The Cardinals Have Had Historically Horrible Timing

Back in the middle of May, Dave wrote about how the Cardinals were off to something of an unlucky start. Their record hadn’t tanked or anything, but they weren’t winning as often as it looked like they should’ve been. Based on, you know, the various other indicators. The post went how those posts usually go — Dave observed that the Cardinals were missing wins, and then he talked about how that kind of bad luck has proven itself to be unsustainable. In other words, the Cardinals had been unlucky, but the Cardinals shouldn’t have remained unlucky.

Two months have passed, and the Cardinals have remained unlucky. Don’t like the word “luck”? That’s fine. You know what I mean. The Cardinals’ most important number isn’t matching up with all the other numbers. In May, it was something to notice early on. Now the Cardinals are in historic territory. It’s the wrong sort of history, but at least they’re making a statement, I guess.

The Cardinals stand out on any standings page. When I started putting this together, the Cardinals ranked 13th in baseball in winning percentage. However, in terms of run differential per game, they ranked third. You’re familiar with this sort of thinking, that run differential tends to be an indicator of success. It’s not like it’s something controversial.

For perspective, I made use of the Baseball-Reference Play Index and went back to 1950. Here’s a simple plot of team winning percentage against run differential on a per-game basis. It’s essentially a plot of winning percentage against Pythagorean winning percentage. Yes, I know, this season isn’t close to over yet. I’m aware of what that means, mathematically. Still, just, deal with it.

I’ve highlighted the Cardinals, and you can see they’re well below the best-fit line. If you’ve ever plotted something like this in Excel, you know you can figure out the equation of the best-fit line. So you can end up with winning percentage and expected winning percentage, based on the x-axis. I calculated the difference between the two. The Cardinals have a winning percentage of .522, and an expected winning percentage of .610, and that yields a difference of -0.088. Since 1950, that would stand as the second-lowest difference for anyone. Only the 1993 Mets were off the pace by more.

Already, that’s meaningful, but I might as well take things one step further. Just as team success is strongly correlated with run differential, run differential is strongly correlated with OPS differential. And one could argue OPS differential is the best indicator, since it’s built off the biggest sample sizes. As a reminder, the Cardinals rank third in run differential per game. They rank second in OPS differential per game. The Cardinals’ OPS advantage is almost 100 points. It turns out their run differential should be even more lopsided.

So now let’s repeat the plot, only with a twist. Here’s winning percentage against OPS differential.

This post is focusing on the Cardinals. I should point out that this year’s Rangers have kind of been the opposite of this year’s Cardinals. The Rangers have won 58% of their games, with an OPS differential of -0.018. The Cardinals have won 52% of their games, with an OPS differential of 0.097. Do you know how good that differential is, in isolation? In this sample pool since 1950, there are 1,652 individual team-seasons. The Cardinals’ OPS differential would presently rank in 23rd place. That’s easily in the top two percent.

As before, it’s possible to calculate an expected winning percentage, based on the OPS differential. Now here’s a table of the 10 teams who’ve most underplayed that expectation.

Again, the Cardinals show up at second-to-last. There’s another team from this year in there, too — the Rays have similarly had bad timing, and the range in 2016 values is a function of how this season still has a couple months left to go. The sample sizes are smaller than those in a full and finished year. But it’s important to understand how regression to the mean doesn’t work. The Cardinals’ bad timing is already in the books. Those missing wins will forever remain missing. Going forward, we shouldn’t look for the Cardinals to outplay the expectation — we should look for them to hit it right on. Which would be only a modest help.

The Cardinals have a difference in winning percentages of 107 points. Multiply that by their 92 games played, and you can say one would expect the Cardinals to have about 10 more wins than they actually do. This directly agrees with the BaseRuns calculation, which also puts the Cardinals at -10 wins. BaseRuns and OPS differential are practically the same. In the reality we have, the Cardinals are fighting to win a wild-card slot. In an alternate reality where things are more balanced, the Cardinals are sitting pretty. They’re among the league elites. Maybe this is cosmic punishment for the espionage. I doubt it’s enough for Rob Manfred.

It’s not like the timing is all fluky. The Cardinals are responsible for when they’ve done what they’ve done. They’re responsible for when they’ve strung hits together, and they’re responsible for when the bullpen has melted down. Trevor Rosenthal hasn’t been a great help, in a high-leverage role. The Cardinals are a league-worst 7-16 in one-run games. This has all been up to them. They’ve been half of every plate appearance, and they’ve known when the situations have and haven’t been important.

But it’s still worth remembering what is and isn’t sustainable. If we were to play this season over again, the Cardinals’ team OPS differential would seem more meaningful than the Cardinals’ present winning percentage. We’d expect those numbers to line up a lot better, because they pretty much always have. Last year, the Cardinals out-performed their OPS differential. Ditto in 2014. Ditto in 2013. The Cardinals used to be known for their good timing. Now the tables have turned rather dramatically, and the Cardinals are fighting for a playoff spot. They’re not fighting because of a lack of roster talent. They’re fighting because their timing has sucked. I don’t know if that should make them feel better or worse.