The Cardinals after Wednesday night's loss to the Reds (CIN 4, STL 2) are 14 games above .500 and on pace for 89 wins. While that's well shy of last season's 97 wins, it's still a strong season. On the downside, the Cardinals' modest run differential -- i.e., runs scored minus runs allowed -- of +3 suggests they should be a mere one game over .500 at the moment. Why the disconnect?
Sometimes, the divide between record and run differential can be attributable to how a team clusters its offensive and defensive events. For example, an inning that goes "homer, double, out, out, walk, out" is very different from one that proceeds "double, walk, homer, out, out, out." By removing such "sequencing" from a team's run differential you can learn something about their underlying abilities when it comes to basic run-scoring and run-prevention skills. Over at FanGraphs, their BaseRuns standings do the heavy lifting for us. Those data tell us that the Cardinals are slightly better than their run differential suggests but still well shy of their actual record ...
Actual record: 80-66
Run-differential record (prior to Wednesday's loss): 73-72
BaseRuns recored (prior to Wednesday's loss): 74-71
As you can see, the underlying indicators agree that the Cardinals are out-playing their fundamentals. Often, you can explain away this kind of thing when a team has enjoyed outlying levels of success in one-run games. This season, the Cardinals are 27-20 in one-run affairs. So that's certainly a factor. It's not the only one, though.
The Cardinals are also .500 in games in which the margin of victory is five or more runs. That's not common for a first-place team. For instance, among other division leaders, the Royals are also .500 in blowout games, but every other first-place team is at least five games above .500 in those affairs. The Cardinals, in spite of their .500 record in blowouts, are getting out-scored by 17 runs in those games. To get a bit more granular, eight times this season the Cardinals have lost by eight or more runs, but just four times have they won by eight or more runs.
Circling back, the problem for the Cardinals moving forward -- and not just 2015, as regression can take hold at any time -- is that winning one-run games isn't any sort of repeatable skill. Time and again, it's been posited that Team A has cracked the code and figured out how to win one-run contests with sustained consistency. The 2012 Orioles were such a team, as they went 29-9 in games decided by a single run. The next season, with the same manager and largely the same roster, they went 20-31 in one-run games. That's how it is, year upon year, team upon team.
After all, great teams win one-run games, but mostly they beat the innards out of the opposition (and thus have good records in blowout games), which is why most of the time you see strong overall winning percentages backed by strong run differentials. That's not the case with the Cardinals, even at the BaseRuns level. That raises concerns about how good the Cardinals really are as the postseason looms and, beyond that, as they evaluate their baseline for 2015.
None of this is to suggest that the Cardinals aren't worthy division leaders or certifiable threats to make the World Series once again. They are and they are. The standings don't lie, after all. Sometimes, though, they don't tell the full story.
