The Stros (41-41) reached the halfway point of the 2009 season in an incongruous position.
Although they are performing only slightly better than predicted before the season and are in fifth place in the six team National League Central Division, the Stros are only two losses behind the first-place Cardinals (45-39).
How could that be? Are the Stros better than expected? Do they really have a good chance of contending for a playoff spot? What is going on here?
The answers: (1) Baseball remains a funny game; (2) Only slightly; (3) Not much of a chance; and (4) Mediocre teams playing mostly other mediocre teams will generally split about even over the long haul of a season.
In coming to these answers, it’s helpful to review the aggregate RCAA and RSAA numbers of each club because that statistic provides a simple but revealing benchmark of how a team is performing during the long MLB season. Baseball remains a deceptively simple game. If your team’s hitters generate more runs than the opposition, and your team’s pitchers allow fewer runs from being scored than the opposition’s pitchers, then your team is going to be a winner.
A club’s RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a club’s hitters generate than a National League-average club and RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a club’s pitching staff saves than a National League-average club (an exactly National League-average club’s score is zero). Accordingly, a club’s combined RCAA/RSAA number shows how many more (or fewer) runs the club’s hitters have generated and the club’s pitchers have saved (or given up) in comparison to a National League-average club.
A negative RCAA number reflects that a club’s hitters have generated fewer runs relative to what an average National League club would have generated using the same number of outs, and a negative RSAA number reflects that a pitching staff has saved its club fewer runs than an average National League pitching staff would have prevented in the same number of innings. Positive numbers in both cases are just the opposite — hitters are generating more runs than a National League average club and a pitching staff is saving more runs than a National League average staff.
Although the Stros’ record during the second quarter of the season was a bit above-average (23-19), the Stros remain a National League-average hitting team (2 RCAA) with a below National League-average pitching staff (-19 RSAA) at the halfway point of the season. Not surprisingly, that performance leaves the Stros smack dab in the middle (8th) of the 16 teams National League clubs from a hitting standpoint and the bottom 25% of the league (12th) in regard to pitching.