Saturday in the Park

A quick AL West Update

Tomorrow or Tuesday I should have a full update, but for now enjoy this quick AL West update.

American League West Update

With the win on Saturday and the Mariners loss, Fangraphs now has the Astros with a 93.9% chance of winning the AL West, as it probably should be with a 5-game lead with 26 games left to play.

Here’s the way I look at it.

Looking at it this way shows you why the odds are highly stacked in the Astros favor as September dawns.

Yesterday was a crusher for the Mariners.

The numbers below are mine.

A season long look at expected wins by my formula.

It’s been a slow and steady climb since early June, with a few smallish dips.

Quality Starts and Kikuchi Starts

Quality starts can be misleading in both directions. Three earned runs in 6 innings isn’t great, but qualifies for a quality start. 1 run in 5.2 innings is really good, but doesn’t qualify.

Maybe I need to look into the data in the offseason and come up with a more important metric.

A quick search shows that Astros starting pitchers have 68 games in which they have at least 5.1 IP and given up 2 earned runs or less and the team is 51-17 (75%) in those games.

Perhaps we should call this a Kikuchi Start, since he went 5.1 or 5.2 in his first 5 starts as an Astro and Houston won all of them.

That’s a good starting point, but suggestions are welcome.

For now, I’ll use the one we have and the data is clear.

Thanks for reading.