When I last left off, I proposed a theory that, while conventional wisdom holds that great teams win one-run ballgames with regularity, in the real world there is no proof that winning (or losing) one-run ballgames means a dang thing.

When I ran the numbers for team winning percentage in all games and in just one-run ballgames, I found that there was a slight correlation (.588) between the two [this is fpr all teams from 1871 to 2005]. So winning teams do tend to win one-run games. Maybe my theory is wrong, eh?

Well, wouldn't you expect that winning ballclubs win one-run games more often then losing teams? I mean, if you have a .600 winning percentage in all games and a .600 winning percent in one-run games, wouldn't that just mean that you were performing as expected. One would expect that the better teams annihilate the opponent in one-run games, right? Isn't that what conventional wisdom always told us?

Wouldn't a very good team have a great one-run record given that it is such a bellwether for winning teams? To check this, I ran team one-run records against the ratio of the teams winning percentages for one-run games to its overall winning percentage. One would expect that the best teams would outplay the opponents more in one-run games and therefore, would have a higher ratio. Losing teams would experience the opposite effect.

What I found, however, was that the reverse, if anything was true. There was a negative correlation (-.141), meaning that as the ratio went up, one-run winning percentage went down.

Next, I removed the one-run records altogether. I looked a team's record in all other games and compared that against its record in one-run games. One would expect that if winning one-run games was an actual skill possessed by the best teams, then it would carry through to its other games. But the results were even worse than against the overall record (.398).

Finally, someone suggested in the first post's comments that winning one-run games was a result of a team's overall run differential. So I compared a team's one-run record to the Pythagorean winning percentage. The correlation was just about the same as it was in the previous example (.439).

So I submit, and I think the facts bear me out, a team's record in one-run games is meaningless. Actually, it means something. It counts in the standings, but no one than its games won or lost by two runs, three runs, or 12 runs.

Now, since I love tables, I present below the best and worst teams in the various stats I derived from one-run records:

First is a comparison between the best teams, those either in first place or in the playoffs, those that won their league, and those that won the World Series. Wouldn't you expect the one-run records to improve as the teams improved given conventional wisdom? Well, it didn't:

Now, here are the best records in one-run games among all teams:

Given that most of these teams are from the nineteenth century, here are the best from 1900 on:

Here are the worst one-run teams all time:

And the worst since 1900:

Here are the only teams not to play in a one-run game:

Best ratios:

Best ratio since 1900:

Worst ratios:

Worst ratios since 1900:

Finally, to address Bill James' complaint with one-run records, a team's tendency from year to year, I ran the numbers for all franchises. Teams that had a winning record in one-run games continued to win one-run games the next season just 10% of the time. Teams with losing records continued to lose about 8% of the time. Compare that to the tendency of winning teams (overall record) to continue to win the next season, which is 42%. The losing trend is 39%. Bill, as usual, is right. There is no skill that a team possesses to win these close games. It's just luck.