Projecting wins in baseball

Baseball stat guru Bill James invented something called the Pythagorean expectation to determine how many games a baseball team “should” win based on their runs scored vs. runs allowed. In a nutshell, James uses the formula to determine how “lucky” a team was by comparing their actual wins vs. their expected wins using this formula.

Whether or not this same equation applies to college baseball, I don’t know (I doubt it because of the wide disparity in talent relative to major league teams). But for my purposes I’m going to apply the formula in the present tense and track the Tigers expected wins at various points during the season.

The number looks pretty gaudy right now, but my guess is that with two games against South Carolina coming up this weekend and three against North Carolina next weekend, reality will set in for the Tigers, not only in the Pythagorean expectation but also with regards to the fielding and ERA stats listed in my previous post.

Actual Record	Projected Record
4-0	48-8