Observations from 2 Baltimore Orioles Fans
Posted in: Statistics
Chris Davis is playing out of this world right now. The million dollar question is how much of Davis’ production is simply the result of an insane early season hot streak and how much of it might be a harbinger of things to come?
The 2012 Baltimore Orioles struggled to get on base. Their .311 team On Base Percentage (OBP) was good for just 23rd in the league. While the ability to get on base – as measured by OBP – is not necessarily the most important element to offensive success, it is certainly a critical one. An offense’s job is to score runs. It goes without saying that logically, the more runners a team as on base, the more chances they have to score runs. It really is that straightforward.
We are getting to the time of the year – if we have not already reached it – where anyone who follows baseball for a living (or hobby) will roll out their pre-season predictions for the upcoming season. As we saw in 2012, it is best to not put too much weight in these things. Nobody has a crystal ball and even more to the point, there is not one individual walking the earth who has the time, expertise, and knowledge to correctly analyze all 30 Major League teams before the first pitch of the season as even been thrown. Nonetheless, these articles are written and we all read them.
The Orioles’ poor run differential has become quite the topic recently. I have given the issue quite a bit of thought over the past two months, even to the point of starting and stopping writing blog entries on the subject at least a dozen times. Over the past couple of weeks, the topic has been heavily debated in several different venues. I’ve read some very good discussions at Orioles Hangout and other Orioles message boards, ESPN.com and Sports Illustrated have ran features on the phenomenon, and the usual talking heads on the cable baseball shows have weighed in on it as well. In other words, almost everything that can be said or written on the subject already has been. That’s not going to stop be from chiming in, but I just want to hit on a couple of high level points rather than wading through the details again. Can a team operate in such a way as to overcome a poor run differential or is any variance between a team’s Pythagorean (expected) record and actual record strictly a function of luck?