With the 7th win in a row and the best record in baseball, they're finally getting noticed.  A commentator on ESPN admitted that it was a good team, but claims they have been "lucky in close games" and "have played an easy schedule".  With close to a quarter of the season on the books let's take a look at if that's true.  I know some of you are much better at the stats, so feel free to contribute.

Luck:

May be some merrit to this.

They are 7-3 in 1-run games and 3-0 in extra innings.  Let's call it 10-3 in close games.  That's the best record in the league.  Compare to 1-13 for Atlanta, 10-11 for Philadelphia and 7-4 for New York.  A few pitches here and there and  it could still be a logjam at  the top of the division.  But a stellar bullpen has to account for some of this luck.  They have the 3rd best bullpen ERA in the majors and have given up the 2nd fewest HRs.  The Marlins power has also enabled them to get runs in bunches but there may be some luck here ("clutch"?) or could it be the bench?

Late innings of close games v regular season

AVG -  .299 v .265

SLG -  .504 v .456

HR/AB -  .06 v .04

Schedule:

According to ESPN - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/rpi

The Marlins have the 2nd highest RPI and are 14th in strength of schedule.  Hardly a cakewalk.  Lucky or not, the team record is legit in my opinion.

2 other things stand out - Atlanta, probably the unluckiest team has had the easiest schedule so far.  The expected W-L formula has the Marlins tied with Philadelphia and New York,  3.5 games behind Atlanta.  Good thing the play the games on the field and not on paper.

It reminds me of another lucky team, the 2003 Marlins.  They didn't always have it together, but they found ways to win close games, to win series, to grind it out.  Let's hope this year's team keeps it up and follows them all the way to the World Series. 

Here's a little project I did at work today.  If everyone likes it, I'll try to update it every week. edit: updated to July 14th.

Continue reading this post »