I was reading the "Fire Dwayne Murphy" thread on the official board. Actually it is the "FIRE DWYANE MURPHY" thread but I digress. In that thread, 'masterbather' claimed that there are no consistent offenses in baseball - other than maybe the RedSox and Yankees.
My curiosity got the better of me and I crunched some number to see how much more consistent the Yankees and Red Sox offenses are and how much the Jays could improve. I also wanted to use it as fuel to power the 'Fire Dwayne Murphy' bandwagon. I was surprised by the results I acheived:
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Team Average Median Std Dev Avg Dev Base Running
Rays 4.21 4 3.09 2.37 2.3
Toronto 4.67 4 3.24 2.63 8.5
Rangers 5.02 5 3.42 2.60 17.3
Yankees 5.39 5 3.55 2.66 0.0
RedSox 5.39 4 3.80 3.03 -11.8
Average - The average runs a team scores per game
Median - The median of the team's runs scored
Std Dev - Standard Deviation is a measure of the variability in runs scores.
Lower values indicate higher consistency
Avg Dev - Average number of runs above or below what the team generally scores
Lower values indicate higher consistency
Base Running - Fangraph's Base Running metric
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If my calculations are correct it seems like the Jays actually are more consistent offensively than the Red Sox and Yankees. I totally did not expect that. Consistently worse but more consistent.
Baseball wisdom and Farell believes that manufacturing runs through small ball is the secret to a more consistent offense. The data somewhat supports their claims but I think there is much more to it.
What do you guys think?