Latest news with #teams
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
From IR and PUP to practice squads: What do NFL roster designations mean?
NFL rosters constantly evolve as general managers juggle injuries, try to improve position groups and add depth. Teams enter training camp with a maximum of 90 players, who try to prove they belong on the 53-man active roster for the regular season. But there are other roster designations that fill the NFL's transactions wire daily. What do they all mean? Injured reserve Players are put on the reserve/injured list — more commonly referred to as IR — when they have a football-related injury and need to miss at least a few weeks. Players on IR don't count against the active roster, but their salaries count against the cap. If a player is placed on this list before the regular season begins, he could miss the entire season unless they are designated to return during the roster cutdown to 53 players after training camp. Teams can designate up to two such players to return. Players on IR need to miss a minimum of four games. NFL teams can designate up to eight players to return from IR during the regular season (and up to 10 if they make the postseason) and an individual player can be so designated twice. Players designated for return from IR before the season count against a team's eight- or 10-player limit. When a player is cleared to practice, a 21-day window begins and the player must be activated to the 53-man roster or be placed on season-ending injured reserve at the conclusion of that three-week period. They could also be released or traded. Physically unable to perform Players put on the active/physically unable to perform list — or PUP — at the start of training camp have football-related injuries, like those on IR, but count against the active roster. These players can participate in all team activities other than practice and can be activated at any point during camp when they are medically cleared. A player can't be placed on the PUP list after he has practiced once or played in a preseason game. Players on the active/PUP list could be moved to the reserve/PUP list during roster cutdowns. If placed on the reserve/PUP list, a player wouldn't count against the active roster and must sit out the first four games. If a player is placed on the reserve/PUP list before final cutdowns, he will miss the season. Non-football injury/illness Players can be placed on this list if they are injured outside of football — perhaps working out in the offseason or doing a recreational activity — or have a long-term illness not associated with playing. Rookies still recovering from injuries suffered in college often are placed on the active/NFI list to start their pro careers. If a player remains on NFI after the final roster cutdowns, they can be placed on the reserve/NFI list and will sit out four games. They don't count against the 53-man roster limit. Reserve/suspended Players who are suspended by the NFL for violating league rules are placed on this list and don't count against a team's roster limit. What's the difference between being waived and being released? Players with less than four seasons of accrued NFL time are waived, meaning they are subject to waivers and can be claimed by other teams. If they go unclaimed after the 24-hour waiver period, they become a free agent. Players with four or more seasons accrued are considered vested veterans and are not subject to waivers, so they immediately become free agents when they are released. This is the case until the NFL trade deadline in October, when all players regardless of their veteran status are subject to waivers. Players can also be waived/injured, which means they can be claimed by another team or revert to their original team's IR list after the claiming period. The team can then decide whether it wants to move forward with the player or release him with an injury settlement. What is the practice squad? Teams can form practice squads after final cuts. NFL teams can have 16 players on their practice squad — or 17, as long as one of those players is part of the league's International Player Pathway program. (Those players have a primary residence outside of the United States or Canada). While most players on the practice squad are rookies or have limited playing experience, six of the 17 can be veterans with no limit on the amount of seasons they have accrued. Players on the practice squad participate in practice during the regular season, but don't play unless they're promoted to the active roster before a game. Players can be promoted a maximum of three times in a season. They can be signed by other teams at any point, but that team must keep them on its 53-man roster. ___ AP NFL:
Associated Press
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Associated Press
From IR and PUP to practice squads: What do NFL roster designations mean?
NFL rosters constantly evolve as general managers juggle injuries, try to improve position groups and add depth. Teams enter training camp with a maximum of 90 players, who try to prove they belong on the 53-man active roster for the regular season. But there are other roster designations that fill the NFL's transactions wire daily. What do they all mean? Injured reserve Players are put on the reserve/injured list — more commonly referred to as IR — when they have a football-related injury and need to miss at least a few weeks. Players on IR don't count against the active roster, but their salaries count against the cap. If a player is placed on this list before the regular season begins, he could miss the entire season unless they are designated to return during the roster cutdown to 53 players after training camp. Teams can designate up to two such players to return. Players on IR need to miss a minimum of four games. NFL teams can designate up to eight players to return from IR during the regular season (and up to 10 if they make the postseason) and an individual player can be so designated twice. Players designated for return from IR before the season count against a team's eight- or 10-player limit. When a player is cleared to practice, a 21-day window begins and the player must be activated to the 53-man roster or be placed on season-ending injured reserve at the conclusion of that three-week period. They could also be released or traded. Physically unable to perform Players put on the active/physically unable to perform list — or PUP — at the start of training camp have football-related injuries, like those on IR, but count against the active roster. These players can participate in all team activities other than practice and can be activated at any point during camp when they are medically cleared. A player can't be placed on the PUP list after he has practiced once or played in a preseason game. Players on the active/PUP list could be moved to the reserve/PUP list during roster cutdowns. If placed on the reserve/PUP list, a player wouldn't count against the active roster and must sit out the first four games. If a player is placed on the reserve/PUP list before final cutdowns, he will miss the season. Non-football injury/illness Players can be placed on this list if they are injured outside of football — perhaps working out in the offseason or doing a recreational activity — or have a long-term illness not associated with playing. Rookies still recovering from injuries suffered in college often are placed on the active/NFI list to start their pro careers. If a player remains on NFI after the final roster cutdowns, they can be placed on the reserve/NFI list and will sit out four games. They don't count against the 53-man roster limit. Reserve/suspended Players who are suspended by the NFL for violating league rules are placed on this list and don't count against a team's roster limit. What's the difference between being waived and being released? Players with less than four seasons of accrued NFL time are waived, meaning they are subject to waivers and can be claimed by other teams. If they go unclaimed after the 24-hour waiver period, they become a free agent. Players with four or more seasons accrued are considered vested veterans and are not subject to waivers, so they immediately become free agents when they are released. This is the case until the NFL trade deadline in October, when all players regardless of their veteran status are subject to waivers. Players can also be waived/injured, which means they can be claimed by another team or revert to their original team's IR list after the claiming period. The team can then decide whether it wants to move forward with the player or release him with an injury settlement. What is the practice squad? Teams can form practice squads after final cuts. NFL teams can have 16 players on their practice squad — or 17, as long as one of those players is part of the league's International Player Pathway program. (Those players have a primary residence outside of the United States or Canada). While most players on the practice squad are rookies or have limited playing experience, six of the 17 can be veterans with no limit on the amount of seasons they have accrued. Players on the practice squad participate in practice during the regular season, but don't play unless they're promoted to the active roster before a game. Players can be promoted a maximum of three times in a season. They can be signed by other teams at any point, but that team must keep them on its 53-man roster. ___ AP NFL:
Entrepreneur
6 hours ago
- Health
- Entrepreneur
How to Use Your Own Body Language Before It Sabotages You
When individuals begin paying attention to their nonverbal cues — not just those of others — they gain insight into what they're feeling and why. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. I've seen body language used to close deals, lead teams and command a room. There's no denying it's a powerful tool for influencing others. But its most valuable impact is internal. When individuals begin paying attention to their own nonverbal cues — not just those of others — they gain insight into what they're feeling, how they're responding, and why. I've watched this shift to self-awareness transform the way leaders and executives lead, communicate and connect. Furthermore, self-awareness doesn't just improve communication — it builds emotional intelligence. In this article, we'll explore how tuning into your own body language can sharpen your emotional intelligence from the inside out. And surprisingly, it often begins in the body, not the mind. Related: Why Emotional Intelligence Is the Key to High-Impact Leadership Self-awareness begins in the body One of the cornerstones of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. You can't be emotionally intelligent without a clear understanding of your own internal state and how it's shaping your behavior. The body holds a wealth of wisdom when it comes to understanding our emotional landscape. Most of us move through our day without consciously noticing our posture, gestures, or expressions. But those nonverbal cues are constantly broadcasting how we feel — whether we realize it or not. The more attuned you are to your own physical signals, the more insight you gain into your emotional state — and the more intentionally you can choose how to respond. Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success. Learning to observe without judgment Learning to be self-observant — but not self-conscious — is a skill that can completely transform the way you understand yourself and communicate with others. Small, often unnoticed behaviors can reveal a lot about your internal state and the impression you're giving off at the moment. For example, how are you sitting? Are your arms crossed? Are your fists clenched? These subtle, nonverbal "tells" can offer a window into what you're feeling. Let's say I'm clenching my jaw or baring my teeth slightly while talking to someone. What message is that sending? And more importantly, why am I doing it? Am I feeling relaxed? Or is there a chance I'm frustrated, stressed, or even angry? Even something as simple as your hands can be telling. When people clench their hands, it often signals self-restraint — an effort to contain frustration or anger. On the other hand, open palms or extended fingers are more likely to reflect positive emotions like ease, confidence, or even joy. These signals matter because they often reflect emotions we haven't consciously acknowledged. We may not feel angry or stressed until we notice what our body is doing — and that awareness can be a game-changer. Personally, I find these micro-observations incredibly helpful, especially in meetings, social gatherings, or one-on-one conversations. It's in these spaces that small, unconscious behaviors often speak the loudest. From self-awareness to self-regulation Noticing is only the first step. It's regulation that turns self-awareness into emotional intelligence. For example, once you notice you're holding tension, you can take a breath and soften. You may ask yourself, "What's really going on here?" and choose your next move from a more grounded place. Let's say you catch yourself clenching your fists in a tough conversation. That's useful information — it tells you something is off. You can pause, uncross your arms, relax your hands, and reset your tone. Emotional intelligence isn't just about physical posture. It's about gaining the space to respond, rather than react. And for leaders, that's where true influence will begin. Related: Mastering thoughts and feelings for well-being Recognizing patterns One of the most powerful benefits of observing your own body language is that it reveals patterns. It's not just about catching a clenched jaw in a single meeting; it's about noticing that you always tense up before presenting or that you tend to cross your arms when someone challenges your opinion. These repeated signals are like emotional breadcrumbs, leading you to the beliefs, triggers, or stressors that live under the surface. This kind of pattern recognition builds emotional resilience. It helps you identify what consistently throws you off balance and gives you a clearer path to responding more skillfully in future moments. Start small. Choose one meeting, one conversation or one stressful moment this week to observe yourself more closely. How are you standing? Where are your hands? What is your breathing doing? These micro-observations, practiced regularly, create a foundation for greater clarity, confidence and emotional control. The power of tuning in As a society, we often talk about the importance of "reading the room." However, the most emotionally intelligent leaders I've worked with do something even more powerful: they read themselves first. True leaders understand that communication doesn't begin with words — it begins with emotional awareness. And by tuning into their bodies, they gain insight not only into how they're showing up, but why. Remember, emotional intelligence isn't just about understanding other people. It's about knowing yourself well enough to respond with intention and lead with lasting impact. Related: How to Build a Culture of Emotional Intelligence
Fast Company
7 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Reliability is the hidden foundation of enterprise AI success
Most traditional enterprise systems are one-dimensional. They do what they're designed to do—full stop. Once deployed, they either perform or they don't, and when something breaks, you fix it. AI -powered systems are different because they're capable of evolution. Each training run is more than a simple technical iteration; it's a moment of potential emergence. Behavior you didn't explicitly build into your systems can surface as unexpected value, like when a model trained on text suddenly demonstrates multi-step reasoning. That leap is where innovation starts to compound. However, that emergence depends on whether the job completes. When a job fails, what's lost isn't limited to compute or time. The momentum derails, creating a missed opportunity for value to crystallize. This is what I call 'AI compound interest'—the accumulated return on uninterrupted iteration. But that value only builds if each step in the process completes and contributes to the next. Interrupt the chain, and you reset the curve. More than time, recovering that momentum can cost you strategic ground. That's why reliability is more than a technical checkbox. It's key to success. Unfortunately, most leaders overlook the fact that reliability doesn't scale like compute does. A single node with 99.9% uptime seems dependable, but multiply that across 1,000 nodes, and those small gaps add up fast. Teams can tune models, refine pipelines, and optimize every layer, only to lose hours of training to a silent node failure. No failover, no checkpoints—just progress, wiped. This is an operational reality that reveals a core design truth: AI success isn't built on flawless execution. It depends on systems designed to take a hit and keep going. I've seen this play out firsthand. In a past role, my team and I managed a dozen servers under a 99.9% SLA, which allowed for about eight hours of downtime per server, per year. We invested heavily in what we thought was best practice: premium disk controllers, mirrored drives, and 24/7 support contracts. It looked bulletproof. However, when one of those premium controllers failed, it took 48 hours to replace. That single failure obliterated our SLA margin and consumed our operations budget. Meanwhile, the lower-tier components we'd expected to fail never did. The problem wasn't that we were underprepared. We just weren't prepared for the right thing. We'd protected against low-risk threats and missed the higher-impact failure mode entirely. Reliability isn't about covering every edge case. It's about knowing which failures are most likely to cost you, then designing your recovery model around them. NOT EVERY SLA IS BUILT THE SAME Too often, infrastructure decisions are made on the strength of vendor marketing —99.9% uptime, multi-zone distribution, racks of GPU capacity. While those numbers sound concrete, I find that they hide the real-world operational behavior. That's why I started asking, 'What margin exists behind that promise?' For example, if a node fails mid-training, how quickly is it detected and how is the job reassigned? Do they checkpoint progress automatically, or does recovery start from zero? One provider might expect you to build around failure by overprovisioning and absorbing the risk. Another may design failure recovery into the architecture itself, enabling graceful recovery without human intervention. Both may have the same SLA on paper, but they represent a different experience in practice. Another common issue I see is treating training and inference as if they operate within the same reliability domain. Though they're both parts of the AI lifecycle, their operational realities and failure consequences couldn't be more different. Training workloads are long running, highly distributed, and sensitive to synchronization breakdowns. One missed checkpoint can set a project back by hours, even days. Inference, on the other hand, plays out in milliseconds. It's user facing, latency sensitive, and unforgiving. A hiccup in one microservice can instantly ripple out to thousands of users. So when teams apply the same reliability strategy to both, they often end up overcompensating in one area and underestimating risk in another. THE SILENT LIMITER: POWER INFRASTRUCTURE Despite the fact that it governs everything, power is a risk that most leaders don't factor in. At hyperscale, power is a physical constraint. When you initiate a large-scale training run, the sudden spike in energy demand can overload the entire localized infrastructure. That could result in a specific rack of equipment shutting down or, in more extreme cases, an entire section of a data center hall. I've experienced the challenge of diagnosing intermittent failures that present as issues with individual nodes, then turn out to be the result of too much power being drawn at once. That's why I've started advising leaders to treat energy orchestration as a first-class reliability concern, on equal footing with compute and storage. WHAT RELIABILITY REALLY MEANS Too many teams treat reliability like an insurance policy. But in practice, it's something deeper. If AI is going to deliver strategic value, reliability has to be part of the foundation. It's what makes iteration sustainable and ensures the output of today's training cycle becomes the input for tomorrow's breakthrough. It shows up across the board—in the speed at which you can retrain, the confidence your team has to push models into production, and the frequency with which those models ship without rollback. These signals reinforce the same truth: reliability is embedded in how consistently everything works when it matters most. As a leader, it's time to start asking your team, 'Are we building for failure, or reacting to it? Are we compounding our innovation, or constantly clawing it back? When a failure occurs, do we lose models, or just milliseconds?' Because in AI, velocity may get you to the frontier, but only continuity lets you build on it.
New York Times
10 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
MLB's luckiest and unluckiest first-half teams: Time to buy low on the Yankees and Red Sox?
With MLB's All-Star break in the rearview mirror, we're heading into a roughly 10-week, 60-game sprint to the finish, culminating in the start of October baseball. A lot can and will change during that stretch, from the looming trade deadline on July 31 to the usual churn of injuries and hot/cold streaks. And as we've seen time and again, even bad teams can pose as good ones (or vice-versa) over any given 60-game span. Advertisement But one of the biggest factors that can still shape the season is luck: Who has it, who's due for more of it and who might be running out of it. It's uncomfortable to admit this, but randomness plays a huge role in shaping the standings, sometimes accounting for as much as two-thirds of the variation between teams' records. And with fewer dominant teams than usual at the break, this season has been ruled by fortune, good or bad, more than most in recent memory. So what does luck actually look like on the field? Sometimes it's players putting together unexpected career years, though that's harder to untangle from smarter player development in the era of data-driven coaching and scouting. But the most tried-and-true indicators involve teams outperforming their expected records, either by winning more than their run differential suggests (typically thanks to clutch and/or bullpen-driven wins in close games), or by producing more favorable sequencing — clustering hits together to score more runs than expected, or scattering opponents' hits to keep them off the scoreboard. Using FanGraphs' BaseRuns model, which estimates how many runs a team 'should' score and allow based on its raw stats — along with Pythagorean winning percentage to estimate expected record based on run differential — we can break down both types of luck. And once we identify the luckiest and unluckiest teams, we can then dig into whether there are any good buy-low futures opportunities. After converting the run-based effects into wins (using a standard exchange rate), here are the teams that benefited most — and least — from luck in the first half: Luck ranks (more = luckier): Close games 2nd | Offense 10th | Defense 16th We don't mean to downplay the Blue Jays' revival, one of the best stories of the first half. And while Toronto did look like one of the most improved teams of the 2024-25 offseason, it has been hardly lucky in the performance of its headline acquisitions — Andrés Giménez, Anthony Santander, Max Scherzer, etc., all of whom are on track for many fewer WAR than expected. Instead, the Jays' largest source of good fortune has been in converting run differential to wins: at +17 through the break, they were tied for 15th in scoring margin despite having MLB's seventh-best record. Toronto had the league's second-best record (38-21) in games decided by three runs or fewer, including a 17-12 mark in one-run games, but was below .500 (17-20) in games with a margin of at least four runs — a split between close games and blowouts that fueled one of the biggest disparities between a team's actual and Pythagorean records. Advertisement Luck ranks: Close games 4th | Offense 14th | Defense 8th It's bizarre thinking of the Orioles as having been 'lucky' to start the 2025 season — if anything, it's felt like anything that could go wrong would, especially early in the schedule. While Baltimore has been better recently, going 27-18 from late May through the break, its playoff odds remain microscopic. So what's been so lucky? According to the Pythagorean expectation, the O's have the fourth-biggest split between their actual and expected records, thanks to a record 2 games over .500 (12-10) in one-run games and 11 runs below .500 (31-42) in multi-run contests. (Even during that recent eight-week improvement, they ranked 14th in Pythagorean win percentage despite ranking fifth in record.) Add in a pitching/defense corps allowing 13 fewer runs than predicted, and the O's have more than six extra wins compared with what we'd expect from their season-long stats. Luck ranks: Close games 1st | Offense 9th | Defense 21st At 47-49 heading into the ASG break, the Halos found themselves sitting surprisingly close to .500 — a level they haven't reached over a full season in a whole decade (since 2015). Some of that, however, was driven by a huge disparity between their record in one-run games (18-11, fourth best in MLB) and multi-run contests (29-38, seventh worst). Sometimes, massive splits like these can be partly explained by elite relief pitching — but that's not the case for the Angels' bullpen, which ranked 28th in WAR, with closer Kenley Jansen and his setup men rating as average at best by ERA and/or FIP. Another aspect of L.A.'s good fortune was an offense that ranked 19th in scoring despite sitting slightly below that in wRC+ (21st) and hitting WAR (22nd). Although the Angels lost some ground in luck on the other side of the ball, allowing 8.6 more runs than BaseRuns would predict, the net effect was a team that exceeded its expected wins overall. Luck ranks: Close games 7th | Offense 3rd | Defense 12th For the teams above, the majority of their overperformance came from winning more close games than we'd expect from their records in multi-run games. And the Dodgers went into the break with a bit of a split there, but not really too much of one. (Yes, they went 17-11 in 1-run contests, but they also had the league's third-best record in games decided by two or more, at 41-28.) Just as large a contributing factor to their fourth-place showing in the luck column, then, was an offense that scored nearly 20 more runs than expected, thanks to one of the league's largest OPS differentials with two outs and runners in scoring position versus overall, plus a run-prevention unit that benefited from timely stranded runners. (Of their nine most frequently used starters, seven had a left-on-base percentage above the league average.) L.A. has been unlucky in other regards, such as injuries, and it is a team to be feared in the postseason, but some of this run-differential luck might regress by season's end. Luck ranks: Close games 5th | Offense 17th | Defense 9th Like with Baltimore, there's nothing that feels especially fortunate about the way Cleveland's 2025 season has played out: One of the best teams by record a year ago, the Guardians have struggled with their offense and once-dominant bullpen en route to a slightly below .500 record at the break and flagging playoff odds. But somehow, matters could be even worse if they were not 34-25 in games decided by three runs or fewer, versus 12-24 in all other contests — a record that ranked only ahead of the Rockies' abysmal 5-33 tally in such games. And although their luck broke even exactly on offense, Cleveland pitchers allowed 12.4 fewer runs than expected, headlined by LOB percentage rates either at or above average for all six of the Guardians' primary starters. So not only will Cleveland have to overcome a long list of teams ahead of it in the standings, but also it will have to fight off any slowdown from its luck wearing off. Luck ranks (more = luckier): Close games 30th | Offense 16th | Defense 27th The Aaron Boone-era Yankees are a fascinating, ongoing test case in whether luck-based stats like these can ever truly regress back to where we'd expect them to be. On the one hand, I (and others) have been complaining about New York's lack of fundamentals for years, citing them as a primary reason the team doesn't always have the record its talent and underlying stats would predict. However, this year's splits are so pronounced that some kind of positive regression seems inevitable. (An eight-win luck shortfall in 96 games is truly enormous.) The Yankees were just 13-18 in one-run games in the first half, and 18-26 in those decided by two runs or fewer, while they were a league-best 35-17 in games with a margin of three runs or more. Performance in blowouts is a strong predictor of future success, and New York's improvement potential is further bolstered by the fact that pinstriped pitchers have allowed 17.3 more runs than expected via BaseRuns. While some of New York's bad luck may be unfixable, a differential like this is extreme. Advertisement Luck ranks: Close games 23rd | Offense 29th | Defense 28th When it comes to historically good or — in this case — bad teams, it takes luck on top of talent (or the lack thereof). So, although the 2025 Rockies are legitimately one of the worst teams in MLB history, and they'll be a threat down the stretch to challenge the 2024 White Sox's record for most losses in a modern season (at 121), Colorado also rode some misfortune to get to its 22-74 mark at the break. The shortfalls came across the board: The Rockies were the only team in the first half to lose at least two wins of luck from close games (they were predicted to be a marginally less-horrendous 24-72 based on their run differential), two wins of luck from offensive sequencing (their OPS was 17 percent worse with two outs and RISP) and two wins of luck from bunching too many hits on the other side of the ball (no team has a lower rate of stranding runners). This Colorado team would have been in the worst-ever conversation regardless of its luck … but that luck is not doing the Rockies any favors, either. Luck ranks: Close games 29th | Offense 12th | Defense 19th Unlike Colorado, Texas is an example of a team where neutral luck would make a huge difference to the complexion of its season. As things stood at the break, the Rangers went in with a disappointing sub-.500 (48-49) record and playoff odds around 20 percent. But they also had MLB's sixth-best record (22-14) in games decided by four or more runs, despite its sixth-worst record (26-35) in games decided by three runs or fewer — including 14-17 in one-run games specifically — which helps explain why their Pythagorean record of 54-43 would have had them sitting in the American League's first wild-card spot at the break instead of 3.5 games back. The rest of Texas' luck profile is fairly neutral on balance, but its Pythagorean gap makes the team an easy stretch-run improvement pick. Luck ranks: Close games 28th | Offense 27th | Defense 3rd Another of the most disappointing teams in MLB's first half, the Braves have been held back by injuries as much as anything else, but their poor luck metrics are also leaving them in a much worse position than they would be otherwise. The All-Star hosts were six games underwater in their Pythagorean differential at the break, with a huge split between their record in close games (13-24 in one-run games, 17-32 in two-run games) and blowouts (25-21 in games decided by three or more runs). And while their pitchers redeemed them with one of the league's highest strand rates, their batters hit .214 with two outs and RISP, scoring a whopping 22 fewer runs than expected from their overall stats. With the Braves buried in the wild-card standings, will any improvement be far too little, far too late? Luck ranks: Close games 22nd | Offense 11th | Defense 30th It's no surprise that the Red Sox are a baffling team on multiple levels — that's just who they always seem to be. The same club that traded Rafael Devers to the Giants in mid-June, then promptly went 16-9 (including a 10-game win streak going into the break), was also among baseball's unluckiest in the first half. Boston went 12-19 in one-run games (fifth worst in MLB) but 41-26 (second best) in multi-run contests, helping fuel a 2.2-win gap in Pythagorean versus actual records. The Red Sox also allowed a staggering 38.2 more runs than BaseRuns predicted they should have, by far the worst mark in the league — Washington was second worst at -28.8. So, even with an offense that scored 7.8 more runs than expected, the Red Sox came out more than five wins short of projected. As much as their recent dominance feels inexplicable, this is an indicator that it might have more staying power than it seems once the luck straightens itself out. (If the Red Sox were a team that made any sense, that is.) Neil Paine is a freelance writer whose work also appears regularly at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sherwood News and his eponymous Substack. He is the former Sports Editor at FiveThirtyEight, and was also an analytics consultant for the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. Betting/odds links in this article are provided by partners of The Athletic. Restrictions may apply. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication. (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Matthew Grimes Jr. / Getty, Tim Warner / Getty, Katherin Skeean / Getty)
