Taking Offense

Dave Paisley

So the last All-Star hot dog wrapper has blown down the back street alleys of Seattle and we're finally moving on to the rest of the season. It was fun while it lasted, but several teams now have some serious work to do. The Devil Rays aren't one of them, of course, which makes one wonder just what Fred McGriff is waiting for. I guess eking out the last vestiges of one's career in a baseball slum like Tampa Bay is just fine when one is pulling in millions of bucks. Never mind the chance to be in one last playoff chase. Of course, Fred may be holding out for the Atlanta first base gig, which would certainly be a nice swan song, not to mention a lot more geographically friendly than Chicago.

But Tampa Bay's woes aside (and they are plentiful) I thought I'd take a look this week at the balance between offense and defense. How many times have you heard the old saw that pitching and defense wins ballgames? Well, let me tell you, pitching and defense without any offense gets you teams like the Anaheim Angels and the New York Mets. Now they're really tearing up their respective leagues, aren't they?

On the other hand, tons of offense and no pitching doesn't work too well, either. Just ask the Texas Rangers or, to a lesser extent, the Houston Astros. We'll give the Rockies a bye on that one because it's just too tough to tell whether they have a genuinely good offensive team or not.

The best teams, of course, do better because they do well in all aspects of the game. Some aspects more than others, but generally they tend not to have any glaring weaknesses. So I got to wondering how to show the different teams' characters graphically. Here's what I came up with for the National League.

The horizontal axis shows runs scored per game, with an average of 4.8. Any team to the right of the vertical axis is better than average, any team to the left is worse than average. The vertical axis shows runs allowed per game. Teams above the line are worse, while teams below are better than average. And, believe it or not, the average for runs allowed is also 4.8. Teams in the upper left quadrant (how's that for a fancy word for quarter?) are bad teams, as indicated by the arrow pointing to the word "Bad" in red letters. I'm sure it will be no shock to you to discover that the primary candidates for worst team are the Pirates, Reds and Expos.

In contrast, the bottom right is where the "Good" teams live. However, candidates for really good teams are hard to come by. The only two teams firmly ensconced in that quadrant are the Diamondbacks (no surprise) and the Marlins (faints with shock.) No, really, this is pretty good evidence that the Marlins are for real, despite their modest record and third place position in the NL East.

Other than the really good and really bad, it's interesting to see where the other teams fall. The upper right quadrant features teams with offense but no pitching, while the bottom left is the reverse. In general any team on the diagonal line from bottom left to upper right should be around .500. Any teams below that line should be above and any teams above it should be below.

The Cubs and Braves are obviously surviving on exceptional pitching with slightly sub-par offenses. Milwaukee too, although they aren’t enjoying division contention. Houston, on the other hand, is winning more with offense, and it will be interesting to see them battle Cubs for the Central division. Part of the difference is the park, of course. Hitter's parks will tend to feature teams to the upper right (hello, Colorado!), while extreme pitcher's parks will be at the lower right (hmmm - none apparent.)

The Mets are an interesting data point, with league average pitching, but a woeful offense. This must be the year that trotting Rey Ordonez out there finally caught up with them. Two other curious cases are those of the Phillies and Dodgers. They, like the Cardinals and Giants are basically league average in both dimensions, but the Phils and Dodgers have managed to parlay that average quality into a few more wins. Still, at 52-40, they aren’t so far above .500 that it's a huge shock. The Cards and Giants are pretty close to .500 as one might expect. If anything, the relatively tight clustering of the teams around the center indicates that the NL is pretty balanced so far this year. As I write this, the D-Backs are tops in wins at 54, while the Reds lead with 57 losses.

The AL, however, is a different story...

Overall, the numbers are similar. There's slightly more scoring in the AL than the NL this year, at 4.9 runs per team per game. As the scales are the same, it's relatively easy to see how much more spread out the AL teams are. At the top left we have the Crime Dog's hapless TB Devil Rays (30-63). Yes folks, they are really that bad. In the upper right we have the Texas Rangers, they of the all hit, no pitching philosophy. Bottom right we have the Anaheim Angels with their no hit, all pitching philosophy. And over on the bottom right we have the astounding Seattle Mariners (66-26) who are, despite popular misconception, doing it more with the bats than the pitching arms. Working up and to the left from Seattle we find that the Red Sox, Yankees, Twins and Indians are all very much on a par, with the emphasis going from pitching to hitting as we move along that list. The four teams vary from a low of 51 wins (Cleveland) to a high of 57 (Minnesota).

The next wave features Anaheim, Oakland, Toronto and Texas. The first three are all around .500 as one might expect from their relative balance, except for Texas, who have managed to parlay a Hindenberg-like pitching staff into a 38-54 record. As the games close out as I write, they are now officially 30 games behind the Mariners.

The White Sox and Orioles are both within striking distance of average, and indeed the White Sox currently sport a .500 record. Sadly, the same can't be said for the Orioles. Nor indeed can it be said of the Tigers and Royals, who are once again out of it at the break.

So despite fewer teams, the AL has a much wider spread of talent, or at least results, so far this year. While all eyes will be on Seattle to see if they can push the 114 win barrier, we'll have to be sure to keep an eye on the Devil Rays to see how fast they can get to a hundred losses.

about the author

Which quadrant do you fall in? Are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays really the weakest link? Is that wink of Anne Robinson's really just a mad tic? Why not ask Dave Paisley at drdjp@strikethree.com.