The Astros are winning the games they should lose, and losing the games they should win

Not much to report in Astroland today, so I got curious, how are they performing against other teams? And what's the problem?

Alright, so here's what I found as far as winning percentage against teams above .500:

Los Angeles Dodgers: .571 (44-33)
Philadelphia: .537 (36-31)
Atlanta: .521 (38-35)
San Francisco: .521 (37-34)
Houston: .474 (37-41)
St. Louis: .472 (25-28)
Colorado: .459 (34-40)
Florida: .457 (32-38)
San Diego: .409 (38-55)
NY Mets: .394 (37-57)
Milwaukee: .386 (27-43)
Arizona: .369 (31-53)
Cincinnati: .369 (24-41)
Pittsburgh: .368 (25-43)
Chicago Cubs: .352 (19-35)
Washington: .268 (22-60)

Notice a few things here:
1. It's easy to see how the Dodgers are almost 30 games over .500 - they've won 44 out of 77 games against teams better than .500.
2. The Cardinals are so far ahead of anyone else in the NL Central because they're 60-33 against teams with records below .500. That's a pounding.
3. The Cardinals (53) and the Cubs (54) have played the fewest games against teams over .500. And the Cardinals are 6.5 games better against those teams than the Cubs. Even that up and the Cubs are only 2 games behind St. Louis.

Projecting the NL Central

It's an over-simplified way of doing it, but the Astros are 10 games back with 38 to play, including three coming up with St. Louis. St. Louis is 72-54, Chicago is 62-60, the Astros are 61-63, and Milwaukee is 61-64. Let's pretend that every other team stays within their exact winning percentage for the rest of the season. That means...

St. Louis: 93-69
Chicago: 83-81
Milwaukee: 79-83

To catch the Cardinals, who would theoretically go 21-15, the Astros would need to go 32-6. Did I get that math right? Do I really care?

Minor League Standings Check

Let's look in to see where Eddie's Farm stands:

PCL American, South

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
Albuquerque	72	57	-	7-3	L1
Okla. City	64	64	7.5	4-6	W1
New Orleans	56	71	15	6-4	L1
Round Rock	55	74	17	2-8	L5

Texas League, South (2nd half)

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
Midland	33	22	-	7-3	W1
Frisco	29	26	4	6-4	W2
Corpus	25	30	8	6-4	L2
San Antonio	24	31	9	4-6	W1

Calfornia League, South (2nd half)

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
High Desert	31	25	-	7-3	W4
Lancaster	27	29	4	6-4	W1
Lake Elsinore	26	30	5	5-5	W3
Rancho Cuca.	26	30	5	3-7	L4
Inland Empire	21	35	10	2-8	L7

SAL, South (2nd half)

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
Asheville	35	19	-	6-4	W5
Augusta	33	22	2.5	6-4	L1
Bowling Green	27	27	8	2-8	L6
Greenville	27	28	8.5	7-3	L1
Savannah	25	27	9	5-5	W3
Rome	25	28	9.5	5-5	L2
Charleston	23	30	11.5	6-4	W1
Lexington	22	33	13.5	2-8	W2

NYPL Stedler

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
Lowell	35	26	-	7-3	W4
Oneonta	32	27	2	5-5	L2
Vermont	28	33	7	4-6	W1
Tri-City	21	38	13	6-4	L1

Appalachian League, West

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
Elizabethton	40	19	-	7-3	W4
Johnson City	31	26	8	4-6	L2
Kingsport	26	30	12.5	8-2	W3
Bristol	22	36	17.5	4-6	L2
Greeneville	22	36	17.5	3-7	L4

GCL East

Team	W	L	GB	Last 10	Streak
Marlins	34	16	-	7-3	W2
Nationals	31	17	2	10-0	W11
Cardinals	22	27	11.5	4-6	L1
Mets	20	30	14	2-8	L1
Astros	16	33	17.5	3-7	L4

Oh, how the Astros have fallen

On July 24 the Astros were 50-46, tied with the Cubs, and 1.5GB of the Cardinals for first place. Let's look at the standings, as of July 24:

Team	Record	GB	RS	RA
StL	53-46	-	436	401
CHC	49-45	1.5	401	388
HOU	50-46	1.5	407	423
MIL	48-48	3.5	446	457
CIN	44-51	7	387	455
PIT	43-53	8.5	411	418

On this day, CoolStandings gave the Astros' their best odds of making the postseason at 20.4%. What do the standings look like, from July 25-today?

Team	Record	GB	RS	RA
StL	14-6	-	103	82
CHC	11-10	3.5	115	103
MIL	10-11	4.5	118	132
HOU	7-15	8	93	150
CIN	6-16	9	78	99
PIT	3-17	11	57	127

Ouch.

Questioning the "overall weakness" of the NL Central

I'm getting pretty sick and tired of "major" media outlets comparing the NL Central to the retirement home's bowling league. ESPN and Baseball Prospectus both had pieces about the Cubs today questioning the competitiveness of the NL Central (basic gist: "The Cubs suck, yet are still 2GB"). So I did some looking...

The NL Central, outside of the division, but within the NL, has a winning percentage of .517 (109-102).

The NL East? .462 (90-105)
The NL West? .522 (95-87)

Or how about the American League, again: outside the division but within the League?

AL East: .525 (105-95)
AL Central: .428 (89-109)
AL West: .528 (94-84)

So basically we see the breakdown as follows, in order of winning percentage:
AL West: .528
AL East: .525
NL West: .522
NL Central: .517
NL East: .462
AL Central: .428

So we see from here that the NL Central is 4th among the six divisions in winning percentage outside the division, but still well above .500. The weakest division? Looks from here to be the AL Central, trailing the NL East. But don't tell ESPN, they won't like that.

I will say this: If you think this is flawed, let me know why, and we'll rework it. I don't want to be accused of using numbers to suit my own purposes...

The 7% Solution

Nice link from Citizen Chris with the CoolStandings odds on the post-season to this point in the season. I noticed this towards the end of last season on ESPN's standings page, but I didn't realize they would do it this early.

Anyhow, good news, I guess. The Astros have a 7.1% better chance of going to the playoffs than they did in 2005! In the Top Comebacks section our Houston Astros on June 7, 2005 had a 0.2% chance of making the playoffs. Of course they went to the World Series, where they had a 50% chance of winning, and got smoked.

This is an interesting site, as the Red Sox and Yankees have the same record, at 9-6, yet the Red Sox are given a 51% chance of making the postseason while those Yankees sit at 20.7%. As of today the Astros are given a 3.5% chance of winning the NL Central, a 3.8% chance of winning the Wild Card. Add that up, and there's your 7.3% chance of making the playoffs.

How do they do it? I'll just let you read it.

Cecil Cooper versus the World!

It's interesting. Cecil Cooper's reign as manager of the Houston Astros. Let's take a look:

2007: Coop takes over after Garner's firing on August 27 when the Astros are 58-73, immediately goes out on the 28th and loses 7-0 to St. Louis - finishes the season 15-16.

vs. ATL: 2-1
vs. CHC: 3-3
vs. CIN: 3-0
vs. MIL: 2-4
vs. NYM: 0-3
vs. PIT: 2-1
vs. StL: 4-3

Home: 8-7
Away: 7-9

2008:
vs. ARI: 2-4
vs. ATL: 3-3
vs. CHC: 9-8
vs. CIN: 12-3
vs. COL: 3-3
vs. FLA: 2-4
vs. LAD: 4-3
vs. MIL: 5-8
vs. NYM: 5-2
vs. PHI: 3-4
vs. PIT: 8-8
vs. SD: 3-3
vs. SF: 7-1
vs. StL: 7-8
vs. WAS: 4-2

Home: 47-33
Away: 39-42
This includes the "home games" in Milwaukee. The Astros were also outscored by 31 runs, making their Expected W-L record 77-84. So they were 9 games better than expected and were 21-21 in 1-run games.

Notice the Astros were 8-8 against Pittsburgh. Want to hear something strange? The only other teams that Pittsburgh was .500 or better against: Cincinnati (9-6), San Francisco (4-2) and St. Louis (10-7).