Weaver, Pythagoras, and Snakes

The Arizona Diamondbacks have been getting grief for outperforming their Pythagorean record by 11 games in 2007. Although it’s nice to see that Bill James’ creation has worked its way into the mainstream, it’s amusing (or not) to see the formula itself so poorly understood.

Instead of talking about “should win” and “luck,” we ought to be digging deeper. Perhaps there are reasons for Arizona’s success that aren’t immediately obvious? Wouldn’t be the first time.

In his 1982 Baseball Abstract, James identifies a team that regularly finished with better records than their run differential suggested they should. From 1977 through 1981, the Baltimore Orioles won a total of 25 games more than the Pythagorean formula predicted. They were +6 in ‘78, +7 in ‘81, and a whopping +9 in ‘77. That’s not just good, it’s freakish — the sort of thing that makes people scream “fluke” even when evidence hints at something else.

In the case of the Orioles, “something else” was manager Earl Weaver. James’ discussion of Weaver (pp. 41 & 42) is fascinating, but the secret to Weaver’s success can be distilled into two elements:

1. He possessed an uncanny ability to construct a bench — “…a collection of players who can each do two or three or four things, but who when added together make ballplayers.”
2. His managerial style fit the Orioles’ home park (Memorial Stadium) like a glove, or should I say, like a three-run homer. As James observes of Weaver’s approach, “…it is what works in Baltimore, and that is where the Orioles are. All successful teams adapt their talent to the design of their home park.”

So, how does any of this apply to the 2007 Diamondbacks? It’s beyond the scope of this humble article to suggest why Arizona is outperforming its Pythagorean. My intent here is to point out that these things can and do happen, and that to dismiss the phenomenon as “luck” without investigating further is to misapply one of the tools that James has given us. Numbers are never the end, they are always the beginning…