The Owlcroft Baseball-Analysis Site

Baseball team and player performance examined realistically and accurately.

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Proving the TOP: Tabular

“Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.”

– He Never Expected Much,
Thomas Hardy

Two-Thirds of a Century of Baseball Data

The Table below shows the results of applying the full Owlcroft formula for runs scored to about two-thirds of a century, 65 full years, of actual major-league data (and for both offense and defense): all teams in all years from 1955 through 2019 inclusive. As to why those year limits: at the early end, there were scoring-rule changes in prior years that make certain raw data suspect or unavailable; at the late end, that’s when we did the job.

The team data used in that formula include: at-bats, walks, hit batsmen, sacrifice hits (bunts), sacrifice flies, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases, caught stealing, catcher’s interference calls, and opponents’ errors allowing an otherwise-out man to reach base safely. All but those last two are widely published, and the other two can be found by looking (the Baseball Reference site, for one, has them). The methodology of the TOP (projected-runs) calculation is explained elsewhere on this site.

(There is no reason why CI, catcher’s interference, should be such a pariah stat: it is an official stat, on a par with at-bats, and is required of the Official Scorer for every game; indeed, without it, he cannot “prove up” his results. Granted, it is usually zero for a given team in a given season, but sometimes it’s not and it should be in every stat-line listing out there. But it’s not. And almost every PA—plate appearances—stat published is wrong, because CI is omitted.)

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Results Summary

In our opinion, the graphical representation available elsewhere on this site shows rather better the accuracy and quality of the measure. But for those who would like to see a long, detailed tabulation in numbers, here it is.

The formula was applied individually to every major-league team’s batting stats and to its pitching stats for every year from 1955 through 2019 inclusive (3,324 team-seasons). The average per-team-per-season error rate for the formula is 2.167% (more precisely, 2.1666512127564%). That is the average size of error; if we allow over and under errors to balance out (so a +2.1% and a -2.3% would net to -0.2%), we get a mere -.006% per-team-season average, which is much less than one run. In effect, the average true error (not size of error) is zero…as it should be for any formula claiming accuracy. And, again, this is from applying the formula to both team batting stats for runs scored and to team pitching stats for runs allowed.