This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.
--
The first thing you notice when you look at this is that the distribution of 1/x records tends to be narrower than the distribution of all records. The closer the game, the more likely it is to be decided by a good bounce, a bad call, one play made or not made. The range of all winning percentages last year was .605 to .253; the range of 1/x games, .604 to .295. The team that broke the modern record for losses in a season, the White Sox, went 13-31 (.295) in 1/x games, 28-91 (.237) in all others. Performance in 1/x games can make or break a season, but it’s not as strong an indicator of team quality as performance in other games or, in particular, in blowouts (games decided by at least five runs).
