Happy Valley Hardball with a sabermetrics twist

I had planned on switching to a Pythagorean Standings using just conference data but I’ve been unable to find conference only statistics that I can easily access, so we’re sticking with the overall rankings.

Team
Runs Scored
Runs Allowed
Pyth %
Delta

1
Minnesota
276
196
0.665
-0.028

2
Ohio State
338
253
0.641
-0.115

3
Illinois
282
221
0.620
-0.065

4
Indiana
290
264
0.547
0.059

5
Michigan.
263
243
0.539
-0.008

6
Penn State
271
268
0.506
-0.019 [...]

Later in the week, I’ll calculate the standings just using conference results.

Team
Runs Scored
Runs Allowed
Pyth %
Delta

1
Ohio State
282
190
0.688
-0.100

2
Minnesota
206
148
0.660
-0.007

3
Illinois
205
157
0.630
-0.094

4
Penn State
241
213
0.561
-0.014

5
Michigan.
217
197
0.548
-0.046

6
Indiana
240
221
0.541
0.056

7
Purdue
217
234
0.462
-0.038

8
Iowa
195
223
0.433
0.078

9
Michigan St
163
190
0.424
0.080

10
Northwestern
150
197
0.367
0.134

Whenever I post these I am alway impressed with how close to the actual standings they come out. These are through Sunday’s games.

Team
Runs Scored
Runs Allowed
Pyth %
Delta

1
Ohio State
192
118
0.726
-0.124

2
Minnesota
132
88
0.692
0.008

3
Michigan.
150
103
0.680
-0.057

4
Illinois
132
100
0.635
-0.071

5
Penn State
139
114
0.598
0.019

6
Indiana
150
155
0.484
0.134

7
Purdue
109
120
0.452
-0.019

8
Iowa
119
137
0.430
0.018

9
Michigan St
107
137
0.379
0.079

10
Northwestern
83
135
0.274
0.052

 
Team
Runs Scored
Runs Allowed
Pyth %
Delta

1
Michigan.
115
70
0.730
-0.104

2
Minnesota
73
45
0.725
-0.003

3
Ohio State
96
67
0.672
-0.128

4
Illinois
66
56
0.581
-0.196

5
Penn State
58
58
0.500
0.000

6
Indiana
62
68
0.454
0.054

7
Purdue
58
85
0.318
0.095

8
Michigan St
39
62
0.284
0.184

9
Iowa
41
77
0.221
-0.029

10
Northwestern
41
78
0.216
0.035

In a statistical anomaly that isn’t likely to happen again this year, PSU’s Pythagarian Ranking exactly matches their winning percentage. We have scored exactly the same number of runs, 58, that [...]

Time to introduce the Pythagorean Standings:

 
Team
Runs Scored
Runs Allowed
Pyth %
Delta

1
Ohio State
67
42
0.718
-0.282

2
Illinois
47
31
0.697
-0.136

3
Michigan.
73
58
0.613
-0.165

4
Indiana
38
31
0.600
0.000

5
Minnesota
40
35
0.566
-0.148

6
Purdue
42
45
0.466
0.132

7
Michigan St
23
37
0.279
0.112

8
Penn State
25
42
0.262
-0.024

9
Northwestern
29
52
0.237
-0.013

10
Iowa
22
58
0.126
-0.041

 
More details can be found here but basically the Pytagorean Standings are what the league standings would look like if the teams’ winning percentages mapped to what [...]

Team
Runs Scored
Runs Allowed
Pyth %
Delta

1
Michigan.
434
248
0.754
-0.024

2
Ohio State
360
298
0.593
0.038

3
Purdue
334
277
0.592
0.037

4
Illinois
393
351
0.556
-0.010

5
Indiana
396
376
0.526
0.026

6
Iowa
384
409
0.469
0.069

7
Northwestern
309
345
0.445
0.017

8
Penn State
305
350
0.432
-0.041

9
Michigan St
287
346
0.408
-0.045

10
Minnesota
309
382
0.396
0.032

UncleLar Take:
On the final weekend of the regular season Michigan State fell back [...]

Michigan remains atop the heap in both their real and projected win percentages. Illinois has managed to squeak past Purdue into second. Michigan State and Penn State by all APMRmetric standards should be at the bottom of the conference, yet they somehow manage to win enough games that they are battling it [...]

Penn State inched up another spot to eighth in the conference despite giving up a ton of runs, forty nine to be exact, to Illinois in the four game set this weekend. It helped that the Nits also scored forty two on the Illini hurlers. Still the Nits projection is significantly behind their [...]

In Part I of my Youngstown State analysis, I broke the game down into its 114 discrete plays and attached a measurement to each play. That measurement is the win expectancy for one of the teams following the play (note the win expectancy of the two teams always adds up to 100% so when [...]

Penn State’s bottom of the ninth against Youngstown was so extraordinary that I’d like to take a few minutes to analyze it. For those you didn’t see or hear the game, the gist of it is that YSU had built a four run lead going into the bottom of the ninth but PSU came [...]

I’ve made a slight change to the charts that I’m using for the Pythagorian Percentages. Rather than tracking the change from week to week, I’m going to note the difference between the projected Pythagorian winning percentage and a team’s actual winning percentage and include it in the charts labeled as Delta.
Penn State finally made [...]

While Penn State remains mired at the bottom of the projected Big Ten standings, the Nittany Lions did make a substantial, i.e. 50 point, move upward in their raw percentage number. Credit for that move goes to the Lions’ offense which finally awoke on Sunday and managed to push across ten runs on [...]

Bill James does a lengthy Q and A column for the New York Times column Freakoonomics. This must be the “Bill James Week” since 60 minutes had a piece on James on Sunday.

Go to the article

Giving up those 15 runs on Friday certainly didn’t help PSU’s Pythagorian projections. They’re still mired in the basement. Conversely, scoring those 15 runs helped Ohio State hold onto first despite actually splitting this weekends games. OSU’s percentage actually went up while PSU’s went down.
In a week or two, I’ll be changing these projections to [...]

In what can only be viewed as appropriate, the Lions are last in the conference in fielding. There’s certainly no need to point fingers at anyone for the Nits dismal performance so far, everyone can share in the blame.