Last season the St. Louis Cardinals won 101 games, due in some part to their ability to win low-scoring games (a subset of all games played where the total runs scored by both teams is six or less).
We wrote about it during the 2015 season when the Cards looked like they might crack the Top 10 all-time in terms of low-scoring game WPCT (note that this list contains only those teams who played more than 70 low-scoring games in a season, making it that much harder to achieve a stellar won-loss record).
The Cardinals were also threatening to crack the Top 20 all-time for WPCT in games where they scored 3 runs or less, a category where only two teams in baseball history have managed a winning record (the 1906 and 1907 Chicago Cubs).
They finished 17th on the list of high quantity low scoring games (51-26, .662), and they finished 35th all-time on the list of team WPCT in games when scoring three runs or less (32-47, .405).
Thus far in 2016, the Cards are not showing any signs of repeating last season's performance in these two categories. As of this morning, they were 0-5 in both low-scoring games (that's six total runs for both teams in the game) and games where they've scored three runs or less.
The only good news in this is that the Cards' ratio of games where they're scoring three runs or less is down markedly from last year. Such games only comprise 29% of their games in 2016, as opposed to 48% last year.
Two teams are currently over .500 in games where they score three runs or less: the Nationals (5-3, .625) and the Dodgers (5-4, .556). We don't hold out much hope for them to join those ancient dynastic Cubs teams, however.
We'll keep an eye on this...stay tuned.
