Why can't a MLB team win 80% of its games?

Aug 10, 2001
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No team has even come close (especially since the league moved to a 162-game season 45 years ago). Is the season just too long?
 

jandrews

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2007
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Because even the worst teams are filled with extremely skilled rare ball players. The best of teams only have a few man difference in skill and the odds would never let equally matched opponents take 80%.
 

torpid

Lifer
Sep 14, 2003
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The season is too long, or more importantly there isn't enough time between games. Many players take games off, not just pitchers, and of course good pitchers can't pitch that often since there is so few time between games. They have to take several games off.
 

Toasthead

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
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Baseball is such a game of precision its impossible to achieve that high of a standard. The guys on the Royals suck, but they are still among the best 200 players in the world...
 

Mr Pickles

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2006
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The same reason teams like Boston play my beloved Drays and they can only win 2/3 with us. The same reason the Yanks came here to play Tampa and we shut them out 0/3. The vital positions cannot be filled for a whole game series and if you host a game with your best pitcher against the away team's worst then it skews the outcome. There is a lot more to the game, but most of the W's and L's rely on good pitching and good hitting. If its just not there or if its just worn out by the end of a series somewhere then you are screwed.
 

Accipiter22

Banned
Feb 11, 2005
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Originally posted by: Toasthead
Baseball is such a game of precision its impossible to achieve that high of a standard. The guys on the Royals suck, but they are still among the best 200 players in the world...

900.

edit: Assuming other teams have AAA players better than major league players on some rosters
 

DBL

Platinum Member
Mar 23, 2001
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Only the best pitchers during their best seasons could accomplish something like that and it would only be for 20% of a teams games. IOW, it can't be done.
 
Nov 5, 2001
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Originally posted by: Toasthead
Baseball is such a game of precision its impossible to achieve that high of a standard. The guys on the Royals suck, but they are still among the best 200 players in the world...

I'm not convinced of that :D We suck so bad, we can't even be the worst anymore.
 

kalster

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2002
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bcoz they play so many games that there is no motivation to play their best in every game,
 

Injury

Lifer
Jul 19, 2004
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When you think about it for a while it becomes sort of an obvious enigma. On one hand, as the defense, you have little to no control until the ball is in play. Even the best pitchers in the league don't have any more than a few perfect games/no hitters in a season. The offensive round is the big difference maker. Unlike a quarterback throwing a football or a hockey player shooting a puck... hitting a baseball being hurled at you from 45 feet in the 80-100MPH range doesn't allow time to direct the ball's velocity, speed, and angle. Thus much of the offensive portion of the game is left to an entirely uncontrollable bit of chance and luck... and no matter how good your team is, no matter how big their payroll is... the luck can't always go in your favor.
 

thepd7

Diamond Member
Jan 2, 2005
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Originally posted by: Injury
When you think about it for a while it becomes sort of an obvious enigma. On one hand, as the defense, you have little to no control until the ball is in play. Even the best pitchers in the league don't have any more than a few perfect games/no hitters in a season. The offensive round is the big difference maker. Unlike a quarterback throwing a football or a hockey player shooting a puck... hitting a baseball being hurled at you from 45 feet in the 80-100MPH range doesn't allow time to direct the ball's velocity, speed, and angle. Thus much of the offensive portion of the game is left to an entirely uncontrollable bit of chance and luck... and no matter how good your team is, no matter how big their payroll is... the luck can't always go in your favor.

Never thought about it that way but that is very insightful. Like you said, you can perfectly hit a rope line drive ever at bat and yet still it would go to someone and get caught 20-25% of the time. So quite a bit of the game is chance and then when you put that with the fact that the difference in skill between great and average MLB players is not that much you get teams winning the division with .600 - .650 records.
 

dman

Diamond Member
Nov 2, 1999
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There's no motivation too. You only need to win enough games to get to the playoffs. Having the best record means nothing.
 

torpid

Lifer
Sep 14, 2003
11,631
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Originally posted by: dman
There's no motivation too. You only need to win enough games to get to the playoffs. Having the best record means nothing.

Disagree. It's not basketball. A much smaller number of teams make it. And ballparks convey a MUCH bigger home field advantage in baseball than in many sports. Records are only meaningless in the world series final games. Up until then you get home field with the best record.
 

FoBoT

No Lifer
Apr 30, 2001
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fobot.com
it is due to rules
the way all the parts of baseball work/interact with each other

it is just a game designed that way, where the hitting is hard enough to do that doing it well 40% of the time is awesome
 

FoBoT

No Lifer
Apr 30, 2001
63,084
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fobot.com
Originally posted by: Toasthead
The guys on the Royals suck, but they are still among the best 200 players in the world...

:( why you gotta hate on the Royals :(

they don't suck as bad as last year
 

WisMan

Senior member
Nov 24, 2004
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In baseball you're going to win at least 60 games each baseball season and you're going to lose 60 games each baseball season - and it's those remaining 42 games that make or break you.
 

Accipiter22

Banned
Feb 11, 2005
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Originally posted by: Injury
When you think about it for a while it becomes sort of an obvious enigma. On one hand, as the defense, you have little to no control until the ball is in play. Even the best pitchers in the league don't have any more than a few perfect games/no hitters in a season. The offensive round is the big difference maker. Unlike a quarterback throwing a football or a hockey player shooting a puck... hitting a baseball being hurled at you from 45 feet in the 80-100MPH range doesn't allow time to direct the ball's velocity, speed, and angle. Thus much of the offensive portion of the game is left to an entirely uncontrollable bit of chance and luck... and no matter how good your team is, no matter how big their payroll is... the luck can't always go in your favor.

True...look at a .250 hitter...and a 300 hitter. In 500 at bats the 250 hitter has 125 hits. the 300 hitter 150. That's a difference of 25. That amounts to one extra hit every 8 games.
 
Aug 23, 2000
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As long as the Rangers are in the league, there is a chance that someone who has a lot of games scheduled against the rangers could break the 80%
 

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
25,111
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I think Boston was on pace to do this early in the season, but its statistically impossible. Boston hasn't even slipped really but they're no longer on pace to win 80%.
 

DBL

Platinum Member
Mar 23, 2001
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Originally posted by: Injury
When you think about it for a while it becomes sort of an obvious enigma. On one hand, as the defense, you have little to no control until the ball is in play. Even the best pitchers in the league don't have any more than a few perfect games/no hitters in a season. The offensive round is the big difference maker. Unlike a quarterback throwing a football or a hockey player shooting a puck... hitting a baseball being hurled at you from 45 feet in the 80-100MPH range doesn't allow time to direct the ball's velocity, speed, and angle. Thus much of the offensive portion of the game is left to an entirely uncontrollable bit of chance and luck... and no matter how good your team is, no matter how big their payroll is... the luck can't always go in your favor.

Thoughtful post but I disagree. IF you were to place a pitching machine throwing 90mph fastballs down the middle (or even on a corner) against 1 team for 162 games, a Major League team should easily win 80% + of their games, provided they could maintain their normal pitching staff. Therefore, while luck does play an important part, it is not enough to prevent a team from winning 80% of their games.

The real difference only comes from effective pitching and no team can guarantee that with any regularity. Even the best pitcher in the league, who may very well be great 80-90% of the time is only able to pitch 20% of the time and then only for ~ 70% of the game that they actually start.

Basically, baseball is ruled by pitching which in general is both insufficient and imperfect by nature.
 

SludgeFactory

Platinum Member
Sep 14, 2001
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The long season, in theory, drives down the variability in winning percentage among the teams.

But there is something inherent about the game of baseball that makes teams more evenly matched. I think a lot of it comes down to nature of the sport and its emphasis on skill over raw athleticism. Skills are more subtle, speed and power are not. The best football/basketball teams can, in a lot of cases, blow the worst teams in the league away with physical dominance. It matters a lot more in those sports than in baseball, and it erases a lot of mistakes in execution. That advantage doesn't go away over a series of games either, so that the best teams in the NFL and NBA routinely pound the weaklings.

In baseball, it's more about execution and skill. As such, mistakes in execution (or lucky bounces) are magnified, and you can't rely as much on speed/power/quickness to prevail. Added to that is the idea that baseball skill is at an all time high. As a sport evolves, the general level of skill displayed by the players increases, and the variation in skill among them decreases. Just look at the quality of infield defense now vs. 100 years ago. The margin of difference between best and worst continues to shrink.

There's also the structure of the game, where the defense dictates the action (for the most part) and the offense reacts, which tends to make offense more difficult to come by and depress scoring and keep games closer.
 

shocksyde

Diamond Member
Jun 16, 2001
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I think maybe baseball does the best job of defining parity.

Edit: as I was typing my reply, SludgeFactory explained it well.