[Kos13]

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They're definitely a very interesting case study, what with their 62-69 X W-L and their 74-57 actual record.

To me, they're kinda like the opposite of the 2006 Cleveland Indians. All everybody wanted to talk about last year was how historically unlucky the Indians were. And, it's true that they finished like 10-15 games below their X W-L based on RS/RA.

But they had a great offense and a horrible bullpen. So, as a result, they lost tons of close games when their bullpen blew late-inning leads. But they also won tons of games like 13-4.

So, while you do have to be pretty unlucky to outscore your opponents by almost 100 runs and finish 6 games below .500, there's still, IMO, reasons it can happen other than just variance.

The '07 D-Backs, as was pointed out in the linked article, are the opposite. They use their solid starting pitching and bullpen to win the close games and, so it seems, really get pounded when they lose. If their offense comes around and they start hitting like they were projected to, they could very likely be the best team in the NL by playoff time.

I say real fangs.

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Solid post. I think that tinkering with the adjusted standings a bit would make it more accurate. Texas is going to gain like 4 expected wins because they had a couple insane innings in a historic blowout.

It's not perfect, but if they just took all of the games decided by 8+ runs and counted them as full wins/losses, then used the same formula to calculate the rest of the runs, it would probably be a bit better. There's no sense in skewing the results because a team scores a few garbage runs in a blowout.