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Table of Contents
Here’s a clickable Table of Contents that completes the study that I introduced on Monday and of which I did the National League version yesterday.

1. American League Team Scores
2. AL Hitter Scores
3. AL Pitcher Scores
4. Conclusions and a Suggestion

Again, as ever, all charts herein are sortable by category.

 
American League Team Scores
The categories for the team scores were explained in yesterday’s post, so check there if you’ve forgotten how this works.

I did forget to mention that the “Market” numbers refer to a teams position within the entire league, not just the teams considered in this “study” — but that might have been obvious.

The Orioles place at the top of this chart shouldn’t surprise anyone. Despite the fact they have just the third “sweetest” hitter and a negligible pitcher entry, they come out “ahead” based on the fact that they’ve had one of the worst winning percentages of any team in the league, not just the remaining postseason contenders that I looked at for this “study.” They haven’t been to the World Series since 1983, and they certainly haven’t won a playoff series in the last decade. Plus, no argument about it, they have the awesomest cap in MLB.

Since I posted the intro to this series on Monday, many people whose teams are “out of it” have commented that they are adopting the Oakland A’s as their team. I myself am torn between the O’s and the A’s. It was less than ten years ago than Billy Beane put together an 100-win team, and they have a decent regular season record despite a lack of playoff success. Their second-place finish here is bolstered by the fact that the have the second-worst media market of any team in the Majors, and that they have exciting, young players as the base of this surprise contender. Oh, and they themselves have a sweet visual aesthetic.

Was the author biased?

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Table of Contents
Picking up where I said I would today about a very loose “study” that I introduced yesterday.

Here’s a clickable Table of Contents, so that you can skip over any crap you want to skip, or skip to other crap as you see fit. I put the Team Scores first for convenience.

All charts herein are sortable by category.

1. National League Team Scores
2. NL Hitter Scores
3. NL Pitcher Scores
4. Conclusions and a Suggestion

 
National League Team Scores
In the chart below, “PSA” is the team’s most recent postseason appearance, “DT” is most recent division title, “WSA” is most recent World Series appearance, “PSV” is postseason series victories in the last ten years (2002-2011), “W%” is regular season winning percentage in the last ten seasons (2002-2011), “Market” is the market size that the team has (per these rankings), H-Score is they score assigned their sweetest hitter, and P-Score is the same for the sweetest pitcher. Finally, “Score” is a combination of all of the above, using the rotisserie scoring method.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, on the strength of the worst ten-year winning percentage of the teams in question, edge out the Washington Nationals.

It’s worth noting, I think, that in “beta version” of this same study, the Nationals were ahead of the Pirates. That version included most recent World Series Win and most recent postseason series win, which heavily weighted things toward the Nats, who, as a franchise, have never won a playoff series. I opted to replace those two with postseason victories in the past ten years, which maybe I shouldn’t have done. Sorry.

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There’s been a good bit of press coverage about Matt Treanor and his wife Misty May-Treanor, who won the gold in beach volleyball last week, for the third consecutive Olympic Games. The LA Times writes about Treanor’s tearful reaction here.

But there was very little MLB-related coverage of her volleyball partner, Kerri Walsh Jennings, and her husband, Desmond Jennings of the Tampa Bay Rays.

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I told readers in a recent post that if you followed me on Twitter, I’d check out your blog. Let’s call this post the first in a series that will take a look at some NotGraphs reader blogs and point you toward some interesting things I find. If you’d like to potentially be included in a future post, it’s easy.

There have been about thirty blogs for me to check out so far, so if I don’t get to yours immediately, it doesn’t mean I won’t. I am tempted to add that if you want me to link to your blog, it would help if the blog is written in English. But, based on the blog I’m about to link to, it may actually help if the blog isn’t written in English.

1000 Ballgame Ways is the first blog I’ve ever seen that posts all of the Rangers’ FanGraphs game graphs and then writes about them in Japanese. Google Translate helps me to understand what seems to be an analysis of Yu Darvish’s chances for the Rookie of The Year award:

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This is an introductory bit to a “study” that will manifest over the next couple of days at NotGraphs.

The Aim of the So-Called “Study”
What it aims to do is guide readers (and thus, baseballing fanatics) who might otherwise feel ambivalent to results these waning days of Major League Baseball’s regular season and during the postseason especially. It seeks to guide such readers towards enthusiasm for a team or teams for which they would not have otherwise have had enthusiasm for in said waning days.

I don’t guarantee, of course, that if you are one of the aforementioned ambivalent parties, that this “study” will be imbue a new energy to you. I cannot ensure that the “findings” or any suggestions that I might make based on the findings will be surprising or insightful, merely that they will be interesting or fun. Further, I am aware that some of you will not like whatever these findings — or their author — suggest, because you, like almost all fans, I imagine, will be prejudiced against certain teams to begin with, or because you will disagree with my methodology, or because you dislike me, or because you dislike your life and thus dislike most things that comprise it.

Rather, this “study,” while it aims to direct ambivalent readers towards energetic fanaticism once again, mostly aims to provide fun info.
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It’s been way too long since we did this. For today’s installment (difficulty level = 7), we mangle the title of a well-known poem.

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Over the weekend, Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to be his running mate on the Republican ticket. I wish to make the case that Romney chose the wrong Ryan.

Paul Ryan: Wisconsin (10 electoral votes)
Nolan Ryan: Texas (38 electoral votes)

Paul Ryan: Chairs the House Budget Committee
Nolan Ryan: Owns a major league baseball team

Paul Ryan: Early jobs included camp counselor, Oscar Mayer Weinermobile driver (seriously, if Wikipedia is to be believed), mail-opening intern, and marketing consultant for a construction company owned by his relatives
Nolan Ryan: Early jobs included pitcher, pitcher, and [Edited to add: Not A] Cy Young Award-winning pitcher [but still a pretty awesome pitcher anyway].

Paul Ryan: Has won 7 elections to Congress
Nolan Ryan: Threw 7 no-hitters

Paul Ryan: One of three founders of “Young Guns” program
Nolan Ryan: Threw fastest reliably recorded pitch ever, at 100.9 MPH [if we ignore Aroldis Chapman, which whatever source I looked at did. Argh.]

Paul Ryan: Makes his own bratwurst and polish sausage
Nolan Ryan: Struck out 5,714 major league baseball players

George W. Bush on Paul Ryan: “This is a strong pick.”
George W. Bush on Nolan Ryan: “Nolan Ryan is one of the greatest pitchers of all time and an excellent role model in sports. He’s living proof that dreams do come true- for anyone with the courage and dedication to work hard to achieve their dream.”

Many of you have surely wondered: why don’t women play more baseball? Here the legendary Babe Ruth, staunch fitness advocate and tireless sports educator, tackles that question with all the diplomacy and sophistication you’d expect. The answer, as it turns out, is that women are hopelessly ignorant, uncoordinated, vain, distractible, and handicapped at every turn by their fat sisters. But however futile his efforts to mold the fairer sex, Ruth’s wisdom shines through for the rest of us, in such pearls of hard-won baseball insight as:

On pitching: “So you wind up, and when you throw it, just follow your arm right through.”

On hitting: “I’ve often been asked the difference between a baseball swing and a golf swing…Notice that the stance at the start of both swings is alike…The follow-through in both is exactly alike.”

On fielding: “On a slow ground ball like this, an infielder runs in at full speed, and throws the ball. He must be very accurate with his throw.”

And to think how close this came, this priceless window into a master’s craft, to being consigned to the dustbin of history! Watch, gentle readers, and learn! And if, by some misfortune, you happen to be female — fear not! We, like the Babe, will be there to snatch you from the jaws of failure.

Joe Mauer defines GIF, in regards to this foul tip by the Indians’ Shelley Duncan, as Getit Inda Froat.

Back in the early days of the Internet (2002), I was a law student with a weblog. I remember looking many times a day at my SiteMeter statistics page, hoping someone would have discovered my blog, linked to it, and sent dozens of new readers my way. A book I just read last week insists that the Internet is not a meritocracy, and there are far too many manipulative marketers at work in the background for actually-worthwhile content to rise to the top. (I don’t think this argument is entirely true, but most of the book was pretty compelling, and worth checking out if you’re interested in why some things go viral and how you can manipulate the system to give your content a better shot.)

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