If you are a regular reader of this segment, you have seen this before. The best stats are the stats that can be used for hitting and pitching. Offensive and defensive efficiency is one of those. Today, we are focused on the worst pitching staff in baseball. At least, that is where the Astros ranked coming into Wednesday night’s game. They were last in hits allowed, walks allowed, and home runs allowed. In fact, if we throw in Wednesday night’s game they even led the league in hit by pitches.
I stepped
out of the lab on Wednesday to question whether Joe Espada or Dana Brown were on the hot seat. Of course, they have no contract for 2027, so they started the season on the hot seat. I would never fire a manager or executive in April. It was more of a question of what would happen if these trends continue. The general law of statistics is that everything will regress to the mean. Today, I present the big table of how each major league team is doing in defensive efficiency.
In the case of pitching, the lower the number the better. It is a simple accounting of what percentage of base runners score. It is not a perfect accounting. We do not include players that reach on errors, but in this case we are short-circuiting the table to include the total number of runs, total number of base runners, and the defensive efficiency rating for each team. We will go last to first this time around.
I should go over some basic math before we dive into what it means. Each category stands on its own. So, if you were to take the median for each category and actually do the math, the median would be .354. Some of you are glazing over as you read this, but I know I have some intrepid readers out there that will notice these little things. Kudos to you for noticing.
Let’s start with the good news. The Astros are due for some positive regression on all counts. This team will not be the worst pitching staff in baseball for the whole season. They will surrender fewer hits and they will definitely get their walks down to a more reasonable level. However, the biggest thing is that their defensive efficiency will also approach the league median as well. This is because the entire league will approach the median eventually.
What exactly does this mean? If the Astros had league median efficiency they would have surrendered 99 runs instead of 113. In the early going, this would probably be equivalent to three wins. Suddenly, a 11-9 team would look a lot better than an 8-12 team. Of course, the hitting efficiency would also be closer to the median. So, maybe you would be looking at a .500 team.
The bad news is that getting to the median in hits allowed and walks allowed is not necessarily in the cards. The Astros will get closer to the median, but this might be a below average pitching staff with all of the injuries. This is mainly about efficiency. You will notice the numbers are over the board in terms of runs scored and base runners. The Rays are one of the better pitching staffs in terms of base runners. They are off the charts in a negative way.
So, in the end, the Astros have been bad, but they have also been unlucky. So, even if they continue to be bad, they will still improve overall due to a regression to the mean. They will eventually get there when health stabilizes and when they move to a more conventional rotation with AAAA type of starters to replace the injured ones.
We will revisit these numbers later in the year, so we should keep these in the back of our mind. You will see the numbers tightening and the Astros improve overall as the season goes along. The other good news is that teams like the Rangers will get worse. On a long enough timeline the survival rate drops to zero. Do you agree?
