Rox Talk - Week 12 (Series Wins, Too)

The Week That Was

A 4-2 week against the Padres and Tigers. The Rox currently stand at 35-36. Three and half games behind the Giants for the division lead in third place. Currently 19-19 at home and 16-17 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 318-308 (expected wins is 37 versus historical wins at 33). On pace for 80 wins with 726 runs scored and 703 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.03 (1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Latest fad (or meme) which seems to pop up a bit this year is a team's ability to win series. Teams who win series obviously have winning records.  So far in 2011, the Rox have played 24 series.  If those were all 3 game series and they won them all by taking 2 of 3 games then theoretically the Rox could be 48 - 24 (they have actually played 5 two game series, 15 three game series, and 4 four game series).  So far the Rox are 9-12-3 in series records this year.  The Rox won or tied their first 5 series (4-0-1), then proceeded to go 2-12-1 in the next 15 series, and then have since turned things around by going 3-0-1.  Tale of two seasons so far...April/June - Good and May - Bad!

Of course I can't let it go at that so what about since the Rox inception?  Well there has been 931 series and Rox are 371-452-108.  See table below for specifics. 

Rox are 3-4 in one game series, 19-27-54 in two game series, 302-349 in three game series, 46-71-54 in four game series, and 1-1 in five game series.  For the three and four game series above I also so the break out of how the series was won.  So for instance in three game series the Rox have swept the other team 94 out of 651 times.

What to make of this?  In Rox 19 years of existence, being an expansion team and all, they had some lean years and only recently have they been playing .500 baseball.  Overall their record stands at 1364 - 1490 or 126 games under .500 (figure this they would have to go 90-72 for seven straight years to get back to even!).  Thus looking at the numbers above taking this into account, the two numbers that jump out are the disparity in losses in a three game set and the higher number of 1-3 series losses to 3-1 series wins (55 vs 30). A few more wins in those situations and you would end up with a series tie versus another series loss in a Game 4 set.  Knowing the Rox road woes over the years one can imagine trying to win 2 of 4 in a long series.

Next week I will have the breakdown of series versus teams both home and away...