MLB runs allowed by team

Or, How good were the Maddux/Glavine-era Braves?

In this on-going series of posts about run scoring in Major League Baseball, for this installment I'll turn the equation around and look at runs allowed.  In order to account for the changing run scoring environments, the runs allowed by individual teams is compared to the league average for that season, creating an index where 100 is the league average. In this formulation, a score below 100 is a good thing; a team with an index score of 95 allowed runs at a rate 5 percentage points below the league average.

Having written the original code in R, it's now a very simple process to change a few variable names and create the equivalent of the earlier runs scored analysis, but looking at runs allowed. This is one of the most important benefits of a code/syntax environment, an option that doesn't exist if  you are using a point-and-click GUI interface.


In the original data set (the "Teams" table from the Lahman database), the variable "R" is for runs scored and "RA" is runs allowed.  So throughout the code simply changing R to RA will do the trick. For example, the variable "Teams.merge$R_index_rank" is changed to "Teams.merge$RA_index_rank".

Similarly, when it comes time to write the summary tables a simple change within the file name is sufficient. (I chose to change the bit with "off" (for offense) to "def" (for defense), so "Teams.hi_off" becomes "Teams.hi_def".)

NOTE: The R code for this analysis is posted at at Github.  The original code, necessary to process the file and create a data table "Teams. merge" is here, and the supplementary code to incorporate individual team runs allowed is here.

So what are the results?

First, the success stories -- teams that allowed runs at a rate of 80% of the league average.  (For those of you new to the story, I used the period 1947-2012.)  There's only 23 of the 1,580 clubs that played during this period ... and seven of them are the Braves franchise.  They make the list in their first two seasons in Milwaukee (1953 and 1954), and then again in 1958. This was the period when the rotation was anchored by the great Warren Spahn, who was 37 in 1958. The Braves reappear in 1993, when Greg Maddux joined the already-strong rotation that featured Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. That trio was still part of the Braves' staff in both 1997 and 1998.  In 2002 the Braves reappear on the list.  By this time Smoltz was gone, but Glavine and Maddux -- both aged 36 -- turned in ERAs below 3. And this in the midst of the run-scoring bonanza of what is now dubbed "the steroid era".

The only other team with more than three appearances on the list are the Los Angeles Dodgers, who appear twice when Sandy Koufax was on the team (1965 and his final season, 1966).  The 1975 Dodgers pitching staff featured the 2.29 ERA of Andy Messersmith, while in 2003 Hideo Nomo and Kevin Brown were the stars of the rotation.

One other thing that I can't help but note is that the New York Yankees only show up on the list once, in the strike-shortened 1981 season.  Below, we'll take a closer look at the team history.

ROW	yearID	lgID	franchID	RA_index	RA_index_rank
337	1966	NL	LAD	73.88	1
1302	2003	NL	LAD	74.59	2
285	1964	AL	CHW	76.20	3
1005	1993	NL	ATL	76.87	4
696	1981	NL	HOU	76.98	5
19	1948	AL	CLE	77.05	6
116	1954	AL	CLE	77.12	7
1146	1998	NL	ATL	77.96	8
1117	1997	NL	ATL	78.01	9
383	1969	AL	BAL	78.02	10
125	1954	NL	SFG	78.24	11
627	1979	AL	BAL	78.44	12
1545	2011	NL	PHI	78.51	13
1266	2002	NL	ATL	78.66	14
688	1981	AL	NYY	78.67	15
108	1953	NL	ATL	78.91	16
124	1954	NL	ATL	79.09	17
1231	2001	AL	SEA	79.64	18
225	1961	AL	BAL	79.69	19
316	1965	NL	LAD	79.74	20
35	1949	AL	CLE	79.76	21
188	1958	NL	ATL	79.87	22
543	1975	NL	LAD	79.88	23

Now we'll move to the teams that allowed runs at a rate greater than 20 percentage points above the league average.  There are more than twice as many clubs on this list -- 54 in total.

One of the factors that appears to play a role is expansion.  Some of the clubs on the list were in their first or second years as a new franchise, and the poor quality pitching shows. (While this makes intuitive sense, a closer look at this phenomenon is warranted, along with a comparison of their hitting performances.)

One such team are the Colorado Rockies, whose inaugural season of 1993 makes the list.  What sets the Rockies apart is that they also have six other seasons of allowing runs at a rate more than 20 percentage points higher than the league average.  This in spite of only played in 20 of the 66 seasons in the analysis.  At least to some degree, the well-established phenomenon of a high run-producing environment at Coors Field can explain this.

ROW	yearID	lgID	franchID	RA_index	RA_index_rank
119	1954	AL	OAK	133.89	1580
1008	1993	NL	COL	132.97	1579
134	1955	AL	OAK	132.30	1578
258	1962	NL	NYM	131.39	1577
100	1953	AL	DET	130.99	1576
1569	2012	NL	COL	129.02	1575
1179	1999	NL	COL	128.07	1574
152	1956	AL	MIN	128.01	1573
1443	2008	AL	TEX	127.61	1572
1092	1996	NL	COL	127.05	1571
1080	1996	AL	DET	126.38	1570
288	1964	AL	OAK	126.38	1569
39	1949	AL	BAL	126.05	1568
589	1977	NL	ATL	125.53	1567
278	1963	NL	NYM	125.38	1566
1269	2002	NL	COL	124.25	1565
168	1957	AL	MIN	124.07	1564
612	1978	AL	SEA	123.99	1563
1150	1998	NL	FLA	123.84	1562
304	1965	AL	BOS	123.83	1561
540	1975	NL	CHC	123.71	1560
71	1951	AL	BAL	123.64	1559
1352	2005	AL	TBD	123.44	1558
524	1974	NL	SDP	123.42	1557
1346	2005	AL	KCR	123.30	1556
1376	2006	AL	KCR	123.12	1555
1233	2001	AL	TEX	122.95	1554
1516	2010	NL	PIT	122.83	1553
516	1974	NL	CHC	122.83	1552
1293	2003	AL	TEX	122.76	1551
272	1963	AL	TEX	122.75	1550
95	1952	NL	PIT	122.60	1549
781	1984	NL	SFG	122.55	1548
1329	2004	NL	COL	122.36	1547
79	1951	NL	PIT	122.15	1546
334	1966	NL	CHC	121.98	1545
1054	1995	AL	MIN	121.96	1544
1120	1997	NL	COL	121.91	1543
490	1973	AL	TEX	121.82	1542
410	1970	AL	CHW	121.77	1541
372	1968	AL	TEX	121.25	1540
111	1953	NL	PIT	121.16	1539
1412	2007	AL	TBD	120.87	1538
1358	2005	NL	CIN	120.83	1537
284	1964	AL	BOS	120.62	1536
40	1949	AL	MIN	120.61	1535
467	1972	NL	ATL	120.58	1534
839	1987	AL	CLE	120.57	1533
927	1990	NL	ATL	120.54	1532
400	1969	NL	WSN	120.43	1531
375	1968	NL	CIN	120.38	1530
1328	2004	NL	CIN	120.24	1529
127	1954	NL	PIT	120.20	1528
1490	2009	NL	WSN	120.19	1527

And similarly, we can look at a single team's performance over time with a few adjustments to the R code.

When looking at run production, the Seattle Mariners were one object of attention. So let's even things up by looking at their pitching since 1977.  They started out, like all expansion teams, with poorer than average performance ... their worst ever year was 1978, nearly 24 percentage points above the league average rate of runs allowed. In recent years, the Mariners have had four seasons of better than average performance. Having Felix Hernandez doesn't hurt, and neither does that fact that Safeco Field tends to play as a pitcher's park.

(click to enlarge)

The Yankees are another story.  Above, I noted that the Yankees only make the list of teams with seasons allowing runs at a rate lower than 80% of the league average only once since 1947. What isn't obvious from that truncated list is how infrequently the Yankees have allowed runs at a rate higher than the league average -- only eight of the 66 seasons from 1947-2012.  Of those, five were consecutive, 1988-1992. The others were 1967, 1975, and 2005.

The inverse of that are the many seasons that the Yankees have had allowed far fewer runs than the league average. Coupled with the similarly dominant offensive performance identified in the earlier post, there is no wonder that the Yankees are (arguably) the most successful professional sports franchise in the world.

(click to enlarge)

And finally, the Braves, who we saw earlier had an unusually large number of appearances on the low number of runs allowed side of the ledger. As noted earlier, the franchise's first few years in Milwaukee (starting in 1953 and ending in 1965) were marked by strong pitching.  But nothing in the team's history can match the Maddux-Glavine era -- the ten seasons from 1993 through 2002 -- where the run suppression was consistently outstanding.

(click to enlarge)

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