The Curse and the Pythagorean Rule

After staring at the first two lines of the AL East standings every day for the past few months, and after writing the last post, I just had to do this. With a little help from the Baseball Archive database, I came up with the following tables:

New York Yankees:

Year	W	L	Pct.	RS	RA	Pythg%	PredtW	Excess
1996	92	70	0.5679	871	787	0.5505	89.19	2.81
1997	96	66	0.5926	891	688	0.6265	101.49	-5.49
1998	114	48	0.7037	965	656	0.6839	110.80	3.20
1999	98	64	0.6049	900	731	0.6025	97.61	0.39
2000	87	74	0.5404	871	814	0.5338	85.94	1.06
2001	95	65	0.5938	804	713	0.5598	89.56	5.44
2002	103	58	0.6398	897	697	0.6235	100.39	2.61
2003	101	61	0.6235	877	716	0.6000	97.21	3.79
2004	73	41	0.6404	630	552	0.5657	64.49	8.51

where "Pythg%" is the winning percentage predicted by the Pythagorean rule, "PredtW" is the predicted number of wins for the number of games played, and "Excess" is the number of actual wins above the Pythagorean prediction. The Yankees have obviously done very well over the past years, but except for 1997 they've always been a little bit "lucky". Which brings up the obvious question:

Boston Red Sox:

Year	W	L	Pct.	RS	RA	Pythg%	PredtW	Excess
1996	85	77	0.5247	928	921	0.5038	81.61	3.39
1997	78	84	0.4815	851	857	0.4965	80.43	-2.43
1998	92	70	0.5679	876	729	0.5908	95.71	-3.71
1999	94	68	0.5802	836	718	0.5755	93.23	0.77
2000	85	77	0.5247	792	745	0.5306	85.95	-0.95
2001	82	79	0.5093	772	745	0.5178	83.36	-1.36
2002	93	69	0.5741	859	665	0.6253	101.29	-8.29
2003	95	67	0.5864	961	809	0.5852	94.81	0.19
2004	63	50	0.5575	643	542	0.5846	66.06	-3.06

That's right, the Sox have consistently won fewer games than they should have according to the Pythagorean rule.Curse, conspiracy, fate, law of averages? You make the call.

As for me (a Royals fan who remembers 1976, 1977, and 1978, and whose greatest joy was 1980):

Yankees Delenda Est

Note added in proof: To be fair, over the lifetime of the franchises, the Red Sox have only lost -0.09 games/season more than they should have according to the rule, and the Yankees are at -0.21 games/season. Things eventually even out, which I'm sure will be a great comfort the Red Sox fans in 2107 or so.