Series preview: Detroit at Pittsburgh, and both of these teams should have more wins than this
Detroit at Pittsburgh. Monday 7:05pm, Tuesday 6:40pm, Wednesday 12:35pm ET, at PNC Park. The call: Detroit takes 2 of 3.
Two teams walk into a series in the third week of August. One has won 60 and lost 63. The other has won 60 and lost 65. Detroit is half a game outside the last wild card, Pittsburgh is 6.5 back of one, and neither club is where it wanted to be.
What they have in common is stranger than the records. Take every club's runs scored and runs allowed, run them through the formula that turns a run differential into an expected win total, and these are the 2 teams with the biggest holes between the wins they have and the wins they should have.
| Record | Runs scored | Runs allowed | Expected wins | Gap | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit | 60-63 | 560 | 475 | 70.7 | -10.7 |
| Boston | 66-57 | 546 | 460 | 71.1 | -5.1 |
| Pittsburgh | 60-65 | 625 | 600 | 64.8 | -4.8 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 49-75 | 507 | 590 | 53.5 | -4.5 |
| Washington | 60-65 | 667 | 648 | 64.2 | -4.2 |
Detroit is the worst in baseball and the worst in the American League. Pittsburgh is 3rd in baseball and the worst in the National League. Between them that is 15.5 wins the arithmetic says exist and the standings say do not.
That is the hook, and I want to take it apart before anybody gets attached to it.
More than half the time somebody is this unlucky and nothing is wrong
Here is the test. Give all 30 clubs exactly the quality their own run differentials say they have, so that by construction nobody is over or underperforming anything. Play out each club's actual number of games as a weighted coin, 20,000 times, and each time look at how far below expectation the unluckiest team in that simulated league landed.
A shortfall at least as big as Detroit's shows up in 55 percent of those seasons. Not 5 percent. More than half. And the average number of clubs finishing at or below Pittsburgh's 4.8 is 5.7 per season, which is to say being the National League's biggest underachiever is something that happens to somebody every year and this year it is them.
The arithmetic nobody does is this. Over 123 games, the ordinary wobble in a coin weighted at Detroit's quality is about 5.5 wins. Detroit sits 1.95 of those below the line, which is a real dip and is not a scandal. Then you go looking for the worst of 30 teams, and the worst of 30 draws off a bell curve sits about 2 wobbles out by construction, because that is what taking a minimum does to a distribution.
"Biggest gap in baseball" sounds like a fact about a team. It is mostly a fact about the number 30.
What is genuinely different is the shape, and these 2 have opposite ones
The lazy version of this preview says neither team can win a close game. Only one of them cannot.
| Margin | Detroit | Pittsburgh |
|---|---|---|
| 1 run | 12-21 | 17-14 |
| 2 or 3 runs | 17-25 | 10-24 |
| 4 or more | 31-17 | 33-27 |
Detroit is 12-21 in 1-run games, 2nd worst in baseball behind San Francisco, and 31-17 when the margin is 4 or more, which is 5th best. That is a team that wins what it was always going to win and loses whatever comes down to one inning. The usual suspect is right there in the box: 25 saves in 51 chances, 49 percent, 26 blown.
Pittsburgh has a winning record in 1-run games, 17-14. Their hole is one bucket over. 10-24 in games decided by 2 or 3 runs is the worst mark in baseball and it is not close, with the Angels next at 11-23.
I do not have a story for that and I am not going to invent one. Nobody manages toward the 2-run game the way a manager manages toward a save, there is no role attached to it, and 34 games is a small enough pile that the same simulation says some club finishes at or below Pittsburgh's .294 in 13 percent of seasons by chance alone. Their bullpen converts at 54.5 percent, which is bad, and is still better than Detroit's.
They are mirror images, which is the real reason to watch
| Runs scored per game | Rank | Runs allowed per game | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pittsburgh | 5.00 | 3rd | 4.80 | 24th |
| Detroit | 4.55 | 12th | 3.86 | 5th |
Pittsburgh has the 3rd best offense in baseball and the 7th worst run prevention. Detroit has the 5th best run prevention and a middling offense. Detroit's starters carry a 3.39 ERA over 637.2 innings; Pittsburgh's carry 4.39 over 628. Pittsburgh has scored 65 more runs than Detroit this season and allowed 125 more.
Two clubs built the opposite way from each other, arriving at the same 60 wins in the same week, both short of what their own numbers promised.
Wednesday is Paul Skenes and the first 2 are a mystery
Pittsburgh has not posted probables for Monday or Tuesday. Wednesday is Skenes: 3.88 ERA in 25 starts, 11.09 strikeouts per 9, WHIP 1.12. The ERA is higher than the reputation and the strikeout rate says the reputation is fine.
Detroit gets him in a 12:35pm getaway game with a lineup missing Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter, Matt Vierling and James Outman, which is 4 outfielders, and that is the game in this series I would least like to have to win.
The 2 clubs have not met at all this season and have not played since July 23 2025, a 6-1 Pittsburgh win. Nobody has a book on anybody. Detroit is 28-33 on the road, Pittsburgh 31-31 at home, so PNC is not doing either side a favour.
The call
Detroit takes 2 of 3. The pitching gap is the largest single thing in this series, Detroit allows almost a run a game less than Pittsburgh does, and 2 of the 3 starters on the other side are still unnamed, which is exactly the spot where I would rather own the better staff than the better lineup.
What scares me is the whole middle of this piece. Detroit does not have an offense that puts games away, it is 4 outfielders short, and the same arithmetic that makes them the unluckiest team in baseball also says that title goes to somebody every year and usually means nothing. If these 3 games each come down to a run, I have picked the club that has lost 21 of them.
Sources: MLB Stats API, pulled 2026-08-16, for both clubs' standings, runs scored and allowed, game-by-game results back to opening day, all 30 clubs' records by margin of victory, starter and reliever splits, save conversions, the season schedule between the 2 teams and Skenes' season line. Every figure here, the chart, and both 20,000-league simulations come from one run of scripts/underperformers.py.
Not betting advice. Just calls, made in public and kept in public.
Got a Detroit number you want looked at? Email projectunmuted@proton.me and it gets looked at properly. A stat somebody quoted that smells wrong, a thing you have always assumed about one of these 4 teams and have never seen checked. Every question that arrives is listed with its answer, including the ones where the answer is no.