It’s good to be king, as Max and Felix Hernandez both know. FiFi says he’s a Mariner for life, but what about after? Why, after, he’ll join the All-Time Royalty All-Stars. And probably win a few more games. (Peak single-season WAR listed for batters, lowest single-season FIP- for pitchers.)
UPDATE: Thanks to alert readers for reminding me of “Rajah” Hornsby and “Burger” King.
Vote for your favorite! Or write your own, and I’ll share the best tomorrow!
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.
| Team | PSA | WSA | DT | PSV | W% | Market | H-Score | P-Score | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baltimore Orioles | 1997 | 1983 | 1997 | 0 | 0.430 | 24 | 36 | 26.5 | 54 |
| Oakland Athletics | 2006 | 1990 | 2006 | 1 | 0.526 | 29 | 36.5 | 32 | 51 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 2011 | 2008 | 2010 | 2 | 0.464 | 28 | 33 | 33.5 | 41 |
| Chicago White Sox | 2008 | 2005 | 2008 | 3 | 0.522 | 10 | 27 | 38 | 38.5 |
| Detroit Tigers | 2011 | 2006 | 2011 | 3 | 0.463 | 12 | 26 | 30.5 | 31 |
| LA Angels of A | 2009 | 2002 | 2009 | 7 | 0.561 | 5 | 49 | 24 | 30.5 |
| Texas Rangers | 2011 | 2011 | 2011 | 4 | 0.505 | 8 | 27.5 | 44 | 26 |
| New York Yankees | 2011 | 2009 | 2011 | 7 | 0.602 | 1 | 29 | 30.5 | 16 |
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?
I had a great idea for a post, where I would assemble a baseball team using only members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and fictionalize a team meeting in the club house.
A great idea, no doubt. And so original! Surely, no one had considered transplanting hip-hop artists into a baseball team. What brilliance!
However, just to make sure, I did what any good writer in constant fear of being called a plagiarizer does. I Googled it.
Lo and behold, someone had thought of this premise before. Also, they executed it far better than I could have.
I have been a voyeur of Flip Flop Fly Ball for some time, though this post slipped through my fingers.
This infographic, outlining a fictitious game between the aforementioned Clan and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, is beyond terrific. Clicking the above hyperlink will bring you to the original post, complete with play-by-play. Take note that the umpires are the members of Led Zeppelin.
I love this so much, you guys. Bless you, baseball nerds.
The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):
Presented without comment, except for the present comment.
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.
| Team | PSA | DT | WSA | PSV | W% | Market | H-Score | P-Score | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 1992 | 1992 | 1979 | 0 | 0.418 | 22 | 34 | 36.5 | 54.5 |
| Washington Nationals | 1981 | N/A | N/A | 0 | 0.448 | 9 | 32 | 46 | 51.5 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 2010 | 2010 | 1990 | 0 | 0.475 | 25 | 35.5 | 44 | 46 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 2009 | 2009 | 1988 | 2 | 0.526 | 7 | 38 | 31 | 36.5 |
| Atlanta Braves | 2010 | 2005 | 1999 | 0 | 0.549 | 11 | 33.5 | 17.5 | 32.5 |
| San Francisco Giants | 2010 | 2010 | 2010 | 5 | 0.523 | 14 | 30.5 | 30.5 | 25.5 |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 2011 | 2011 | 2001 | 1 | 0.486 | 17 | 28 | 25.5 | 24.5 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 2011 | 2009 | 2011 | 10 | 0.556 | 19 | 22.5 | 15 | 17 |
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.
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.
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:
For some reason, this seemed like a baseball thing.
You know what. With a slight tweak, it really IS kind of baseball-y.
