Should’ve just included this in the previous post, but oh well.
Here’s looking at each team’s hitting ability. No defense is taken into account for this.
Sorted by average overall. Same concept as pitchers, just a different version of an overall rating like WIS uses that I developed.
Season 24 kicked off today, so it’s probably about time to look at how teams stack up on paper.
Here’s the power rankings of starting pitchers. For a pitcher to be considered a starter, the team’s owner had to have had him in the starting rotation, as judged by the “Player Search —> starters” tool.
For those new to the world, I have a set of formulas built into spreadsheets that I use to judge players on. It’s the same formula I use to determine trades and free agent signings for my own team. So that’s probably why I’m near the top, not that I don’t have good pitchers or anything. Average WAR is what I would expect each pitcher to contribute in terms of wins above a replacement player in WIS. Average OVR is just my own overall rating that works better than WIS’ in my opinion. The column this is sorted by is “Overall,” which is the total projected WAR for the starters on each team because rotation size typically doesn’t stray too far from five usually.
It turns out that Tacoma has, on paper, a better rotation than I currently do.
As you can also see, Montreal and Tampa Bay only have two starters as of tonight, and St. Louis has three.
Here are the relievers:
Same concept as starters, except sorted by average WAR as bullpen size can vary depending on personal preferences.
Sorry this is late. I had hoped to get this up sometime before award voting was done, but a number of events conspired to prevent me from doing so. Here are the top five for each league, as well as team ratings that are used as one half of the team power rankings later.
American League
1. Olmedo Oliva – DET – 8.0
2. Mike Lawrie – NY1 – 6.5
3. Willie Rooney – SAL – 6.4
4. Ossie Borchard – SAL – 5.9
5. Albert Granados – SEA – 5.2
Season 23 Cy Young Winner Jody DuBose was around 16th in the AL with 3.9.
National League
1.Malcolm McCartin – COL – 10.2
2. Harry Perez – TAC – 6.6
3. Don Carter – TAC – 6.3
4. Willie Ellis – LOU – 6.2
5. Emmanuel Estrada – TAC – 6.1
As you can see, McCartin accounted for about 28 percent of Colorado’s pitching performance by himself this year. In the two years in Colorado he’s contributed 20.9 wins above replacement, and been paid $45 million, meaning each win he puts up cost amohoop34 $2.15 million. From stuff I’ve read about MLB, each win on the free agent market costs about $2.5 million. Translate that into HBD and McCartin should have been paid more than $50 million in those two years. We’ll see how his body holds up in the remaining years of the contract, but right now he’s been an unbelievable bargain.
Something new to the blog, well in terms of actually receiving a dedicated post rather than being lumped in with quarter three WAR numbers. Below is a shortlist of players that SHOULD be considered for awards, not ultimately what WIS will give us for votes. This is all based on data about 118-120 games into the season, so these are all subject to change. There is going to be an obvious front runner in each based off the data, but I will update these at the end of the season along with who I’m voting for.
*Note, for ease of posting, I’m not going to link to players. I trust you’ll be able to find them.
AL MVP
1. Howard Blake – DH – SEA – 5.8
2. Julio Rivera – LF – MIN – 5.5
3. Don Meng – DH- RIC – 5.5
4. Ivan Baez – SS – MEM – 5.1
5. Ewell Torrealba – 2B – MEM – 5.1
My thoughts: Do I think Blake is going to win the MVP when he wasn’t even an All-Star? Probably not. I think this will come down to Rivera, Baez or Torrealba.
NL MVP
1. Bing Tannehill – 2B – AUS – 5.4
2. Sid O’Keefe – 2B – TAC – 5.3
3. Richard Flores – C – WAS – 5.2
4. Jonathan Todd – 1B – LOU – 4.8
5. Heathcliff Dorsey – 2B – BUF – 4.5
My thoughts: This is going to come down to O’Keefe and Flores(if he even gets on the list). Tanneheill is a little below average fielding, and is boosted a tad by stolen bases. Flores has been really solid behind the plate this year.
AL Cy Young
1. Olemdo Oliva – DET – 6.2
2. Willie Rooney – SAL – 4.3
3. Mike Lawrie – NY1 – 4.3
4. Albert Grandados – SEA – 4.0
5. Ossie Borchard – SAL – 3.9
My thoughts: Oliva in a landslide. It’d be interesting to see where the Highlanders would be if Rooney was still on their team. Also, AL wins leader Jody Dubose (19) is at 2.0 giving further credence to the fact that wins are overrated.
NL Cy Young
1. Malcolm McCartin – COL – 6.9
2. Don Carter – TAC – 5.4
3. Harry Perez – TAC – 5.2
4. Willie Ellis – LOU – 4.6
5. Carlos Nieves – TRE – 4.4
My thoughts: I’ve lost count on how many Cy Young’s McCartin has won, but he’ll add to the trophy cabinet this year.
Rookie of the Year
I’m not going to try and find out which players have less than one year of service time and are eligible for this.
AL Gold Glove
C – Del Martin – MEM
1B – Esmerling Vazquez – BAL
2B – Alexi Balentien – SCO
3B – Rich Mattingly – NY1
SS – Tony Olivares – NO
LF – Cookie Albaladejo – CLE
CF – Alex Buhner – BAL
RF – Denny Scales – RIC
NL Gold Glove
C – Richard Flores – WAS
1B – Edgard Batista – TRE
2B – Heathcliff Dorsey – BUF
3B – Al Barrios – BUF
SS – Vasco Camacho – BUF
LF – Jay Jones – TRE
CF – Mikey Governale – ATL
RF – Damaso Marquez – KC
I would try to do Silver Sluggers at the moment, but the way my spreadsheet is setup it’d have to be if a player played at least 1 inning at a position he would show up at that position. So I’m going to wait until the end of the season to do them.
A little late, and I skipped the halfway point power rankings, but nevertheless, here they are.
Below is a the quarter one power rankings. Bat WAR and Pitch WAR are replacement adjusted, the three middle ones are averages and not replacement adjusted.
Offered without comment.
I was bored while watching the Stanley Cup game, and the girlfriend is out of town for the week. So I thought about how could Kansas City, who is admittedly tanking, could’ve built a team that was better, at a somewhat similar cost.
Below is the team I came up with, from readily available players in the world. For the sake of this exercise I defined “readily available” as any player over 27 years old, in the minor leagues, and under $2 million. I’m sure the owners of these guys wouldn’t demand too much in a trade.
I guarantee that this team would perform better than Kansas City
C: Keith Stockton – SAL – $327k
1B: Robert Damon – SYR – $327k
2B: Logan Bradley – CLE – $1.6 mil
3B: Dewayne Brooks – WAS – $725k
SS: Javy Lee – RIC – $327k
LF: Ronald Terrell – LA – $327k
CF: Michel Contreras – DET – $327k
RF: Chuck Simms – SEA – $360k
BSS: Ramiro Iglesias – TRE – $327k
BC: Gerrit O'Brien – BUF – $327k
PH: Esmailyn Lugo – TRE – $327k
PH: Ryan Redman – ATL – $343k
PH: Bernard Adcock – JAC – $327k
SP: Alfredo Santiago – JAX – $327k
SP: Phil Teahen – LR – $327k
SP: Roger Davis – JAC – $343k
SP: Jin Ho Koh – HAR – $327K
SP: Darryl Knapp – MIN – $327k
RP: Rafael Romero – SCO – $515k
RP: Jimmy Simon – HAR – $765k
RP: Andy Brooks – HON – $378k
RP: Marcus Ransom – BUF – $327k
RP: Douglas Ford – NY1 – $327k
RP: Wilt Rivers – AUS – $327k
RP: Fernando Lee – HON – $327k
Total Cost: $10.6 million
I think a lot of us suspected Kansas City was in the start of blowing up his team and tanking for a couple of seasons. Only time will tell if that’s the ultimate direction, but holy hell does it sure look like it right now.
The worst rotation in the league by two points, the second worst bullpen, and the worst batters by a whopping five overall points. Yes, my overall rating is very subjective, but it’s based on solid overall statistical projections for batters.
No offense to Buffalo, but the Wings destroyed Kansas City 26- 7 during the opening series, and they didn’t exactly put up much of a fight against Tacoma. Their one win so far was more of a fluke than anything;Donn Christians got lucky while Harry Perez had some poor defense behind him.
Currently Kansas City has a total major league payroll of $13 million. Only three players make more than the major league minimum, and one (Dave Witte) just got designated for assignment despite being arguably the third best position player on the team to make way for a THE worst player in the majors (Charlie Callaway) at second base. I rate Callaway as a -1.6 WAR player over the course of 600 PAs, and that’s if he hits his projections of a .503 OPS and a .243 wOBA. At least the guy can play a lick of defense. Yes, I did say Callaway is the worst player in the majors right now by my measures, right behind Huston Kielty. Sidenote: Kietly’s WARs the last four seasons: .056, .022, .446, and -1.32.
This is even before we get to players like Tom Dalrymple, Victor Pastornicky, Vic Borbon, Damaso Marquez, and David Crow holding down everyday starting jobs in the field. Out of those five guys only one, Crow, I predict will have a positive WAR come the end of the season.
Let’s get into pitching.
There are currently, as of tonight’s PM2 cycle, 161 pitchers listed as starters. Guess who has three of the worst 10?
Obviously the answer is Kansas City.
This is how I rank the KC starters:
Rico Manzanillo: 133
Quinton Slowey: 147
Paulie Buford: 152
Donn Christians: 160
Alving Juarez: 161
Remember the five “tiers” I outlined with the pitching ranks? All five KC starters are in that last tier, which I defined as marginal major leaguers/life time AAA.
I’m not even going to bother talking about relievers, because what’s the point?
It’s obvious he’s tanking.
Just like the pitching rankings, here is the batter rankings. This is just based on a team’s average hitting ability, with no fielding ratings taken into account because of the effect actual position played has on whether a player is a good fielder or not. It’s one thing to have 80/80/80/80 at SS, but entirely different to have that player at 3b.
Minnesota and Washington should fall back to the pack once they fill out their rosters.
I forgot which formula I based the overall number off of, whether it was OBP, SLG, or OPS, but knowing my mindset when I created it last year, it’s probably OPS.
So now we know the relative strengths of each team’s starting rotation, bullpen, and hitters, which leads me into me next blog post…
Vin Scully 