Atlanta Braves First-Quarter Season Review
W-L Record
What all of this has added up to is a record of 20-24. That’s the Braves Win-Loss record as we sit on May 25th. 20 and 24.
But should it be? The next question we want to answer is have the Braves experienced in any abnormal luck or randomness that may be affecting that record.
For that we’re going to look at BaseRuns. I’ve talked about this before but if you don’t know, BaseRuns takes all the positive and negative events a team produces and assumes those events are sequenced normally.
Sometimes teams can cluster a bunch of their positive or negative events together and can skew their record relative to what their actual talent is. BaseRuns looks at what a team’s record “should” be if luck and randomness didn’t play a part.
For the Braves, BaseRuns has them at 21-25 on the season, or 1 game better than their actual record. (ed. note: maybe that was Wednesday night’s game!)
Basically, they’ve been a bit unlucky given their overall numbers but for most part, their record matches their production. A one game difference is well within the margin for error.
More Pythy Numbers
Pythagorean Win-Loss is from Bill James who first noticed the relationship between runs scored, runs allowed, and win totals. There’s plenty more that can be said about this theory and its origins but for our purposes here, all you need to know is it calculates an “expected” record simply based on the total number of runs a team has scored and allowed.
The Braves Pythagorean record is 19-26 for the season, or 1 game worse than their current record. This again is well within the margin of error and basically means what we’ve seen is very much in line with what we “should” have seen.