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August 4, 2005

Crooked Numbers

Objects at Rest

by James Click

Jumping right in today, reader Benjamin Lauderdale sent this question Will Carroll’s way; he was kind enough to forward it to me:

I have never seen an analysis of the effects of consecutive games in baseball and recent Cubs history makes me wonder whether it might be important. You may recall that the 20+ consecutive games at the end of last season culminated in an ugly finish and the long stretch just finished ended with losing 3/4 to the DBacks. Obviously this is anecdotal, however it should be easy for someone to compile the records of all the teams in baseball as a function of how many consecutive days the team has played. If there is a steep falloff in record at 10+ or 15+ games that would have implications for the fairness of season schedules. One could extend this analysis by looking at the relative rested-ness of the two teams in each game, which might make the effect clearer if it exists.

Thanks for the question, Benjamin, it’s a good one. I explored a similar angle back in March, checking to see if teams coming off extra inning games or double headers showed any notable decline in their next game. The results were inconclusive, mostly due to a sample size issue, but this angle compiles a much larger sample of games, even from a single season, so we should be able to put a great deal more confidence in the data.

First, let’s look at those 2004 Cubs. As many of us can attest, memory is a fallible tool. The Cubs backed out of the wildcard last year by losing seven of ten to the Mets (71-91), Reds (76-86), and Braves (96-66), not the D-Backs, but those 10 contests were the end of 26 games in 24 days, the result of three consecutive rainouts in early September that gave the Cubs four days off in a row. The Cubs certainly appear to have been the victim of fatigue in this case; they won 12 of the first 15 games during this stretch before collapsing to the aforementioned 3-7 finish.

Of course, this could have just been a bad stretch of games for the Cubbies. To check, let’s see how the entire league did in 2004 when broken down by how many games a team had played since its last off day. In 2004, the minimum was obviously zero (the day immediately after an off day) while there was one stretch where a team played 29 games in a row without a break--the Marlins to finish the season, the victim of those aforementioned rainouts with the Cubs in early September. Here’s how they did: