2009 NL West Run Differential

First I want to say hello. This is my first post. In fact I haven't made a comment yet. But I've been reading this blog every day since the end of the 2009 season. Great community, I look forward to becoming a part of it.

After watching the Dodgers 30/30 Today. And being frustrated for the countless time. About national coverage of the Dodgers, specifically they're starting rotation. I decided to go check out some of the stats from 2009, which I had already looked at before, but it's been a while. After looking around for a while I noticed a few things. Particularly some eerily similar numbers with the Giants. LA and SF both had the same runs allowed 611 walks allowed 584 and GO/FO 1.14 LA had 27 more innings pitched, but it still struck me as odd. Most of the other pitching stats are also very close, as i'm sure most of you know. I was surprised that they had walked as many batters, I guess I over looked that before. Again this just frustrated my more because we always hear how great the Giants pitching is and how many questions there are with the Dodgers. I realize some of this is because the the Giants got more innings out their main starters and we had a lot of bull pen innings, But some times I just think does it matter who allows the runs to score. The run doesn't care how it got on the board. I know this isn't always true on an in game basis, but it over the coarse of a season.... I don't know. Any way to my point some where along the way I started thinking about run differential. I knew the Dodgers had a good one, I think i've even heard best in the NL. But I thought I'd check out the other teams in the NL west last season. These are my calculations and they could be wrong, but I double checked them and they seem about right.

These are per game. LA 1.04, COL 0.55, SF 0.23, AZ -0.39, SD -0.81.

I like run differential because it show a good contrast of the overall abilities of a team to me. I know there have been roster changes and injuries can always effect things. But I feel for the most part the west in unchanged. When I look at the Rockies run differential it looks like they got lucky in the last 2/3s of 2009. I don't know if that record is sustainable. As for Arizona they probably underperformed last year. But even IF they get Web back at something close to his old self I don't know if they are consistent enough to give us a real push.  Clearly San Fran just doesn't have the offense and SD is a AAAA team with some descent upside. We'll see how it all plays out I can't wait. GO BLUE!