Have The Angels Been Lucky This Year?

The Wall Street Journal had an article about this recently called Baseball's Luckiest Team. It mentioned some things like their AVG with runners on base and how many more games they have won than expected. It also mentions how well their pitchers have done in stranding runners. But with runners on they allow a .264 AVG, 11th best in baseball. They are 5th in that in OPS allowed at .744. They are 10th in AVG allowed with runners in scoring position with .260.

So I decided to do my own analysis. First, I checked to see what their winning percentage should be based on their OPS differential using the equation

Pct = .5 +1.21*OPSDIFF

The table below shows how teams ranked in wins above those predicted using this formula (which is based on regression analysis I did a few years ago). With an OPSDIFF of .010, they should have a pct of .512 but they actually have .615! So they have won about 16 more games than predicted (over 161 games-I used that for all teams). You can click on the table to see a bigger image. After the table, I present another analysis which takes clutch situations into account.



I have some research called Does Team Clutch Matter in Baseball? I broked down performance into close and late and non-close and late. Then I ran a regression with OPS and opponents OPS in close and late and non-close and late situations as independent variables explaining pct. Here is the equation:

PCT = 0.501 + 0.918*NONCLOPS + 0.345*CLOPS - 0.845*OPPNONCLOPS - 0.421*OPPCLOPS

Then I predicted each team's pct and how many more games they won than predicted. The table below shows how the teams did and again the Angels are first in terms of doing better than expected. Maybe they are lucky.