Earlier this week I had a discussion about the Pittsburgh Pirates, specifically on their sheer disaster of the last season. It was stated in the discussion that the pirates were so bad that even if they had Albert Pujols they would finish in last place. I thought on this and decided to test the theory.
First step Pittsburgh scored 636 Runs and gave up 768, this translates to Pythagorean record of 67-94, but they really had a record of 62-99, so I'll assume that their new record will be -5 of their new Pythagorean record.
I compared their actual runs scored to runs created (636-659), they lost 23 runs or ~-4% to expected.
So I'll take their full run elements and subract enough plate appearances to fit Pujols.Now Pujols played 160 games so I can safely assume no one will get any plate appearances at first. So I subtract all the plate appearances for those who played first, including a fraction of Garrett Jones for his 30 games there.
Name AB H 2b 3b HR SB BB RC
Pirates2009 5417 1364 289 34 125 90 499 659
Laroche 324 80 25 1 12 2 41 48
Jones 115 34 8 0 16 4 15 25
Pearce 165 34 13 1 4 1 21 19
Total 4813 1216 243 32 101 83 422 569
Now I add Pujols stats to the team and observe the teams runs created rise from 659 to 730.
Name AB H 2b 3b HR SB BB RC
OtherPirates 4813 1216 243 32 101 83 422 569
Pujols 568 186 45 1 47 16 115 179
Total 5381 1402 288 33 148 99 537 730
Okay so we assume similar run luck and subtract 4%, bringing the teams 'actual' runs scored to 701. So now their Pythagorean record is now 74-88. Now assuming win luck is the same, their 'actual' record would be 69-93. So even though Pujols' monster ability was enough to improve they would not be quite good enough to beat out Houston's 74 wins to move out of the cellar. But if you were to even out both their run and win luck they improve to 77-85, almost enough to beat out the reds for 4th place. All this just proves it's better to be lucky than good.
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