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A Tale of Two Cities

Dave Paisley

As the season wears on, it is quite evident that the Seattle Mariners are the year's major disappointment.

I hear some of you objecting and pointing out that the Orioles, with their MLB-leading payroll, are bigger underachievers. You'd be wrong. Despite all he money the Orioles spent, anyone with any sense (i.e., not Pat Gillick) knew they were buying shoddy goods. A close to .500 performance is not unexpected, and that's what we've got. Too bad the Yankees are already in another galaxy.

No, the Mariners own the crown for several reasons. First, they have two of the best players in baseball in Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez, who anchor one of the best offenses in the majors. Secondly, they have an experienced starting trio that led the majors in wins last year - Randy Johnson, Jeff Fassero and Jamie Moyer. Even their bullpen, while not the best, promised to be better than the cast of retreads that Seattle started with in 1997.

So what has happened? The Mariner offense remains very good. Pitching, however, has been shabby. First the bullpen melted down, then the starting pitching went south to match. Overall though, the team is about even in runs scored and allowed (358 to 363). With those numbers, the team's Won-Loss record should be about even. However, given the talent involved, a .500 record for this team would still be a major disappointment.

But hold the phone! The team is nine games under .500! (at the time of writing) and plummeting into the AL West cellar. How on earth did that happen?

Before we delve into that mystery, let's take a look at a team at the opposite end of the spectrum, the Boston Red Sox. The Sox currently occupy the wild card slot, just a shade ahead of Anaheim. They have scored 322 and given up only 293. Good but not terribly spectacular. Based on those numbers, they should be four or five games over .500 at this stage, yet they're a healthy eleven games over.

This table summarizes the story so far. The W-L predictions were made using the Pythagorean method:

Team	Games	Runs Scored	Runs Allowed	Runs Scored - Runs Allowed	Wins	Losses	Wins - Losses	Wins Predicted	Wins - Wins Predicted
Mariners	65	358	363	-5	28	37	-9	32	-4
Red Sox	63	322	293	29	37	26	11	34	+3

So that tells us what, but it doesn't tell us why. How are the Red Sox turning their runs into more wins? Play-by-play guys are always telling us how many one-run games our team has won or lost. Does that factor in here in a big way?

We need to look at the game-by-game numbers for that. What I've done is to take all the games played by each team and figure out how many runs they won or lost each game by. I then figured out how many games each team won and lost by one run, two runs, three runs, and so on. The graph shows how the wins and losses add up. The Mariners have lost twelve games by one run, another five by two runs and another nine by three runs. Add up the other losses to the left,  concluding with the fourteen run blowout, and they have 37 losses in total.

On the other hand, they have won only three one-run games, six two-run games and three three-run games. So in close games (decided by three runs or less), the Mariners are 12-26. Ouch! Continue adding wins to the right, ending with a couple of eight run wins, and they have 28 wins.

The Red Sox are the almost exact opposite. They have won nine one-run games, ten two-run games and four three-run games. Look at how much steeper the win curve is than that of the Mariners. On the debit side, they've lost only seven one-run games, three two-run games and five three-run games for a total of 23-15 in close games. The slope on the loss side is a lot shallower.

So the Red Sox are able to win the close games, either by luck or talent. The Mariners show no such ability, and the steep initial slope of the loss curve indicates just how bad they are in close games.

Perhaps this is the curse of the Mariners. Their explosive offense generates a lot of runs, but they come in bunches, so they win a lot of games in blowouts. In addition, the bullpen generally comes in in close situations and gives up just enough runs to lose a game. The final nail in their coffin is that their high-powered offense begins swinging for the fences late in close games with poor results. That's the horrible combination that has resulted in their current plight.

So the Sox continue to look forward to winning the wild card, while the Mariners look like they can start planning those October family trips to Disney World.

Dave Paisley once ran into David Segui in a bar, but by the time our Dave had finished sketching a chart on a bar napkin, Segui had managed to escape. Wish him better luck with Jason Giambi at drdjp@strikethree.com.