Estimating Remaining Strength of Schedule
All right, here’s the deal. At the start of the season, everybody cares about schedule strength, but they care only a little bit. At this point in the season, far fewer people care about schedule strength, but they tend to care much much more, since the games are higher leverage than ever for those still in the race. So if you’re someone who cares about schedule strength, boy, do I have the post for you. At least, I have a post for you.
Two graphs follow, one for the American League, and one for the National League. This was actually really easy to put together. If you click on “Standings” above, you end up at this page, and that one has team projections on it. If you go to the Playoff Odds page, though, you see similar but different team projections. That second set adjusts for schedule, so to find a measure of schedule strength, one need only compare the projections on the two pages. It’s so easy you could do it yourself! You can do more than you think yourself.
There’s a key difference between this and what you might read elsewhere about schedule strength. People typically look at the number of games against, say, .500+ opponents. Or they’ll evaluate schedules based on team records so far. This is 100% about projections, so if there are projections you disagree with, that’ll have an effect. So this is kind of a FanGraphs measure, but then this is FanGraphs, so take it with however much salt you like. On the graphs, a positive number means an easier schedule. The bar shows the number of extra wins once you schedule-adjust. Of course, negative means the opposite. We’ll start with the American League, because here, the American League looks boring.
AL
Look at those big, bold bars! Then look at the y-axis. There’s not so much of interest here. The Royals, by a small margin, have the easiest estimated remaining schedule, but then they’ve already basically locked up a playoff spot, and they’re the favorites for home-field advantage. At the other end, the A’s face the toughest schedule by this method, but the A’s also suck, record-wise, better only than the Red Sox in the league, at this writing. So nobody cares about Oakland’s remaining schedule.
If there’s anything worth highlighting here, it’s probably how the Blue Jays compare to the Orioles and Twins. Right now, the Jays are in the second wild-card slot, a game ahead of those other teams. So, the situation is tight, and everybody realizes that. Because of the moves Toronto made, a lot of people are probably figuring they’ll run away with a playoff spot, and the Twins might finally be playing to their weaknesses. But let’s try not to get ahead of ourselves. The Twins are in the mix. The Orioles are in the mix. And based on these numbers, the difference between the Jays and Twins’ remaining schedules is worth more than half a win in Toronto’s favor. The difference between the Jays and Orioles is about a full win. It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing, and it’s something the Jays’ rivals would have to overcome. Toronto has gone and put itself in good position.
NL
Now that’s more like it. The y-axis has doubled in size, as we’ve got numbers here of greater magnitudes. The biggest positive number in the AL is 0.3; here, it’s 1.5. The biggest negative number in the AL is -0.8; here, it’s -1.3. Granted, here, the toughest remaining schedule belongs to Colorado, and nobody cares about that, but then, on the other hand, there is a race for the worst record. We’ll get to that in a bit.
The graph is led by the NL East, where we see the Mets, Nationals, and Marlins, two of which are in any way relevant. As far as the division is concerned, the Mets and Nationals effectively cancel out, with neither team getting an advantage. But then, whoever doesn’t win the division will be fighting for a wild-card slot, and that’s where this gets more interesting. Consider the Cubs, who occupy the second slot. The Nationals’ schedule is almost a projected win easier. Then consider the Giants, who are just barely behind the Cubs. The difference between them and the Nationals, above, is almost two and a half wins. Obviously, the same goes for them and the Mets. The Giants are a win and a half behind the Cubs, on schedule. If you just look at the playoff picture, you see the Giants close to the wild card and still close in the NL West. But they have the toughest remaining schedule of all the contenders, so success isn’t going to come easy. Not that it ever does. What a pointless thing to say.
As for the worst record, and therefore the first overall draft pick: not even long ago, it looked like the Phillies had this sewn up. At the All-Star break, there was a 9.5-game gap between the Phillies and baseball’s next-worst team. But since the break, somehow, the Phillies have baseball’s best record, so now either they’ve closed in, or other teams have closed in. Depends how you look at it. The Phillies are separated from the Marlins by one game. They’re 2.5 from the Brewers, and three from the Rockies. We have a race on our hands, and now it does matter that the Rockies have the toughest remaining schedule overall.
By schedule, the difference between the Phillies and the Rockies is about a win and a half. That helps the Rockies’ case. The Phillies and Brewers are about even, and the Marlins have an easier remaining schedule than the Phillies do, by about a win, so this could come down to Philadelphia and Colorado. Any number of things could happen — see: recent Phillies results — but this is at least how schedules are aligned. The Phillies have another 10 games against the Marlins, and there are six against the Braves, and three against the Brewers and Red Sox. The Rockies do get to play the Diamondbacks, but then, the Diamondbacks are still better than the Rockies are. And the Phillies also get to play them.
Turns out there’s always something to watch for. There might always be something at stake.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Does this take into account home vs. away?
it should
Sure glad the “brain” trust that is the commissioner’s office remains so in love with the unbalanced schedule. The thing the 5 teams with the easiest schedules remaining have in common is multiple series remaining against the Phillies, while all the teams hanging at the right end of that chart have a trip through the top of the NL Central ahead.
Your rant is factually inaccurate, as the Cubs only have 1 series remaining against the Phillies.
Then again, they have 3 more series with the Brewers, and that’s not really much different.
That’s cause the Braves Marlins and Nationals are all in the same division as the Phillies. I don’t know what you expect them to do? Change divisions each year based on which bad teams are in which division?
Actually, an even bigger factor for the Mets and Nats than the Phillies is that their interleague division this year is the AL East, and they both have tons of games remaining against the Rays and Red Sox. Just like interleague ‘Rivalry’ series create needless imbalance every year, which division your division is slotted to play each season decreases balance of schedules.
Removing, or severely curtailing interleague play is a realistic fix to increase schedule parity. Unfortunately, with the leagues both having 15 teams right now, I don’t see it happening any time soon.
^what David said.
Every pro sports league in the US has an unbalanced schedule. That’s what divisions/conferences do. The only “solution” (if there even is a problem) would be to dissolve all league and divisional affiliations and have teams play a round-robin schedule.
Hey, the Giants win when it counts. That’s not analytical, but it’s Pence, Posey, Belt, etc.
Only in even-numbered years.
So all the times the Giants lose, it doesn’t “count”?
How well does predicted SoS at August 5th correlate to actual SoS over the last 20 years.
I have a feeling that the results aren’t as predictive as one would expect.
Does this factor in clinching teams resting starters near the end of the season? A series the final week vs KC isn’t likely similar to a series with them next week.
That’s kind of what I was implying with my post above. There are 3 factors in particular – one of which is yours.
One is basic mean regression, hot teams cooling off and vice versa
The third is the spoiler effect, bad teams playing well in part because they call up new guys that are either playing for a spot on next years 40-man, or new guys that pitchers don’t have a book on.
I’ve always wondered if these effects are real or if they seem real because they leave a lasting impression. My guess is that through a combination of all 3, strength of schedule going into the last 8 weeks is overrated as a determinant of anything.
I can see two of these having a likely impact.
Antonio’s factor could, and I doubt that it’s part of this projection because it’s too difficult to predict.
Mean regression probably has some impact, though I’d think that would be figured into the formula for projecting strength of schedule.
If playing call-ups moves the needle, it should be the other way, though. By nature, these players as a group aren’t yet as good as the MLB team – that’s why they’re call-ups. So playing them should, on average, make teams worse, not better.
Yeah not sure I buy the spoiler effect idea either. Look at the Marlins and Phillies. They’re replacing some of their (former) best players (Hamels, Papelbon, Haren, Latos) with guys they’re not necessarily invested in for the future, just guys who can fill innings cheaply.
‘Spoiler effect’ always struck me as kind of a silly idea, simply because you have late-season call-ups who are more there for a team to ‘see what they have’ rather than actually try to win games.
More importantly, and I realize this is less than quantifiable, is that I think the ‘person’ effect comes into play as summer drags on and you’ve been out of meaningful baseball for a month, two months, etc. Whether your’e a baseball player or work at an office, it’s hard to stay motivated on the micro when it doesn’t feel like you’re working towards something important. There may have been work done on the idea of ‘spoilers’, but I’d guess that this is an idea that doesn’t have basis in fact.
I mean, the idea of a spoiler is that the bad team (with no reason to be focused and care) playing a good team (with every reason to be focused and care) at the end of the year (when the playoffs are easiest to visualize) is going to have an advantage because they want to ‘stick it to the good team’? I’m not buying it.
There will always be factors that aren’t taken into account, and that’s one of them. You can’t really predict who will clinch, and when. Mets/Nats end the season against one another. Either team could have clinched by then – or it could come down to the last game of the season.
It also depends on which pitchers you’re facing. If you’re facing Harvey, deGrom and Syndergaard in a three game series, that’s much different than facing Colon, Niese and Harvey. Or if you happen to miss someone like Scherzer or Jose Fernandez, there’s a big drop-off to the next guys in their rotations.
It’s definitely interesting to see how much variance there is in the schedule, but there’s simply no way to predict ahead of time how tough the schedule will actually be.
So if you want to show how this matters a bunch more for the NL than AL there’s a really simple way to do that: put them both on the same y-axis. Then you not only make a reasonable comparison but also save two full paragraphs of redundant text. Axis jiggering is a methods crime.
Yea! Get the damn jiggers out of my graphs!
Except they’re not competing with each other for playoff spots, so comparing them would be useless. If you did merge them, you’d just end up with the entire AL stuck in the middle of the pack. I’m reasonably confident that the average FG reader can discern the difference between the two.
Exactly. They’re not competing for the same playoff spots so there is no need at all to put them together on a single graph; the AL and NL data needs to standalone and be analyzed separately. And there is clearly no intent to mislead as Jeff calls attention to the differences in scale on the y-axis.
So? Showing the entire AL in the middle of the pack would be an accurate depiction of the data. If you really wanted to you could still have two different graphs but just put them on the same scale.
If you find yourself having to write things like “Look at those big, bold bars! Then look at the y-axis. There’s not so much of interest here.” then you’ve created a poor graphic. He may as well have just deleted the graphs and written that this really only matters for Nats, NYM, SFG, and (possibly) the Cubs. He ends up having to write that anyway, because the graphs don’t easily convey that information. (In fact he could have deleted the whole post and just written that in a tweet, but whatever.)
Also: use light colors, ditch the grid lines, and use a larger font size.
As a Blue Jays fan I’ve been annoyed and tormented by the imbalanced schedule for years. In the last decade there have been several times where Toronto would have made the post-season if they were in a different division. Even more annoyingly, if the Jays weren’t playing the Red Sox and Yankees 38 times they also would likely have won quite a few extra games – say if they were playing the sad sack version of the Royals and Indians.