A stat we don't keep?

[S5Dewey]

It seems like we have stats for everything in baseball now, from the easy to understand things like BA to that one that it takes 5 pages to try to explain (You know which one I'm talking about! LOL) but one occurred to me recently that I haven't seen.

 

Those of you who have followed me both here and on the old BDC know that I put a lot of emphasis on defense and the fact that one defensive error can cost several runs by extending the inning. I was reading an old recap of last Saturday's game when I noticed that the Twins pitcher gave up 7 runs but only one of them earned when the Twins SS made one error that lead to six unearned runs in the inning.

 

That got me wondering, does anyone keep track of how many times a team gives up more (or the same number of) unearned runs than the margin of victory? IOW, games when a team definitely booted the game away with errors?

[Bellhorn04]

I sincerely doubt anyone keeps track of that.

 

But if you scroll through pitcher game logs you can see the games in which they gave up unearned runs pretty easily. So this could be done manually.

 

Or you could try your luck with an e-mail to Alex Speier about it...

[Kimmi]

I am not aware of any such stat S5.

 

As Bellhorn mentioned, you can go through the game logs, but that would be rather tedious.

 

I would look at the team's DRS, which is -5 on Fangraphs, and estimate that the team's defense has cost us about 1/2 a game.

[a700hitter]

It seems like we have stats for everything in baseball now, from the easy to understand things like BA to that one that it takes 5 pages to try to explain (You know which one I'm talking about! LOL) but one occurred to me recently that I haven't seen.

 

Those of you who have followed me both here and on the old BDC know that I put a lot of emphasis on defense and the fact that one defensive error can cost several runs by extending the inning. I was reading an old recap of last Saturday's game when I noticed that the Twins pitcher gave up 7 runs but only one of them earned when the Twins SS made one error that lead to six unearned runs in the inning.

 

That got me wondering, does anyone keep track of how many times a team gives up more (or the same number of) unearned runs than the margin of victory? IOW, games when a team definitely booted the game away with errors?

It would be a simple understandable and very revealing stat.

[S5Dewey]

It would be a simple understandable and very revealing stat.

 

And the more I think about it....

 

I think there's always been an attitude of 'it will all average out', but does it? With playoff spots determined by a game or two a team with, say, a +1 vs. a team with a -1 would have a two game swing in the won/lost column. That swing could easily be the difference after 162 games.

 

It also doesn't seem that it would be that difficult to determine for anyone with much more than rudimentary spreadsheet skills and time on their hands. Someone someplace - maybe Elias, etc. - HAS to already have the scores of every game played and how many unearned runs were scored. It would simply be (runs scored by winning team) - (runs scored by losing team) - (unearned runs allowed by losing team). Any total of 0 or less would indicate a game that was kicked away.

[moonslav59]

It's hard to know that when a pitcher lets up 6 unearned runs after one error that no runs would have been scored the next inning had the out been made the previous inning, afterall the pitcher did let up multiple hits after the error.

 

I think we've lost 2-3 games on fielding errors.

 

We've also made some bone head plays not considered errors, and I'm not even talking about base running mistakes.

 

My guess is, we've lost 3-5 games due to mistakes on defense and the base paths.

[Bellhorn04]

Here are some numbers on unearned runs:

 

To date there have been 418 unearned runs allowed by all teams this year, or an average of 14 per team.

The Red Sox have allowed 16, so a little worse than average.

The Cubs (ha) have allowed the most, 25.

The Orioles and the Angels have allowed the fewest, 4.

[Northern Star]

I'm sure anyone with the official database could extrapolate the data.