Twins Magic Touch At Home Bad News For Yankees?
Posted by Steve L. on October 6th, 2010 · Comments (3)
I was just looking at the four A.L. post-season teams this year in terms of how they did, playing at home this year, when facing teams who were .500 or better. Here’s the data:
| Tm | Year | G | W | L | W-L% | RS | RA | pythW-L% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEX | 2010 | 24 | 15 | 9 | .625 | 115 | 104 | .546 |
| TBR | 2010 | 41 | 24 | 17 | .585 | 187 | 160 | .571 |
| MIN | 2010 | 35 | 20 | 15 | .571 | 153 | 149 | .512 |
| NYY | 2010 | 39 | 21 | 18 | .538 | 220 | 205 | .532 |
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Note how much better the Twins did at home compared to their projected W-L%. Perhaps they do have some home field advantage working for them here? And, maybe the Yankees will live to regret not winning the A.L. East and having to be the wildcard this season?
Steve Lombardi wrote:
Using your logic, then not winning the division was the better option since the Rangers (0.079) have a greater delta than the Twins (0.059) between their actual W-L% and their Pythagorean W-L%, according to your data table.
Having said that, the data is skewed anyway since the Yanks hosted the Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays a total of 27 times (all above .500 in 2010). The Rangers and Twins hosted fewer games against teams above .500 by virtue of the fact that the unbalanced schedule gave them more intra-divisional games and, as we all know, the AL Central/West don’t stack up to the AL East.
@ MJ Recanati:
If the yankees won the AL east, they’d only have to play the Rangers twice in Texas – like the Rays are now.
@ Steve Lombardi:
It still wouldn’t matter because, by your inference, if the Yankees are the “worst” home team and the data shows the Rangers to be the “best” home team, then the Rangers would be more likely to win their two home games than the Yankees would be likely to win theirs.
All that said, I’m fundamentally disputing the entire argument in the way it is being presented since.