RECORD IN LOW SCORING GAMES (6-
RUNS, TOTAL FOR BOTH TEAMS)
Cardinals 51-26 (.662)
107th best 1901-2015
(77 games tied for 125th highest total in
season;highest all time is 103, LAD 1968)
Other 2015 playoff teams:
Cubs 41-25 (.621)
Mets 36-24 (.600)
Royals 38-26 (.594)
Dodgers 36-30 (.545)
Rangers 26-24 (.520)
Yankees 28-27 (.509)
Blue Jays 23-24 (.489)
Astros 29-33 (.468)
Pirates 28-32 (.467)
It would be interesting to take a look at how many teams have made the post-season with a sub-.500 record in low-scoring games. Would 2015's 30% figure hold up over history? We suspect not.
2015 PLAYOFF TEAM RECORD IN
LOW-SCORING ONE-RUN ROAD GAMES
Cubs 6-2
Pirates 7-5
Blue Jays 3-3
Rangers 6-7
Royals 5-6
Cardinals 3-5
Yankees 3-6
Astros 3-7
Dodgers 3-10
Mets 2-7
MOST LOW-SCORING ONE-RUN ROAD
GAMES, 2015
Rays 18 (10-8)
Tied for 77th highest, 1901-2015
Overall WPCT, Low-Scoring 1-Run Road Games:.381 (122-198)
Most Low-Scoring 1-Run Road Games: 27, CHW 1968 (9-18)
Small sample size alert at the top, but included mostly to demonstrate how little rhyme or reason is to be found low-scoring road games in terms of team quality. Key stat here is that road teams do a good bit worse in this subset than they do in all road games (.378 to .457).
ALL ONE-RUN ROAD GAMES, 2015
Pirates 15-10 (.600)
71st in WPCT 1901-2015; highest all time: BAL 2012 16-5 (.792)
Other playoff teams:
Cubs 14-12 (.538)
Rangers 14-13 (.519)
Royals 9-12 (.429)
Cardinals 8-13 (.391)
Yankees 6-12 (.333)
Dodgers 8-17 (.320)
Blue Jays 6-14 (.300)
Astros 8-19 (.296)
Mets 6-18 (.250)
ALL ONE-RUN HOME GAMES, 2015
Braves 21-2 (.913)
Playoff teams:
Mets 19-6 (.760)
Pirates 21-7 (.750)
Royals 14-5 (.737)
Cardinals 24-10 (.706)
Cubs 20-9 (.690)
Dodgers 15-9 (.625)
Rangers 13-9 (.591)
Yankees 17-12 (.586)
Astros 13-10 (.565)
Blue Jays 9-14 (.391)
Cardinals’ 34 1-run home games tied for 44th
highest total, 1901-2015;
Highest all-time: 40 (HOU 1971, STL 1991)
That same 30% works in the reverse: only 3 of 10 playoff teams played better than .500 ball in all one-run road games--games that comprised about 15% of all games played in 2015. We'd like to see that percentage over time, and one of these days we'll do the work necessary to extract the data.
The Atlanta Braves had a strange, strange season in 2015, which we will document in another entry here in the pre-season. All those close wins at home surely didn't translate into anything remotely resembling a winning season, a fact that screams anomaly at a rather high volume.
