Thoughts from Diamond Mind

Thoughts from Diamond Mind

Welcome to the Diamond Mind weblog. For a while, we've been looking for the best way to publish small pieces of baseball commentary and research, items that may not warrant a full article (such as the ones we've been writing for ESPN.com since 1998) or items that would be outdated by the time our next email newsletter is due to be issued. A weblog seems perfectly suited to this purpose, and we hope you enjoy what you read here.

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Thursday, September 25, 2003

2003's best offense, Win Shares version

After reading our post from two days ago, Andy Cox shared the following analysis with us:

I'm glad you brought up the Atlanta offense flying under the radar. I had noticed this during the second half while following the 2003 win share calculations at http://www.baseballgraphs.com/winshares/ (see the Team Spreadsheet link).

If you believe in the general concept of win shares and the accuracy of these calculations, Atlanta's offense is on pace to be one of the best ever, while Boston's, albeit record-setting, is not quite as good.

The Top 20 all-time offenses, as cited in the Win Shares book are:
1932 New York Yankees    185.37
1913 Philadelphia A’s    185.10
1928 New York Yankees    181.45
2001 Seattle Mariners    181.04
1930 New York Yankees    179.70

1933 New York Yankees    178.89
1962 L.A. Dodgers        178.36
1976 Cincinnati Reds     178.09
1964 Milwaukee Braves    177.92
1982 Milwaukee Brewers   177.57

1927 New York Yankees    175.74
1914 Philadelphia A’s    174.72
1954 New York Yankees    174.68
1953 Brooklyn Dodgers    174.58
1975 Cincinnati Reds     173.20

1931 New York Yankees    172.82
1998 New York Yankees    171.46
1962 S.F. Giants         170.10
2000 S.F. Giants         169.76
1986 New York Mets       169.56
As of September 21, the Braves were on pace for 175.92 offensive win shares, ranking them 11th just above the legendary 1927 Yankees. Boston is currently on pace for "only" 159.64 offensive Win Shares.

Some of this difference could be explained by the slightly lower win count (91 vs. 97) based largely on the Sox bullpen; Boston has slightly more marginal runs than Atlanta (517 to 510). Even after changing 6 Sox losses to wins (giving 18 additional shares to distribute), the Braves still have a slight edge.

Win Shares, for those of you who may not be familiar with the idea, is an approach developed by Bill James and explained in detail in his 2002 book. Bill takes each team's actual number of wins, divides the responsibility for those wins between offense and pitching/defense, and then apportions the offensive wins among the hitters.

The offense vs pitching/defense split isn't always the same. A team with mediocre hitters and mediocre pitchers will split the Win Shares more evenly. A team with great hitters and lousy pitchers will have a larger share of its Win Shares go the offense. So an offensive juggernaut can still rack up a lot of Win Shares even if it is saddled with a terrible pitching staff.

To make the numbers a little easier to work with, Bill decided to express things as Win Shares, which are wins times three, rather than wins or fractions thereof. So a team with 100 wins has 300 Win Shares to be split among the players.

If a team wins more or fewer games than normal given its run margin, the Win Shares go up or down accordingly. For instance, Atlanta has four more wins than the pythagorean method predicts, so it has 12 more Win Shares available to its players. That's partly what Andy was getting at with his comment about adjusting for the difference in team wins.

We don't have the time or space to do a full critique of the Win Shares method here. I've read Bill's book a couple of times, and it's a very interesting idea, but I haven't had time to study the method in enough detail to form an opinion about whether it's the best way to rank offenses from different eras.

In any case, I thought you'd find it to be a useful addition to the methods I used in the Tuesday post, and I thank Andy very much for taking the time to pull this together.

posted by Tom at 9:55 AM

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

2003's best offense

I'm not sure why I didn't notice this before, but it's possible that the much-talked-about Red Sox don't have this year's best lineup. Another team with Boston roots, the Atlanta Braves, may be better.

Through 9/21, Boston leads the majors with 3298 total bases plus walks (TBW). Atlanta, with 3141, isn't far behind, and the difference is small enough that it could easily be explained by park factors and the designated hitter.

Boston has gotten a lot of attention, and rightly so. Here's are some of the reasons why:

they lead the league in OPS with an amazing 43-point cushion on the #2 team
they recently broke the all-time record for extra-base hits in a season
they're on pace to set a new record for doubles in a season
they're on pace to produce more TBW (3447) than any team in history
on a per-game basis, which levels the playing field for teams who played a 154-game schedule or missed games due to labor stoppages, Boston (with 21.28 TBW per game) ranks first among the DH-era AL teams and fourth among all teams in the modern era (1901-present)
for much of the season, they were on pace to score 1000 runs

But Atlanta has a very good offensive resume, too:

they lead the league in OPS with a 23-point cushion on a very good Cardinals team
they're on pace for 239 homers, a figure that would tie them for 11th all-time; take out the DH teams and they'd be 2nd all-time (behind the 2000 Astros, who got a big boost from their home park that year)
on a per-game basis, Atlanta's 20.14 TBW per game ranks 15th in the modern era (1901-present) among teams in non-DH leagues

Who's better? To get a handle on this, we need to make three adjustments:

Turner Field has been pretty neutral this year, but Fenway has been a very good park for hitters, as usual. Using park factors derived from games through the end of August, I figure the Red Sox have gotten a boost of about 80 TBW from their park.
Comparing Boston's DHs to Atlanta's pitchers, I figure the Red Sox gain another 130 TBW.
Through 9/21, Atlanta has played one more game, so let's add 21 TBW to the Boston total.

Boston's adjusted TBW figure becomes 3298 - 80 - 130 + 21 = 3109, a little less than Atlanta's total of 3141.

On the other hand, Boston is scoring runs at 122% of the league-average rate, while Atlanta is only at 115% of the NL average, and the Fenway factor isn't big enough to make up that difference.

In the past decade, the NL has been trending toward hitter's parks. The new stadiums in Colorado, Arizona, Houston, Milwaukee, and San Juan have narrowed the scoring gap between the AL and NL. (I know, I know, everyone says the AL parks are smaller, but I just don't buy it.) It's harder to be certain with the unbalanced schedule, but my conclusion is that Atlanta has a small road-park edge over the Red Sox.

Let's compare the starters (stats through 9/21):

    Boston         OPS    Atlanta      OPS
c   Varitek       .866    Lopez      1.071
1b  Millar        .813    Fick        .751
2b  Walker        .749    Giles       .929
3b  Mueller       .945    Castilla    .772
ss  Garciaparra   .873    Furcal      .791
lf  Ramirez      1.017    CJones      .919
cf  Damon         .755    AJones      .851
rf  Nixon         .979    Sheffield  1.021
dh  DOrtiz        .931
p                         ROrtiz      .694

It might be a little easier to see how they stack up if we put them in a batting order:

    Boston         OPS    Atlanta      OPS
1   Damon         .755    Furcal      .791
2   Walker        .749    Giles       .929
3   Garciaparra   .873    Sheffield  1.021
4   Ramirez      1.017    CJones      .919
5   DOrtiz        .931    AJones      .851
6   Millar        .813    Lopez      1.071
7   Nixon         .979    Fick        .751
8   Mueller       .945    Castilla    .772
9   Varitek       .866    ROrtiz      .694

One way to compare the lineups is to average the OPS figures of the starters. Even with the pitcher and the DH in the lineup, Boston's edge is very small, .881 to .867. Drop the DH and pitcher and the advantage swings to Atlanta, .888 to .875. If you assume that David Ortiz would play first base ahead of Kevin Millar if the DH was not allowed, Boston's average rises to .889, one point better than Atlanta's.

It's close no matter how you look at it, but I have to give the edge to Atlanta because Boston has to sacrifice some defense to get Ortiz into the lineup. Millar cannot be considered an asset in the field, but he has improved over the course of the season, and he does have better range than Ortiz.

It's difficult to make precise comparisons between DH and non-DH lineups. Each front office was faced with a different challenge when putting together its roster, and who knows how they would have changed their approach if their leagues were reversed?

So I don't think this bit of analysis amounts to a conclusive proof, by any means. All things considered, both teams have impressed me a great deal this year, and it's hard to say which lineup I would fear most if these teams were to meet in the World Series. If forced to choose, I'd say that Atlanta scares me a little more than Boston right now, but it's so close that if you asked me again in five minutes, I might change my mind.

posted by Tom at 10:28 AM