Stat of the Week: Pythagorean Record

Credited to the Greek mathematician Pythagoras for describing the sides of a right triangle. Around the year 1980, Bill James, American baseball writer and statistician, discovered that you can tell how many games a team will win, based on its runs scored and runs allowed using a formula containing “three squares” like the pythagorean formula.

Pythagorean Record:

Winning % = (runs scored)^2 / [(runs scored)^2 + (runs allowed)^2]

The winning percentage is, of course, approximate and can be more accurate by adjusting the exponent. This adjustment is known as “Pythagenport”, named after Clay Davenport who used logarithmic formulas to estimate the adjustment exponent based on runs scored and allowed. Later revisions to this method have been made.