That's a great question. I would have assumed bullpens as well, and that appears to be some part of it -- but maybe less of a part than I would have hypothesized. I calculated the average bullpen WAR percentiles (relative to league) for all 20 teams on our list in the post:
Prev. Season: 46.8 (so only slightly below average! very surprising to me.)
Current Season: 48.1 (nowhere near the improvement I expected, either.)
Certainly there are some examples on the list of bad bullpens becoming good the following year -- the 1911-12 Pirates, 1946-47 A's, or more recently the 2015-16 A's (who had the worst WAR pen in 2015 and improved to 5th-best in 2016). But others, like the 1967-68 Orioles, went from one of the best 'pens to a below average one even as their terrible "luck" got a lot better.
My impulse is always to assume these big Pythagorean gaps are due to poor relievers blowing close games, but that may be less correlated with this phenomenon than I had thought.
Beyond this insightful look at the distress of Pythagoras over his failing Theorem, two things that make me go hmmmm with the Padres.
First, I cannot believe the season Jurickson Profar is having after a litany of bad years. I remember when he first went to San Diego, Harold Reynolds on MLB Network was responding to a question about the Padres being a potential postseason threat when he noted, "can you really consider yourself a postseason threat with Jurickson Profar in left field every day?" To which Greg Amsinger replied, "we should now probably apologize to the Profar family in case they are watching."
Reynolds wasn't wrong.
Second, imagine how good the Padres would be today if they didn't make that ill-advised trade for Soto that everyone applauded as a steal? Soto didn't deliver what Preller anticipated, he then walked, and the Nationals greatly accelerated their rebuild from that trade's assets alone.
Before considering how good MacKenzie Gore has been this year, just keeping CJ Abrams alone would have alleviated the need to make a second ill-advised move - signing Xander Bogaerts. It's hard to imagine that San Diego has the 31-year-old Bogaerts for 8 more years after this one for around $25 MM per and a no trade clause. Ouch.
Sometimes your best deal is the one you were prevented from making.
Neil any theories as to reasons for the possible persistent part of poor pythagorean performance? e.g. teams with bad bullpens or something?
That's a great question. I would have assumed bullpens as well, and that appears to be some part of it -- but maybe less of a part than I would have hypothesized. I calculated the average bullpen WAR percentiles (relative to league) for all 20 teams on our list in the post:
Prev. Season: 46.8 (so only slightly below average! very surprising to me.)
Current Season: 48.1 (nowhere near the improvement I expected, either.)
Certainly there are some examples on the list of bad bullpens becoming good the following year -- the 1911-12 Pirates, 1946-47 A's, or more recently the 2015-16 A's (who had the worst WAR pen in 2015 and improved to 5th-best in 2016). But others, like the 1967-68 Orioles, went from one of the best 'pens to a below average one even as their terrible "luck" got a lot better.
My impulse is always to assume these big Pythagorean gaps are due to poor relievers blowing close games, but that may be less correlated with this phenomenon than I had thought.
Beyond this insightful look at the distress of Pythagoras over his failing Theorem, two things that make me go hmmmm with the Padres.
First, I cannot believe the season Jurickson Profar is having after a litany of bad years. I remember when he first went to San Diego, Harold Reynolds on MLB Network was responding to a question about the Padres being a potential postseason threat when he noted, "can you really consider yourself a postseason threat with Jurickson Profar in left field every day?" To which Greg Amsinger replied, "we should now probably apologize to the Profar family in case they are watching."
Reynolds wasn't wrong.
Second, imagine how good the Padres would be today if they didn't make that ill-advised trade for Soto that everyone applauded as a steal? Soto didn't deliver what Preller anticipated, he then walked, and the Nationals greatly accelerated their rebuild from that trade's assets alone.
Before considering how good MacKenzie Gore has been this year, just keeping CJ Abrams alone would have alleviated the need to make a second ill-advised move - signing Xander Bogaerts. It's hard to imagine that San Diego has the 31-year-old Bogaerts for 8 more years after this one for around $25 MM per and a no trade clause. Ouch.
Sometimes your best deal is the one you were prevented from making.