A differential of opinion

Back in the early 1990s, I used to play in a Strat-O-Matic league. The Free State Baseball League, we called it. But my buddy Kyle Schmidt had another name for it: "geek baseball."

That came to mind this morning when I was looking, as I regularly do, at not the "regular" standings, but instead the standings based on each team's runs scored and allowed. These "expected" wins and losses are better at predicting the future than the actual records, but somehow they're still considered in most quarters to be theoretical claptrap. Geek baseball.

Here are the teams with the five best records in the majors, along with their expected records based on runs scored and allowed:

To continue reading this article you must be an Insider

• Recommend0
• Tweet0
• Email
• Subscribe