The 2005 White Sox Went 14-5 Against The Indians Despite A -.033 OPS Differential In Those Games (and the Indians had an overall OPS differential of .098 while the Sox had .040)

All data from Baseball Reference and the BR Play Index. My formula for estimating winning pct based on OPS differential is

Pct = .5 + 1.33*OPSDIFF

That is based on a regression. So it estimates the Indians to have a .631 pct or 102 wins while the Sox would have .553 and 90 wins. Yet the Sox actually went 99-63 and the Indians went 93-69.

In the 19 games, the Sox had a .667 OPS and the Indians had .700. There were nine 1-run games and the Sox won them all. The White Sox only outscored the Indians 80-75 in their games.

These stats slightly over state the improbability, but only slightly. The Sox had a 3 game lead with a three game left in Cleveland. But given that at that point the Sox led the season series 11-5, they were assured of having the tie-breaker on their side if the two teams had an identical record since the worst the Sox could do against the Indians would be 11-8, thus taking the season series.

The Sox won all of those last three of those games, two by 1 run and one by 2 runs. But that still means that the Sox had been 7-0 in all the 1-run games between the teams before that. They had only outscored the Indians 70-69 in their first 16 games. And still went 11-5.

The Sox had a 15 game lead at the close of play on Aug. 1. By Sept. 22, that had fallen to 1.5 games. It was still 1.5 on Sept. 24 with 8 games left.

The Sox lost 2 of 3 to the Indians over Sept. 19-21 in Chicago, winning only the middle game 7-6 in 10 innings. By winning that one, they got their lead up to 3.5 games. A loss would have meant a 1.5 game lead (which it still fell to anyway two days later).

The Indians outhit the Sox 14-11 in that game, out HRed the Sox 3-2 and out walked them 5-4. The Indians committed 2 errors and had 1 unearned run.

For the whole season, The Sox had the following OPS differentials in High, Medium and Low leverage situations: .102, .018, .034. The Indians had .044, .098, .123.  I do have a regression equation that uses the OPS differentials in the High, Medium and Low cases. Here it is

Pct = .5 + .306*LOW +.420*MED + .564*HIGH

That estimates the Sox to win 93.2 games and the Indians 97.8. Not as big as 12 mentioned at the beginning based on total OPS, but still fairly large. Maybe the Sox had a much higher OPS in High leverage cases in the games between the two teams.

In games between the two teams, here is the Sox OPS in High, Medium and Low leverage situations: .798, .661, .599. For the Indians they were .584, .739, .748. So here are the Sox OPS differentials in their games with the Indians in High, Medium and Low leverage situations: .214, -.078, -.149.

In games between the two teams, the Sox had an OPS of .729 with runners on and the Indians had .651. From the 7th inning on, with the score tied or either team ahead by 1 run, the Sox had an OPS of .784 and the Indians had .705.

Here are the scores of all the games between the two teams that year and the OPS each team had. It shows the OPS each team had. The Diff column is the Sox OPS minus the Indians OPS. The Indians had a higher OPS in 11 of the games, yet won only 5. The Indians had a higher OPS in 8 of the first 16 games and won only 5 of those.

Date	Loc	Sox R	Ind R	Inn	Sox OPS	Ind OPS	Diff
Apr 4	CHI	1	0		0.351	0.181	0.170
Apr 6	CHI	4	3		0.655	0.454	0.201
Apr 7	CHI	5	11	11	0.648	0.653	-0.005
Apr 11	CLE	2	1		0.654	0.618	0.036
Apr 13	CLE	5	4	10	0.644	0.616	0.028
Apr 14	CLE	6	8		0.664	0.660	0.004
Jun 3	CHI	6	4		0.727	0.704	0.023
Jun 4	CHI	6	5		0.731	0.707	0.024
Jun 5	CHI	4	6	12	0.729	0.708	0.021
Jul 14	CLE	1	0		0.740	0.753	-0.013
Jul 15	CLE	7	1		0.739	0.751	-0.012
Jul 16	CLE	7	5		0.739	0.748	-0.009
Jul 17	CLE	4	0		0.739	0.747	-0.008
Sep 19	CHI	5	7		0.749	0.782	-0.033
Sep 20	CHI	7	6	10	0.750	0.784	-0.034
Sep 21	CHI	0	8		0.748	0.786	-0.038
Sep 30	CLE	3	2	13	0.748	0.790	-0.042
Oct 1	CLE	4	3		0.748	0.788	-0.040
Oct 2	CLE	3	1		0.747	0.787	-0.040