Expected wins and losses for the Indians vs. actual ones

Last week I postulated a theory regarding the difference between expected wins and losses for starting pitchers (based on the Game Score for each game, with 55+ being an expected win, 45 and below being an expected loss, and anything between being an expected no decision) and the actual wins and losses. I offered data points for the 2013 Indians and Tigers' rotations and it seemed both were pretty unlucky with a 20+ game difference in wins vs. expected wins for the starters.

But a data set of two is hardly conclusive evidence to support anything. As I had the data for the past 45 seasons of Cleveland starts, I'll stick with that. That takes us back to when the mound was lowered following the incredible numbers put up by pitchers around both leagues in 1968.

First, let's look at Tribe starters' actual records in games they started:

*This total excludes the data from the three strike shortened seasons (1981, 1994, 1995).

Other than the known fact of some really bad teams in those 45 seasons, is the result that there are some really huge outputs of no decisions. 1993 and 2004 had seasons of 60+ and another six seasons had 50 or more. 1993 was an odd year where 18 different players started a game and 2004 was one of the poorest bullpens in recent memory (30 different pitchers were used that season).

Now let's see what the expected wins totals look like:

*This total excludes the data from the three strike shortened seasons (1981, 1994, 1995).

Interestingly enough, the 2013 staff outpitched the 2005 staff. That was the one where five starters made 158 of the 162 starts (and the Tribe choked away their shot at the White Sox late in the season). And shocker of all shockers, the best expected winning season occurred in 1972. That happened to be Gaylord Perry's Cy Young season, who made 40 starts. The other two core starters that year were Dick Tidrow and Milt Wilcox. So how did that squad finish in fifth of six teams in the AL East? It was because of an awful offense. The majority of the hitting stats were tenth or worse (out of twelve teams).

The three worst pitching staffs according to the expected win metric were the teams from 1987, 2012, and 1993. The 1993 squad was discussed above. The 1987 team was a preseason favorite, but didn't have a regular starter with an ERA+ over 100, and the only core reliever above 100 was Doug Jones. That overall 48-89 expected wins/losses is very telling. And that 2012 team should be relatively fresh in everybody's mind. The top three starters by games in 2012 (Masterson, Jimenez and McAllister improved from 29-41 in 2012 to 48-23 in 2013, a massive improvement. And the staff itself went from 47-76 to 82-50, a huge 35 game improvement on the win side. [Thanks Callaway!!]

And here are the differences between expected and actual results:

*This total excludes the data from the three strike shortened seasons (1981, 1994, 19

At first glance, I see that while the rotation looks to have been lucky in some years and unlucky in others, when combined, the seasons do not "even out." There are many seasons on each side of things though, and if I take the median value, the figure for expected wins is only -5 (instead of -8). What stands out to me is the incredible increase in the number of no decisions. This seems to be due primarily to increase in bullpen usage and the volatility of bullpen performance (and of course there are also days when the other starting pitcher is just better). Intuitively, that seems to make sense, as the fewer innings a starting pitcher provides, the lower the correlation between the quality of those innings and the actual result of the game will be.

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