Rox Talk - Week 16

The Week That Was

A 1-6 week against the Marlins and Phillies. The Rox currently stand at 51-47. Seven and half games back from division leading San Diego in fourth place. Currently 31-16 at home and 20-31 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 461-433 (expected wins is 52 versus historical wins at 46). On pace for 84 wins with 762 runs scored and 716 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.06 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

And that my friends is the season. It is time to face facts that with this disastrous road trip the Rox are no longer in contention. With 64 games remaining, seven and half games out, three teams ahead in the standings it would require the Rox to go 39 - 25 down the stretch to get to 90 wins. MLB playoff odds stand at 7.1 which is the lowest all season. The simple fact is that we are running out of games and Padres aren't making it any easier. Padres at 58 - 39 only have to go 32 - 33 to win 90. Meanwhile Rox are only 4.5 out in the Wild Card but again being 4th in our own division it makes it tough to leap frog all of these teams.

Because of this I think the management really needs to build for next year instead. Time to rid the team of Hawpe, Iannetta, and maybe Rodgers to bring in a some more offense. See below for some information. Rox need to realize that good teams consistency win and that winning teams don't just go on 20 games wins to squeak into the playoffs. Rox need to be consistent winners. Nose dives like this last road trip just show how much the Rox really lack that playoff drive. Sure the Rox are a good team but they just seem to be lacking something...

Winning Percentage versus Offense Prowess

It would seem that the pundits are claiming what the Rox are missing is some offense power. It has been highlighted that hitting with runner's in scoring position has been dismal. Well what does the data show? The figure below shows home runs by teams versus their winning percentage. The darker blots are the division leading teams and the purple dot is the Rox.

Not a lot of correlation between winning and hitting homers. The next figure shows slugging percentage versus winning percentage. Data shows a bit better correlation. From this figure it would suggest the Rox are slugging fine. Perhaps some more pop but Rox aren't that far off.

And finally the final figure shows how often baserunners score. While this is not specifically batting average with runner's in scoring position it does show how teams bat when there is a runner on base. From the figure below it would seem that teams that score runner tend to win more...duh! Either way Rox don't seem to be in that bad of position. They are least in the top half. At 0.146 (351 runs scored with 2388 at bats with runner's on base), Rox are above the league average of 0.143.

So either way I don't think the Rox aren't winning because they can't drive runs in. More important is that they aren't scoring when it counts...a study for a later day...