Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCity
If any season out of MLB history was replayed by the same players immediately after they finished the first one, the results would not be the same, and in some cases would be significantly different.
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This is a good point.
Phil Birnbaum did a study published in the SABR's
The Baseball Research Journal #34 entitled, "Which great teams were just lucky?"
Luck was defined in five ways:
1) Hitters having a career year, playing better than their talent can support
2) Pitchers having a career year, playing better than their talent can support
3) The team was more successful at turning baserunners into runs
4) The opponents were less successful at turning baserunners into runs
5) The club won more games than expected from its runs scored and runs allowed.
After much math presented in the article, Birnbaum then offered his list of the 15 clubs were the luckiest and unluckiest in the 1960-2001 time period. The unluckiest club was the 1962 Mets; they finished 40-120 but correcting for the factors mentioned above they should have been 61-99. The luckiest club was the 2001 Mariners; they finished 116-46 but should have had an 89-73 record based on the criteria of the study.