I’m not the biggest fan of luck as a metric per se. Yes, the Castillo dropped ball was a gift BUT otherwise the Yanks have been a very good team.

@ Crank, the Tigers are in a shitty division, so their being in first place is not a case of luck, they suck less than the White Sox, Twins etc al!

@ Corey, point well taken. Wang’s early starts were literally from hell,weren’t they.

@ SL, good call on the 2004 Yanks. I don’t think the @009 Yanks are as weak BUT that remains to be seen in the post season.

Ah, the 2004 Yankees – classic case of a W-L record masking a flawed team. That’s what PW% does for me. It shows me which teams have won more games than they should have, based on Run-Diff, and who probably have a weakness – or, at the least, are not as strong as their actual W-L record would suggest.

JTLYK, according to Baseball Reference The Yankees are 7 games better than their Pytagorean Record.

But the whole point of the Pthagorean Record to me is to demonstrate that, overall, good teams win more games than they should while bad teams lose more games than they should. The ’61 and ’98 Yankees were both 6 games better than their Pythagorean Records. And by nearly all accounts the “luckiest” Yankees team was the 2004 edition that finished 12 games better than their Pythagorean Record (89-73)

Had Wang not given up a thousand runs, that run differential would be closer, if not what our record is.

This is nothing. You want to see a classic case of luck?

The Tigers are in first place and nine games over .500 (five games better than their Pythagorean record as well) despite allowing more runs than they score…678 RC, 681 RA. I don’t know the reason for how it ends up this way for them, but either way…luck has to come into it.