Taking Offense

We've passed the quarter season mark, so I thought I'd take a look at the state of offenses around the major leagues. One of the reasons for my curiosity this time is that my home town Mariners have inexplicably become one of the most prolific offensive teams so far this year - third behind only Colorado and Cleveland. This despite playing their home games at Safeco Field -- a place where offense goes to die. In fact the Mariners are third in the majors in runs scored per game.

What's more curious is that when you look at the numbers, Seattle's offense is ranked only 13th out of 30 major league offenses in OPS (On base percentage Plus Slugging average.), the basic building block of offense. That got me thinking about how well runs scored correlates with OPS again this year and whether any other teams are showing such peculiar behavior. It's also interesting to note that AL teams are only averaging 0.2 runs per game more than the NL, despite the DH. The difference is usually greater.

Seattle sports an OPS of .763 - good but not great, but it has resulted in 5.65 runs per game. That's pretty amazing when you look at the bottom three or four players in the batting lineup. Three of the regulars (Wilson, Martin, Bell) have an OPS under .600 (i.e. abysmal) and a fourth just scraped above that OPS Mendoza line (Guillen)

The Texas Rangers, meanwhile are getting only 5.58 runs per game out of an offense that runs up an impressive .837 OPS. Believe me when I say that's a huge difference in OPS. There's only a .203 spread from the worst team in the majors (Baltimore, .670 OPS, 4.23 R/G) to the best (Colorado, .873, 6.34.) So for Texas and Seattle to be getting the same runs out of radically different OPS values is very odd. Either Seattle is being very lucky, Texas is being very unlucky or a combination of both.

Maybe a picture will help. Here's how the R/G correlates with OPS for all thirty teams so far with the high and low oddball teams marked.

The red line shows the best straight line fit to the data points and it correlates extremely well statistically. It's fairly easy to see that Seattle is indeed the furthest from the line, followed closely by San Diego, who are getting very similar results. The next most fortunate team is Baltimore, but that's not so easy to see because they are actually the lowest ranked team in OPS, although four other teams are scoring significantly worse.

To return to my comparison with Texas, it's evident that the Rangers aren’t making the most of their OPS, in a mirror image of the Seattle situation. The fact that the pitching staffs are mirror images doesn't help them, either (Tuesday's pounding of Seattle by Minnesota notwithstanding.)

The disparity can be explained in good measure by the fact that Seattle is hitting phenomenally well with runners on base and in scoring position. The question is whether they can keep it up or not. Is hitting with men on base a skill or can we put it down to just a lucky couple of months of team batting? The abnormal distribution of batting may be another factor in run production. Bunching five or six really good hitters together and leaving the crummy bottom of the order to scrape together what it can may be better for run scoring than spreading the mediocrity thinly across the lineup.

Whatever the cause, I think it's unlikely that the Mariners can buck the statistical trend and stay as far above the line as they are currently, just as it's unlikely the Rangers, Braves, Rays, Astros and Cards will stay as far below it. While we're at it, the Blue Jays, Yankees and Royals are probably due to taper off in run scoring a bit.

So there's the offensive state of play in the majors. Just be sure not to wake those overachieving Orioles.

about the author

Dave Paisley is a great fan of those darn Mariners. He's just not a fan of getting pummelled 12-11 in Minnesota, though. But gee, isn't that another stellar offensive performance from that modest offense? Tell him why it's OK to lose those 12-11 pitching duels at drdjp@strikethree.com.

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