Choiniere: Explaining the DRA-beaters
From John Choiniere at Baseball Prospectus on June 26, 2016, with mention of SABR members Rob Arthur and Ben Lindbergh:
I’m certainly not the first person, and maybe not even the first person whom you’ve read today, to point out that the Cubs are having an incredible season. As of the moment this sentence is being written, their third-order winning percentage is an insane 0.750, and they sit in first place on both the batting and overall WARP leaderboard (and in fourth on the pitching one). As was pointed out by Rob Arthur and Ben Lindbergh at FiveThirtyEight last week, their pitching staff’s BABIP allowed is historically low. They also are among the best all-time in outperforming their DRA, the best pitching skills estimator currently available.
It was even more extreme a few days ago, but as of Friday evening the Cubs’ RA9-DRA was -0.95—almost a full run difference over nine innings. That’s the 12th-biggest difference in the entirety of what you might call the “DRA era,” which begins in the early 1950s. Also of note, both their DRA and RA9 are lower than any team above them on that list.
Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=29643
Originally published: June 27, 2016. Last Updated: June 27, 2016.