The Futility Infielder

As promised, my New York Sun debut is up today. It's on the predictive value of the July 4 standings:

There's an old baseball axiom which holds that the team in first place on July 4 will win the division. While the direct route from regular-season glory to the World Series has disappeared, that maxim is still good news for the Red Sox, White Sox, Angels, Nationals, Cardinals, and Padres. If history holds true, four of those six division leaders should make the postseason.

Like most axioms, no one is exactly sure where this one came from. But as far back as 1934,a Time magazine cover story noted that in the previous 25 years, the leader on July 4 had gone on to the World Series two-thirds of the time. Since then, the major leagues have expanded from 16 to 30 teams, adding two preliminary playoff rounds while quadrupling the number of clubs invited to the postseason. But the predictive power of Independence Day remains intact.

I had prepared a chart for the article in its original form, summarizing the study I did to determine the axiom's historical accuracy (special thanks to my new research assistant, Peter Quadrino, for help in compiling this):

            Divisions    1st on      Won
Era        Per League   July 4    Division   Pct
1901-1968      1        142 (6)*     89      62.7
1969-1993      2        101 (5)      57      56.4
1995-2004      3         63 (3)      40      63.5

* Numbers in parentheses denote ties on July 4 and are included in total. 
  The strike years of 1981 and 1994 have been excluded from this study.

In other words, being in first place on the Fourth is almost exactly as predictive of reaching the postseason in the three-division era as it was in the single-division era. If Wild Cards are factored in, the predictive value grows to 68.2%, as three teams in the lead or tied on the Fourth entered the postseason through the side door.

The second portion of the article deals with another way of looking at postseason chances, namely via Baseball Prospectus' Postseason Odds page, which uses a variant of a team's Pythagorean record [Winning Percentage = (RS^2)/(RS^2 + RA^2), where RS is Runs Scored and RA is Runs Allowed] to determine a team's chances of winning the division and the Wild Card. A sibling of BP's Adjusted Standings page (the foundation of the Prospectus Hit List), the Odds page uses third-order winning percentage, which is based on run elements (hits, walks, total bases, etc.) and is adjusted for park, league, and the quality of opposition and then fed into a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate how many wins each team will finish with. As of the close of play on the Fourth, here were the division leaders' chances:

Division    Leader      W-L    Lead  Win Div Pct
AL East     Red Sox    46-35    2.5    61.5 
AL Central  White Sox  55-26    8.5    68.6
AL West     Angels     50-32    6.5    78.4
NL East     Nationals  50-32    4.5    39.0
NL Central  Cardinals  52-30   11.5    92.3
NL West     Padres     45-38    4.5    79.2

By this method, the two East divisions are the ones that are the most up for grabs, which is good news for the Yankees (up from 10.8% at that writing to 13.4% now) and Mets (a 5.9% chance of winning the division, but an 8.1% chance of the Wild Card).

Anyway, there's some analysis tacked onto the piece, much of it cut for space reasons (sigh, that's print for ya). Still, it's nice to get my name in the papers, especially when it's spelled correctly.

Labels: New York Sun