Catching up in September
by Dave StudemanSeptember 19, 2008
I'm working away on the 2009 Hardball Times Annual (preorder it now!), collecting articles from over 40 prominent baseball writers and preparing THT's usual stable of stupendous stats. Among other things, we list each team's wins, losses, ERA and other stats on a monthly basis. So I have a lot of spreadsheets of 2008 data to load.
I took last year's monthly team spreadsheet and inputted each team's monthly 2008 wins and losses through the end of August (got to wait for the season to end before inputting the September stats). As a result of combining this year's monthly totals with last year's year-end totals, I got an interesting picture of how each team will have to perform in September to match last year's record.... For instance, the Orioles were 63-73 through the end of August. That's pretty bad, but they'd only have to go 6-20 in September and October to match last year's really bad record of 69-93. The Rockies, on the other hand, would have to post a 26 and -1 record to match last year's (in other words, they'd have to take one of those games they'd already lost and turn it into a win).
So this "make up" record is a cute way of measuring how much each team has (or hasn't) improved over last year. Here is each team's "make up" record for September and October would have to be, starting with most improved to, um, least improved.
TB -18 45 CHA -5 31 CHN 0 25 MIN 2 23 FLA 2 23 HOU 2 23 MIL 3 23 STL 4 21 BAL 6 20 TEX 8 16 LAA 11 15 PIT 11 15 CIN 11 14 KC 12 14 SF 12 14 NYN 12 13 TOR 13 13 OAK 13 12 PHI 14 11 LAN 15 10 BOS 17 9 ARI 21 5 WAS 21 4 DET 22 4 NYA 22 4 ATL 25 0 COL 26 -1 CLE 31 -4 SEA 35 -9 SD 36 -9
Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.