Sunday, October 14, 2007

Runs Created by Defense

In my last post, I showed that the Tigers scored almost exactly as many runs as they created sabermetrically in 2007. I wanted to see if the same was true about runs allowed by the defense (pitching and fielding combined). I applied the same runs created formula as I did for batting stats to pitching stats. The team results are listed in Tables 1 and 2 below for the American and National Leagues respectively.

You will notice that 4 teams scored at least 5% runs below their runs created figures and none were more than 5% above. So, there is a little more variability here than there was for offense but the correlation between runs allowed and defense runs created is still strong.

Table 1 shows that the Tigers defense allowed 797 runs which is 18 fewer than the 815 runs they theoretically created. This is a difference of 2.2 percent which is not a huge discrepancy. In 2006, their defense allowed 37 (5.2%) fewer runs than they created. This suggests that they were either more lucky or more skilled at preventing runners from scoring last year. Remember that they also scored more runs than their offense created last year. So, it appears they were less "lucky" all around this year than in 2006.

The luckiest teams were the the Royals who allowed 56 (0r 6.7%) fewer than they created and the Astros (55 or 6.4% fewer). The unluckiest teams were the Orioles who allowed 36 (or 4.4%) more runs than they created and the Cardinals (22 or 2.7% more).

Table 1: Runs Allowed Versus Defense Runs Created in American League in 2007

Team

Runs allowed

Runs Created

difference

% difference

KC

778

834

-56

-6.7

MIN

725

766

-41

-5.4

CLE

704

730

-26

-3.6

BOS

657

680

-23

-3.4

LAA

731

753

-22

-3.0

NYA

777

799

-22

-2.8

DET

797

815

-18

-2.2

SEA

813

830

-17

-2.0

TEX

844

845

-1

-0.1

TOR

699

692

7

1.0

TB

944

934

10

1.1

OAK

758

748

10

1.4

CHA

839

827

12

1.5

BAL

868

832

36

4.4




Table 2: Runs Allowed Versus Defense Runs Created in National League in 2007

Team

Runs allowed

Runs Created

difference

% difference

HOU

813

868

-55

-6.4

PHI

821

865

-44

-5.1

ARI

732

768

-36

-4.7

SF

720

753

-33

-4.4

WAS

783

816

-33

-4.0

CHN

690

716

-26

-3.6

PIT

846

875

-29

-3.3

COL

758

780

-22

-2.9

ATL

733

753

-20

-2.6

CIN

853

876

-23

-2.6

FLA

891

913

-22

-2.4

MIL

776

792

-16

-2.1

SD

666

678

-12

-1.7

NYN

750

759

-9

-1.2

LAN

727

715

12

1.7

STL

829

807

22

2.7



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