with very good records, of course, tend to have Figure 2 Mediocrity of playoff MLB teams, 1962 - 2007 (non-strike years only) shorter periods of tepid play, as do eliminated immediately 1973 NYM advanced before losing 160 teams with very bad records. Alwon World Series 2005 SD 2007 Red Sox though the rough shape of the distri140 2007 Yankees bution is clear, the width of the data 120 along each arm indicates that there is quite a bit of scatter in this relation2004 BOS 100 ship; two teams with the same final 80 record may have “mediocre streaks” that differ by 40 or 50 games. 60 Of course, bad teams aren’t 1998 NYY 40 really relevant to the question at hand. So, let’s narrow things down 20 2001 SEA by concentrating on teams that 0 qualified for the postseason. Of the .500 .550 .600 .650 .700 1106 teams in Figure 1, only 206 Winning percentage at end of season made it to the playoffs. Figure 2 Longest stretch with 0.500 record

shows the distribution of their stretches of tepid performance. As you can see, there are still some pretty long stretches of mediocrity. The shaded portion of Figure 2 includes half of all the playoff teams in this period, who suffered stretches of between 48 and 86 games when they lost as many as they won. That means that a typical playoff team will spend somewhere between two and three months mired in middling play. The different symbols in Figure 2 show the eventual fates of all these playoff teams. Is there a connection between .700 a team’s longest duration of average play and its outcome in the playoffs? The majority of the World Series winners fall near the bottom right portion of Figure 2, indicating that teams with better records in the regular season—and shorter stretches of .500 play—tend to progress farther in the postseason. However, the connection is a weak one; note that neither of the two teams with the very shortest stretches of mediocrity, the 2001 Mariners and the 1979 Orioles, won the World Series. Let’s get back to the 2007 Red Sox. In Figure 2, you’ll see a circle to mark their position. Their longest streak of .500 play started on May 19, with a crushing 14-0 loss at home to Atlanta, and ended on July 19, with a 4-2 loss at Fenway to the Chicago White Sox. During this two-

Mediocrity of MLB teams, 1962 - 2007 (non-strike years only)

Figure 1

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

It Happens to the Best of Them

Longest stretch with 0.450 record

teams go while losing more games than they won? If .500 month period, the Sox won 27 and lost 27; and despite all is mediocre, then .450 is bad; it corresponds to only 73 the hand-wringing last summer, this streak of 54 games wins over the course of a season. How long were the lonlies near the middle of the group of teams with similar gest streaks of .450 performance for playoff teams? final winning percentages. The 2007 Yankees (shown by On average, these streaks are shorter than those of the square symbol) had a much longer stretch of medi.500 play. Nevertheless, a large fraction of them still exocrity when, from April 2 to July 13, their record was 44 ceed 50 games. Three teams—the 1973 Mets, the 2005 wins and 44 losses. What about the 2004 Red Sox? After sweeping a pair from the Devil Figure 3 Longest streaks of 0.450 play for playoff MLB teams, 1962 - 2007 (non-strike years only) Rays during a doubleheader on April 29, 140 eliminated immediately Boston’s record stood at 15 wins and 6 1973 NYM advanced before losing won World Series losses. On July 24, in a game that you 120 2007 Red Sox 2007 Yankees 2006 STL may recall—Bill Mueller hit a home 2005 SD run to cap a three-run, ninth-inning 100 rally against Mariano Rivera—the win 80 brought their record to 53 wins and 44 losses. In between, over a span of 86 60 games, the Red Sox won and lost 43 2004 BOS games each. Despite their terrific 40 offensive firepower, this team spent 1998 NYY three months spinning its wheels. 20 It seems surprising that so many 2001 SEA good teams spent so much time losing 0 .500 .550 .600 .650 .700 as many games as they won. But, let’s Winning percentage at end of season go a little further: How long did playoff 37

Many credit this mitt sandwich Jason Varitek gave A-Rod for turning around the 2004 team’s season. It did indeed mark the end of the team’s longest stretch of .500 play that year.

It Happens to the Best of Them

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Figure 4 90 80 Longest stretch with 0.400 record

Padres, and the 2006 Cardinals—managed to reach the playoffs despite streaks of over 100 games with a .450 record. The Cardinals even managed to win the World Series! Let’s go even further: A winning percentage of .400 yields only 65 wins over an entire season, which can only be described as “very bad” as it would likely yield a last pace finish. What was the longest stretch of “very bad” play for our sample of playoff teams? The average length drops again, of course, but it is still surprisingly long. Exactly half of all playoff teams suffered a stretch of 30 or more games during which they lost six out of every ten. The two longest streaks belong again to the

Longest streaks of 0.400 play for playoff MLB teams, 1962 - 2007 (non-strike years only) 1973 NYM 2005 SD

60 50 40

2004 BOS

30 20

1998 NYY

10 0

2001 SEA .500

.550 .600 .650 Winning percentage at end of season

People need to try and keep the big picture in mind during the season and realize that a couple of months of average play in the summer does not mean there won’t be a scene like this come the end of October.

eliminated immediately advanced before losing won World Series 2007 Red Sox 2007 Yankees

.700

1973 Mets and the 2005 Padres. The very shortest streaks, 10 games long, are shared by 10 playoff teams, ranging from the 1963 Dodgers (who won 99 games) to the 2001 Mariners (who won 116 games). How well did these teams do in the postseason? Only three of them won the World Series. All in all, it appears that the 2007 Red Sox were pretty typical for a playoff baseball team. Yes, they spent two solid months losing as many games as they won, but most teams, even World Series-winning teams, will do the same. The length of the baseball season means that all teams are going to have long stretches in which they look average. The best teams just tend to have shorter stretches like this, and fewer of them. Let’s hope that fans can keep this in mind during future seasons, when the Red Sox seem stuck in the mud—as they inevitably will be at some point. But as 2004 and 2007 showed, that does not mean the season won’t end with champagne bathes and Duck Boat parades. MSP Endnote Some of the information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at www.retrosheet.org. Some information was obtained free of charge from Baseball-Reference.com—Major League Statistics and Information. http://www.baseball-reference.com/