Long-time SU subscriber A. Grossman has been emailing SU all year long about the Yankees’ relatively high run differential for the season. Many sabre metric experts say that run differential is one of the best predictors of team record – especially for the elite teams. As of today, here are the leaders across all of baseball:
- Cleveland: +227
- Yankees: +174
- Dodgers: +173
- Houston: +151
- Arizona: +145
- Washington: +144
The Yankees should be projecting around 97 wins this year with the 2nd highest run differential across both Leagues. Instead, they are still trying to secure the wild card and trail the Red Sox who have a run differential of +111. How can this be you may ask? SU says it’s this:
- Late inning losses caused by a surprisingly bad bullpen. Not only do they blow games, they hurt momentum
- Bad hitting with RISP as SU has lamented all year long. Just terrible at getting runners in from 3rd base with less than 2 outs
- Record in close games is terrible – it was almost the opposite last season
- Gary Sanchez allows a lot of passed balls and wild pitches late in games
Even now, the late innings are scary as Betances is a walk machine and Chapman is still not right. SU says a successful season will be winning the wild card game and then playing competitively against the Indians in the Divisional series. I will accept that and then look to next season as the youngsters are brought up and Todd Frazier moves on to strike out and hit home runs somewhere else.
Big Giant game tonight. SU is expecting a much more effective offensive performance. The NFL is so up and down early in the year. Did you see the Cowboys get rocked against Denver? They are not world beaters. Atlanta looks really good – SU is surprised how well they are playing despite the Super Bowl loss hangover. But you need to be 6 games into the season to really know what you have plus luck with injuries.
SU is worried about Michigan. Great defense; lackluster offense. Harbaugh either has no confidence in his QB or he is a very conservative play caller. The rest of the country is playing wide open football; why so many runs up the middle on 1st and 2nd down? SU says let them play a little. They will not fare well in the Big Ten with this style offense.
Sports Update Intergalactic 
You have to been a sabermatrician to see that run differential is a good predictor of team record but there will be outliers and the Yankees are one. The reasons you list have a lot to do with it although they must score some of those runs with RISP. They also tend to be good at piling on runs in blowout wins. My gut is to blame this sort of thing on the manager but they’ve actually performed better than their run differential would have indicated in recent years.
Still, they are playing fairly well. I’m more nervous about a 1 game playoff with anyone than I am about a series with the Indians. I like the 1 game system for Wild Card teams because I don’t like rewarding 2nd place finishes but the results tell you very little about the teams.
Howard: I really feel you should have mentioned “how misleading I felt the run differential has been in the Yankees case.” Your opening line kind of suggests how I am embracing the differential as an accurate measure. It’s just the opposite
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I actually think run differential is a great barometer of team success. I suspect it correlates very well with number of wins compared to other metrics. I think Seth’s point is correct about the number of blowout wins. But their record in close games is very telling this year and is unusual from other seasons. I don’t blame this on Girardi. But I know both of you have watched a lot of games this year and the RISP failures combined with the bullpen equal losing close games.