My Second-Favorite Song About Cleveland

Randy Newman’s Sail Away came out in 1972. I can never decide whether it, or its successor, Good Old Boys (1974) is better. Fortunately I don’t have to. In any case, Sail Away contains “Burn On,” the song about the Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969, a seminal event in the US environmental movement and the inspiration for some of Newman’s most mordant lyrics:

Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn

The song is used over the opening credits to the movie Major League, and I didn’t use it last night because the score was too close. It’s just right for tonight, and I’m going to go with the live solo version with highly eccentric tempos. And the factual 1969 fire is pictured above.

Efficiency

As a (former?) microeconomist, I’m supposed to care a lot about efficiency. Alex has created one index of an efficient offense: EAAR = runs/hit, with a game value>1 being a high-water mark. But the job of a (former?) microeconomist is to make up a lot of alternative definitions to muddy the waters.

The first step is to add walks. I think we can grant that a team that can draw walks all over the place but can’t score those guys is not very efficient, and EAAR misses that. So we can modify the efficiency index to E1 = runs/(hits+walks) , When we do this, there are now only 52 games in the entire Retrosheet database with E1 > 1. (Note that I exclude the 9 forfeits, all of which have an infinite E1.) There have been only 9 in this century (none by the Braves.) The most recent such game was this one from last year, in which the Dodgers scored 6 runs on 5 hits with no walks.

But a look at the box score suggests what’s wrong with E1. The Dodgers didn’t walk, but they did have three batters reach base on errors, all of whom either scored or drove in others. Taking advantage of openings that the other teams give you is yet another sign of an efficient offense. That suggests that we ought to add base runners reaching on errors, hit by pitch and catcher’s interference as well. That creates E2 = runs/(hits+walks+reach_on_error+hbp+ci). Fortunately, this is all easy to do with the Retrosheet database, so long as we ignore the data before 1910 in which “reached on error” is unavailable.

When we do this, the maximal efficiency value ever observed is 1. Lots of these games, while efficient in a narrow sense, are pretty damn bad overall performance, like a single homer with no walks or any other baserunners. There are a couple of exceptions, like this one in which Cleveland scored 9 runs on 8 hits and a walk. I haven’t really thought about all the squirrely conditions in which E2 might turn out to be greater than 1, but I know it hasn’t happened yet.

Armed with this, and knowing that efficiency doesn’t really guarantee anything at the game level we might ask the question of whether efficient teams are better teams. To take a first cut at this, I looked at the 2024 season, creating an aggregate E2 for each team. And you can see that the correlation is pretty high:

Even so, Arizona was by far the most efficient team last year, but only had 89 wins. (Not that it matters much, and not at all for Arizona, but I included playoff games.) As in so many other metrics, Tampa Bay outperforms its expected results for some reason, and it really sucked to be the White Sox last year.

There are some more definitions one could use for efficiency which should be highly correlated with E2, like “percentage of baserunners who score,” or runs/plate appearance. The latter has the problem that hitting into a double play makes your offense more efficient than getting two outs from two batters. The former suffers from the treatment of guys thrown out trying to turn singles into doubles, for example. But to run down all the distinctions I’m going to have to charge you a lot more, and I’m retired…. I can’t afford the extra income.

The Game

Joey Wentz got his 5th start for the Braves. He was opposed by Slade Cecconi, the only player in MLB history whose name is a mashup of “Cum On Feel The Noize” (no, the Quiet Riot version is a cover) and “Lucky Star.” Cecconi gave up 3 in the second; the big blow was a shot off the left field wall by Nick Allen: exit velocity 100.7 mph.

Wentz gave up a solo homer to pull it to 3-1, but the Braves scored two more in the 5th, the last run scoring on yet another Jurickson Profar out on the bases when he was thrown out going from 2nd to 3rd (not Third… he had the night off) on a sac fly from Olson. Profar actually had to hold up to allow Nick Allen to come home from 3rd. This one is entirely on Profar — Fredi is innocent.

In the 5th inning, “The Bangin’ Man” continued his onslaught on 2nd half records with a three run homer to make it 8-1. From Cecconi, it was “Merry Xmas Everybody” and he departed with two outs and two on in 5th. It was not yet time for “Celebration,” but we were on the “Borderline” of “Celebration.”

After Uncle finished the 5th, former Brave Kolby Allard came on in the 6th. At 27, Allard is having his best season, but he was greeted by a single from Olson and a double from RAJ, efficiently brought home by a groundout and a sac fly. 10-1. Yet another double by MHII made it 8 multihit games in a row, tying the Braves franchise record.

Ski Slopes pitched the last 3 innings. (The record is 13, from Rogers Hornsby.)

For the rest of the game, I turned off the sound and listened to Good Old Boys. As a final point, I am still astonished that “I Love LA” is played after every Dodgers win — the inability of LA to understand irony is indeed the ironic legacy of “I Love LA.”

Don’t look now, but the run deficit is now down to single digits. In the last week, our playoff probability has doubled to 0.2%. 1:40 start tomorrow.