AN UNBIASED ANALYSIS?

You can click on the image above if you need more info, but essentially we can use the 'runs allowed' and 'runs forced' in our league to see if a club was 'lucky' or 'unlucky' in terms of games won, and by how much.

In general, the teams that should've won, did so. The one exception is that Darwin did much better than its Pythagorean would suggest, and Yuma did far worse, so the Firebirds had to settle for the wild card, but still made the playoffs. Darwin and Yuma both did well enough that some pretty good clubs in the East are missing the playoffs....but at least 2 of the 3 contenders will have a chance to play for it themselves, winner-take-all.

As you might imagine, though, there's more than meets the eye where Darwin and Yuma's respective records are concerned. The Pythagorean between the two clubs is greatly skewed by the fact that two of Yuma's highest-scoring games were against Darwin, including a league-high 27-17 win early in the season. If we go on just runs forced, then the rankings of all BARB clubs in 2009 with 70 or more wins is as follows:

Black Mesa (780)

Worcester (769)

Darwin (754)

Yuma (754)

Casselton (744)

Fresno (738)

Frostbite (734)

Brooklyn (733)

Pottsylvania (741)

Yuma, by this accounting is tied with Darwin for the loop's third-best offense. But suppose we subtract the five highest-scoring games from each club's offensive total, to deal with scoring outliers that are not typical of the club's overall production? A different picture emerges:

Black Mesa (709)

Worcester (690)

Darwin (686)

Fresno (675)

Pottsylvania (675)

Frostbite (674)

Brooklyn (668)

Casselton (668)

Yuma (666)

In other words, Yuma's high run total is a bit of a mirage, mostly based upon five games with 14 or more runs scored, all of those against divisional foes who had, at best, mediocre bullpens (including Darwin) that let games get out of control. Darwin, which struggled to score runs in the final month with Bradley and Hamilton out, is not a good offensive club at this point, either. But for much of the season, they were more consistent at scoring runs than their rivals in the West, a division that is still not as competitive as the East.

This raises questions about last year's realignment. We've had a steady drumbeat of complaints from Eastern clubs that they would post the third or fourth-best winning percentage, yet not make the playoffs. Darwin was moved to the West as part of a general reshuffling. Overall, the league has been more competitive, with all three races being undecided with a week left in the season...but if the goal was to help more deserving clubs in the East qualify as wild cards, that simply hasn't happened.

Another way of examining outliers is to look at the number of times a club is shut out. I'll do that analysis in the near future.