Do Bad Teams Play More One-Run Games?

[Matthew Trueblood]

A brief study on an interesting theory about the nature of teams who play close games.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

As the 2024 Chicago Cubs flail and flounder, one major source of frustration for fans has been their woeful record in one-run games. No team in baseball has played as many as the Cubs' 33 such nailbiters, and they're 14-19 in those games. Flip that record, and they'd be at least in contention for a playoff berth this season, As it is, they're cellar-dwelling sellers as the league approaches trade season.

Last week, 670 The Score midday host Dan Bernstein raised a reasonable hypothesis about this interminable string of narrow defeats: maybe bad teams just play more one-run games. In other words, maybe the Cubs' tendency to play tight contests (and lose them) isn't driving their dismal showing in the standings, but rather a symptom of their overall lack of quality. Almost two years ago, Jed Hoyer (now-infamously) said, "Good teams blow teams out." He hasn't built a team that does that. Is that why he's now at the helm of a sinking ship?

This is a testable theory, so let's test it. Here's a chart showing each team's number of one-run games played this season, and their overall winning percentage.

Mm. That's not especially compelling. The Cubs and A's do stand out, and so do the Dodgers, but are the Red Sox the beacon you would want to make the point that good teams play fewer one-run contests? The correlation between number of one-run games played and winning percentage is -0.25, and usually, the weakest correlation you can call real or meaningful is 0.20, in either direction. Yes, this season, bad teams are a little more likely to play one-run games than others are, but it's not a strong relationship.

Does it hold up when we look at a full season--say, last season?

Alas, not really. The correlation factor here is -0.17, so we're on the wrong side of that (blurry) bright line between significant and random. The really, really good teams do seem to stay out of such games, so that's something, but the teams who play the most close games seem to be ones who hew close to .500 overall. That makes sense, right? Teams who often play what we understand to be coin-flip games are probably aggressively average, rather than truly bad.

I wanted to check one sub-hypothesis, which is that maybe a tendency to play a lot of close games early says something about a team, over and apart from what it says about them to play a lot of those kinds of games over a full season. Here's every team from 2014-23 (except 2020, of course), plotted according to their number of one-run games and winning percentage through the end of June.

No relationship. None. And if you can believe it, when I look at the same large sample of teams and remove the filter for months, it gets even weaker. These data could hide the impact of the fluctuating run environment on the global frequency of one-run games, but there's nothing here to suggest a relationship on the whole.

Maybe what Bernstein really meant--I think it's probably the better way to formulate the argument--is that very, very good teams (the kind the Cubs should aspire to be) play fewer one-run games than others. That's a little bit more well-supported by the data above, so let's try to pursue that thread. Here are all teams from 2021-23, with their one-run games played and overall winning percentages. I've highlighted the eight teams--the Dodgers, Yankees, Astros, Brewers, Phillies, Rays, Mariners, and Atlanta--whom the Cubs would do well to imitate, given their results over those seasons.

I would argue that the Cubs should most want to emulate the Dodgers and Astros, who have combined to appear in 11 League Championship Series since 2017. Those two do seem to habitually avoid playing a lot of close games. One way or another, they play decisive ball. They blow teams out.

For everyone else, though, it's a mixed bag. The Rays, Brewers, and Phillies prove that you can live pretty well playing close games. The Mariners have had an underrated run the last few years (and are leading the AL West in 2024) despite playing cardiac baseball. You can win this way. You just have to be better.

One shape of team is fairly certain to play more close games, of course: one with good pitching but relatively poor offense. Every team helps create their own run environment, and if you keep the other team off the board especially well but don't score at a very high rate yourself, you end up in a lot of scrappy games. Both runs per game and runs allowed per game have a negative correlation with one-run game frequency at least as strong as that of winning percentage. If you're above-average at preventing runs and below-average at scoring them, your margins are sure to be thin. Then it's just a question of whether you win or lose those close contests. The Mariners, built so heavily around pitching the last few years, are an excellent example.

The 2024 Cubs are a below-average offense, which makes for a lot of their close games. The reason why they lose them, as cruel as this sounds, is that their pitching is just on the wrong side of average, so once games end up being decided by narrow margins late, they're in deep water and can't swim.

The offense is helping ensure that the Cubs play close games. So is the fact that the league run environment is spare in the first place. The pitching is the reason they're losing them, because they lack the depth to get to the right side of average and stop a few more teams, for just a few more outs. That's all pretty obvious, but at least we're not learning that we were entirely wrong about what ails this team. Neither unit is quite good enough, and that's adding up to a team that doesn't feel within 'quite' range of being good enough, any time soon.

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