FiveThirtyEight had an interesting story last week about the Texas Rangers, who currently have the second-best record in Major League Baseball. The article takes a deep look into the team’s success winning one-run games and compares it to other teams throughout league history. After a close look at history, writer Rob Arthur laid out the reasoning why the team’s ability to win tight games doesn’t guarantee any sort of reliable winning pattern come this fall.
I believe this particular piece does a good job of illustrating its points through infographics and data. Specifically, I think the graph showing bullpen WAR and a team’s winning percentage in one-run games was a valuable one in proving a few points, namely 1) The Rangers’ bullpen is by no means the best in baseball and 2) What Texas has been able to do is a rarity. It also helps that it singles out the 2012 Baltimore Orioles, who had comparable numbers in both these categories and eventually ended up losing in the ALDS.
There are several aspects mentioned in the readings that were easy to pick out in Arthur’s story. With “Visualizing Trouble,” it specifically spelled out that data needs to show comparisons and differences, which was accomplished with the aforementioned infographic. The need to illustrate cause-and-effect described in this reading was also evident in Arthur’s story, as he later explained that the team’s lackluster bullpen is aided by the offense’s ability to come up clutch in big moments on a fairly consistent basis.
As pointed out in “Introduction: Infographics and Illustrations”, the chart concerning bullpen WAR and the Rangers’ winning percentage in one-run games is left open to be closely studied and scrutinized, especially considering there are so many plotted points on the map. It’s clear that Arthur wants the reader to focus on two particular points — the Rangers and ’12 Orioles — but provides enough information that the graph is nothing something quickly passed by.