2003 National League

This is a crazy graph. According to the run differentials, two of the four best teams in the league were Houston and Philadelphia, but neither team made the playoffs. The reason: they had the two worst Pythagorean records in the league (see table). Both teams tended to score its runs in bunches, which negated some of the impact of their offense.

I've updated the graph from previous versions. First, I'm using new graphing software. I hope you like the new look. Second, I'm using Patriot's park factors, which I believe are more valid than the ones I used previously. To review other team-specific comments, please refer to the team-specific graphs under development on the Baseball Graphs home page.

I've made a slight change to this graph. I'm now using ISO instead of SLG to better distinguish teams from each other. You can see that this graph is more revealing than previous graphs.

For instance, San Diego stands out as a team with a clear offensive weakness: slugging. And the Cardinals' OBP was better than the Braves, but the Braves had the best league slugging, by far. Surprisingly, the Phillies' slugging also could have been better.

One other team of note is Milwaukee. As you can see on this graph, the Brewers were about average offensively; their OBP could be improved, but their slugging was above average. Yet they scored a third of a run less per game than projected. It's hard to say why, exactly. They did bat worse with runners in scoring position, but not appreciably so.