One of the most frequently asked questions of the 2006 baseball season is this: What’s wrong with the Indians? The answer is: not quite as much as you might gather from their place in the standings.

Certainly they have had their problems. A bullpen that was one of the best in the majors last year is now one of the very worst. Their starting pitchers haven’t had the same sort of decline as the relievers, but they are allowing more runs per start than they were in 2005. Also, the Indians’ third basemen have been abysmal.

Aside from St. Louis’s catchers, they are the worst performing single team position (out of 254) of any in the major leagues. Aaron Boone has the majority of playing time there and he, along with his slow-starting heir apparent Andy Marte and a couple of others are a combined .234 AVG/.300 OBA/.336 SLG. Shortstop Jhonny Peralta, who, last year, seemed poised to remind us of the days of the great shortstop triumvirate of the 1990s, has fallen on hard times as well.

Every team has underperformers, though, but not every team has a hitter the likes of Travis Hafner, arguably the most productive bat in the American League, to compensate for them. The Indians also have one of baseball’s best centerfielders at the plate in Grady Sizemore, and one of the better hitting catchers in the game in Victor Martinez. Throw in a surprise offensive outpouring from 32-year-old Casey Blake, and there’s plenty there to offset the shortcomings in the lineup.

Of course, not all won-loss records are created equal. Two .500 teams can arrive at their records by vastly different means. One of them can have outscored their opponents by a good number of runs while the other could have done just the opposite.The Boston Red Sox, for instance, have a 15-game lead on Cleveland in the wild card standings while scoring and allowing nearly the same amount of runs. Taking into account runs scored and runs allowed, as well as the quality of the opponents’ offense, pitching, and defense, is a much more accurate picture of a team’s performance than the won-loss column. In the case of the Indians, their won-loss record is over 12 games lower than expected.

That is a very significant number, as getting into double figures in this case is rare. Only 18 teams have ever underperformed by more than 10 games and just a dozen teams have overperformed by that much, with the 2004 Yankees being the most recent club to do so. If the Indians record holds, it would be the third-worst underperformance ever.

In the chart to to the right, you’ll see the 18 teams that fell the furthest below expectations, starting with the infamous “Worst Team Money Could Buy” 1993 Mets. The first column is their actual winning percentage in the year of their discontent. The second column is what they did the following season and the third column is the difference between the two:

The ’93 Mets real claim to fame should be as the team that most underperformed its run projection, but it’s hard to fit that on a pennant. Of the 18, only one — the 1984 Pirates — failed to improve the following year and only a few more failed to improve significantly.Two teams on this list won the pennant the following year: the 1933 Giants and the 1906 Cubs, the team with the highest regular season winning percentage since 1901. On average, these clubs improved by about 100 points, which is certainly good news for the 2007 version of the Indians.

So how does this happen? In Cleveland’s case, they have a very poor record in one-run games. They also have the worst team ERA in situations defined as “close and late.” It should be pointed out, though; they don’t have as many of those situations as do other teams. The average team has found itself in close and late confrontations in 77 games, while the Indians have been there in just 64. One of the reasons for this is because the Indians often win very big. On 12 separate occasions this season they have gotten into double figures while holding their opponent to three or fewer runs. The combined score of those games is 157–19. Conversely, they’ve only lost three games by such parameters for a total of 35–8. That’s a surefire way to skew a run projection.

Does this mean the Indians get a free pass in the off-season knowing they’ll improve simply by standing pat? Not necessarily. Armed with this knowledge though, they will be aware that their season was not the disaster it appeared to be and wholesale changes do not have to be made, at least on the offensive side. Taking steps toward making their bullpen at least as good as the league average would do a lot to guarantee that they, like the majority of the super underperformers before them, will get their desserts next year.

Mr. Baker is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art analysis, visit baseballprospectus.com.