How Have The Royals Won 7.36 More Games Than Their OPS Differential Would Indicate?

They had a .690 OPS during the season and allowed .687. That should give them a .50397 winning pct or 81.64 wins. They actually won 89 games. I had a regression about a week ago that had pct as

Pct = .5 + 1.3246*OPSDIFF

The tables below show what the Royals hit and allowed this year. Their big advantages are with RISP and when it is Late & Close. They had differentials of .052 and .057 in those two cases.

Royals	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Totals	0.263	0.314	0.376	0.690
None on	0.258	0.308	0.373	0.680
Men On	0.268	0.321	0.381	0.701
RISP	0.271	0.332	0.399	0.732
Late & Close	0.245	0.310	0.340	0.650

Royals Opponents	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Totals	0.250	0.310	0.377	0.687
None on	0.249	0.304	0.378	0.682
Men On	0.252	0.317	0.375	0.692
RISP	0.246	0.311	0.369	0.680
Late & Close	0.221	0.292	0.300	0.593

If I use some research I did a few years ago, Does Team Clutch Matter in Baseball?, where I estimate pct by breaking things down into RISP & NONRISP and Late&Close & NONLate&Close (the OPS and OPS allowed in each case), I get some slightly higher estimates for the Royals winning pct.

Using the Late&Close regression, they would have about a .520 winning pct and using the RISP regression, they would have about a .525 pct. There probably is a bit of an overlap between the two situations (maybe 4.165% because usually RISP is about 25% of PAs and L&C is about 16.66%-multiplying .25*.1666 gets about .04165).

But perhaps combining the two together would get us to about a .540 winning pct. That would be 87.5 wins and that is pretty close to the 89 they actually got.