Big Lead Brewers

Baseball Musings

I’m not contesting the idea that the Brewers are for real, I suspect they are, but I think the idea that you can tell this because their two recent blow outs have flipped their Pythagorean Ratio is a fallacy. Bill James’ Pythagorean Ratio held that a team’s winning percentage should be the same as its Runs Scored (squared) divided by its Runs Allowed (squared). When a team’s winning percentage deviates from the predicted outcome, it’s a good time to look for reasons. These are usually a disproportionate proportion of one-run outcomes one way or the other (in other words, better or worse than average relief pitching or clutch hitting).

The point is that it’s an evaluative tool that draws its power over the long term of the season. A reminder that it is easy to overuse any and all of the tools at our disposal.