In the lab: How does “bully ball” impact the Astros?

For many of you, your eyes have glazed over and you are wondering what this has to do with the price of whiskey in Ireland. Simply put, Pythagorean records are one of the things we use to determine if a manager is doing a good job and whether teams are overachieving or underachieving. When we spit runs scored and runs allowed into Bill James' trusty formula, it spits out an expected record based on that differential. The Astros are currently four games better than their expected record. Does this mean Espada is actually doing a good job?

Obviously, that explanation is overly simplistic for a number of reasons. For one, we would have to include the manager's input into why they have scored and allowed those runs. For instance, do shoddy bullpen decisions lead to more runs allowed? Do you shaky lineup decisions limit runs scored? Is how the manager using players and does that have an impact on player health? These are things that run differentials can't tell us on their own.

Maybe more importantly to those of us crunching the numbers, we have a baseline explanation for things we have yet to figure out. If we don't know why something is occurring then we are apt to assume it is random. This is not something we know mind you. It is more of a default that we put in place until a better explanation comes down the pike.