The Atlanta Braves have defied all odds, rewritten the narrative, and made it to the World Series against a very good Houston Astros team.
As expected, most betting sites, experts, and writers are giving the Astros the edge here. It makes sense. After all, the Atlanta Braves weren’t even supposed to be here in the first place.
However, just like we have seen time and time again, anything is possible in the off-season. We have seen 7 wild card teams win the world series since the Marlins did so in 1997.
There have also been multiple teams that had worse records than the 2021 Atlanta Braves to win it all. The 2000 Yankees were 85-76, the 1987 Twins were 85-77, and the 2006 Cardinals were 83-78.
The Braves, on paper, had a much better season than any of those teams with their run differential being double any of the above teams.
How did the Atlanta Braves and Astros do in the regular season?
Now that the history lesson is over, it is time to look how these teams did in terms of numbers. Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to compare these teams 1 on 1. First, they did not play each other in the regular season. Second, they played drastically different schedules.
We can, however, compare some numbers to help paint the picture. In the regular season:
- Runs Scored – Astros 1st in MLB, Braves 8th
- Weighted Runs Created Adjusted (wRC+) – Astros 1st, Braves 13th
- Batting Average Of Balls In Play (BABIP) – Astros 4th, Braves 19th
- Runs Against – Astros 7th, Braves 6th
- Earned Run Average Adjusted (ERA+) – Astros 7th, Braves 6th
- Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) – Astros 13th, Braves 12th
- Run Differential – Astros 4th, Braves 7th
There is a lot to unpack here. First, it is easy to see, that after adjusting for parks and the rest of the league, both teams’ pitching is pretty much a “what you see is what you get” scenario as far as expectancy vs reality.
Second, it should be noted that the Astros had a much better offense, but there are some caveats here.
The second-half Braves scored 5.14 runs per game in the second half, which is higher than their 4.9 for the whole season, which is largely due to the trade deadline acquisitions.
We can also look at BABIP and see that both the Astros got a bit lucky being that much higher than league average, and the Braves were quite unlucky being that much lower than league average. It is not a perfect stat, but it does help paint a picture.
This is not to take away from the Astros elite offense, as they scored 863 runs, which the Braves have not done since 2003… the only time they did it since the 1800s.
We would be naïve to not point out that since the Designated Hitter was implemented, American League teams score more runs as a whole than National League teams do.
One other area to point out is that according the Pythagorean Theorem of baseball, the Braves expected record would have been 94-67, and the Astros would have been 101-61.
The Braves played a whopping 57 one-run games to the Astros’ 40. This could potentially have played a factor in the Braves record not reflecting their expected performance, since historically speaking, 1 run games can be a toss-up at times.
Based on these numbers alone, it appears that as a whole, the Braves have slight advantage with their pitching, with the Astros having a bigger advantage with their offense.