ERAsing Runs

Yesterday we looked at the ways in which EFL offenses have been performing this month compared to last month. Except for the Pears and Cheese, every team is projected to score somewhere between 10-60 fewer runs this month that last month, or an average of .1-3 runs fewer per game. If you are a team on the upper end of that range (Kaline, Haviland, Flint Hill, Portland – basically if your last name is Johnson), you have got to combat the dramatic loss of production with a significant decrease in runs allowed. 

While ERA is not the only measure of runs allowed in the EFL, it is a very significant component of the equation. The table below shows each teams August and September ERA, and the difference between them – for each team, but also for the entire EFL:

You can see that our league average ERA decreased by .33 earned runs allowed in the month of September, a small improvement but nothing extremely significant. And if you remove the Tornadoes dramatic 3.08 improvement, the league ERA average is 4.82 or a small gain of .12.

I am sure there are other equations one could undergo to be more accurate, but by mere observation one can safely state that our ERA did not improve commensurate with the decline in runs scored per game.

What does this mean?

It could mean a lot of things, but mostly I think it means the best pitching in MLB this month was, for the most part, not on our teams. Which is pretty incredible, considering we own approximately 150 MLB pitchers.