The 1942 National League Pennant Race

The Dodgers had a 10 game lead over the Cards at the end of play on Aug 5. The Cards had been at least 6 games out every day since June 19 (and most days they were at least 7 behind). The Dodgers were defending champs and it looked like there was not much of a race (at the end of the season the third place Giants finished 20 games out).

Here are their records through Aug. 5:

Dodgers: 74-30
Cards:     63-39

The Dodgers went 30-20 the rest of the way but finished 2 GB. The Cards went 43-9 after Aug. 5 with no losing streaks. They were 5-1 vs. the Dodgers with 2 walk off extra inning wins (on Aug 25 and Aug 26). It looks like Cards clinched on next to last day of season.

 

The Cardinals won the season series 13-9, outscoring the Dodgers 102-78. If it had been 11-11, Brooklyn would have finished 2 ahead. 

The chart below shows how many games behind or ahead the Cards were from Aug. 4 (when they were also 10 out) until the end of the season. 

The Cards pulled even with the Dodgers on Sept. 12 (they swept a 2 game series on Sept. 11-12). So they made up 10 games in 38 days. 

 

The 1942 Cardinals may be one of the best teams ever. They had a .131 OPS differential (.717 - .586), the 15 highest since 1901. The Dodgers had .066.

 

Regressions have given me the following relationship between OPS differential and winning percentage:

 

Pct = .500 + 1.3*OPSDIFF 

So that projects the Cards to have a .670 pct (103.2 wins) and the Dodgers .586 (90.2 wins). The Cards actually won 106 while the Dodgers won 104.

So how did Brooklyn manage to win 104 games out when they were projected to win 90?

They went 27-17 in 1-run games while St. Louis was only 25-24. So winning the close ones helped a bit. The table below shows how they hit in different situations:

Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
RISP	0.282	0.369	0.392	0.761
None	0.252	0.323	0.342	0.665
Men On	0.279	0.354	0.385	0.739

So they clearly hit much better with runners on base. It means they probably scored more runs than expected. That all helps, but their OPS in Late & Close situations was only .658 (it was .702 overall). That would not help with those 1-run games.

Here is what their pitchers allowed in different situations:

Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
RISP	0.226	0.338	0.329	0.667
Men On	0.226	0.314	0.323	0.637
None on	0.236	0.294	0.338	0.632

 

Usually batters do better with runners on, so by allowing a .637 OPS with runners on compared to .632 with no runners on did help. The .667 with RISP is fairly normal given what they did with no runners on (The league did .019 better with RISP compared to none on). The league was .009 better with runners on compared to none on.

The Dodgers allowed a .604 OPS in Late & Close situations while it was .634 overall. For the league as a whole those numbers are .638 and .661. So normally OPS was .023 lower in Late & Close situations. The Dodgers allowed .030 less. A help, but not much.

The next table shows how things break down by leverage. They did perform better by OPS differential as leverage increased. Does this account for them winning 14 games more than expected?

Split	HOPS	POPS	Diff
High Lvrge	0.736	0.638	0.098
Medium Lvrge	0.679	0.605	0.074
Low Lvrge	0.702	0.657	0.045

Probably not. Here is how I estimate winning pct if we have leverage data:

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

That would only bring them up to .600. That would only get them up to 92.4 wins. So I can't see how they won 104. But the better team did win the pennant in the end.