In my previous two posts on the 2012 MLB season, I looked at
the best teams in each league, what made them successful, and how their
strengths/weaknesses compared to the other teams in the playoff picture. All
assessments were made on July 11, the day after the All-Star game when I
started paying attention to baseball again. In this post, I will examine some
broader trends regarding both leagues and reflect on the playoff matchups.
Click here for the earlier posts on the specific leagues: AL and NL.
THE CONTENDERS
As explained in earlier posts, I used playoff % and point
differential to sort out what I believed to be the contending teams in either
league, as looking at all the teams would have been exhausting. The notable
absence? The 2012 Baltimore Orioles, who are covered in the AL Post.
A COMPARISON OF LEAGUE PITCHING
HR = Home Runs Given Up,
BB = Bases on Balls (Walks), K = Strikeouts, Diff = K – (HR + BB)
Moving from left to right, we see that although certain
teams rely on their top three starters far more than others, when comparing
across leagues, the average number of innings pitched is relatively constant.
Even the standard deviation was similar (18.1 in the AL, 20.0 in the NL). The
similarity between league averages could be applied across through the rest of
the columns: homers/walks given, strikeouts, and the differential HRs/BBs and
Ks. The lesson here, I think, is that across a broad sample of 8 teams in
either league playing dozens of games through July 11, the teams tend to revert
to the same midpoints. These are professionals and I suspect that it would be
difficult for one group to deviate significantly from the others. While this is
not unsuspected, it is a bit surprising given that I would have thought NL
pitchers to fare slightly better not having to face designated hitters.
In terms of standard deviation, the leagues differ in homers
and differential (varies a lot more in the NL), and walks (varies a lot more in
the AL). The really fascinating part happens when you take out Stephen
Strasburg out of the National’s lineup, which is reflected in the line “WAS-NO
S” (there is also a second set of averages without Strasburg titled “NO S”).
The standard deviation in the Differential column decrease by almost 10 full
points, a 20% decline. What this shows is that taking Strasburg out of the
equation, the NL teams are clustered much more closely together and the
National’s huge advantage in starting pitching disappears. Let’s see what
happens when we compare the rate-related pitching stats which measure each item
by % of total pitches:
A COMPARISON OF LEAGUE PITCHING RATES
FIP
= Fielding Independent Pitching, WAR = Wins Above Replacement; both FIP and WAR
are divided by 3 to give per-player averages
The averages show that NL pitchers seem to be more
conservative, giving up fewer HRs and walks, on average, with slightly fewer strikeouts.
The WAR calculation from Basketball-Reference shows that this conservatism hurt
them as the NL team’s average starter had a WAR slightly worse that the ace
average from the AL. This indicates that aggressive pitching and strikeouts
have an outsized influence on the WAR stat, possibly because they make up a
bigger percentage of plate appearances pitchers face (~60% for both leagues
compared to less than 30% for HR/BB combined). There are a number of WAR
calculations; I chose B-R because their site is designed well and their
calculation is defensible. Removing Strasburg (4.2 points of WAR himself, behind
only Justin Verlander’s 5.1 and Johnny Cueto’s 4.5), the NL average declines
further to 1.51, making the AL’s average starter ~19% better than a starter
from the NL.
FIP is also an important stat : unlike WAR, it measures
ALL balls in play, not just those that pitchers can control (HRs, BBs, and Ks).
It gives the average pitching performance if all balls in play (foul ups, line
drives, pop flies, etc.) were defended at a league average level. My thought is
that this may take away some of the weighting towards strikeouts and reward
crafty pitchers. From the FIP column, we see that the NL starters were better
than their AL counterparts when we take into account other ways to get outs. This
is a place for more research, but it seems that the NL pitchers are better at
inducing ground balls, which are more favorable for the defense than pop flies,
and also explains the lower HR rate. As to which is better in the playoffs,
again, I need more research and a bigger sample.
In standard deviation, the NL seems to be a more varied league
with WARs ranging from -0.10 (Atlanta Braves) to +3.10 (Nats), but the standard
deviation of their WAR is actually lower than the AL, with the deviation
becoming smaller when Strasburg is removed. In both leagues, the biggest
deviation numbers occurred on Strikeout%, which in turn affects the
Differential%. There was tremendous variability between teams with strikeout
artists and teams built to produce groundouts. In both leagues, the strikeout %
column seemed to predict FIP and WAR better than HR% or BB%, confirming what we
saw from the total WAR comparison. Teams that strike out a high % of batters
seem to do better than safe teams that focus on avoiding homers and walks.
The two outliers were the Tampa Bay Rays, whose starters had
the highest combined K% in either league, a mediocre WAR and FIP in the AL, and
the St. Louis Cardinals, who had a terrible K% but were average in both FIP and
WAR. Outside of these teams, it seems that to compete, you need to strike guys
out. In the Cardinals case, they were tops in the league at avoiding both HRs
and BBs, while the Rays seemed to be good across the board except for in the
WAR department.
The one thing I didn’t analyze was how a reliance on one
starter, such as a Verlander, can affect a team’s performance. That may be the
subject of a further analysis over multiple seasons to produce the requisite
sample size. In the meantime, let’s move on to hitting.
A COMPARISON OF LEAGUE HITTING
OPS = On-base + Slugging adjusted for the
league and park, WAR is batting-only, PwrSpd = Baseball-Reference proprietary
stat that measures athleticism through HRs and Steals
The first thing that I expected from the batting lineup
analysis was for the AL to dominate because of the designated hitter. My logic:
you are allowed a spot in the lineup reserved for a guy that has no other duty
besides hit? A guy that doesn’t have to play defense, pitch, do anything
besides get on base and drive in runs? This guy has to be the mother of all
hitters, right?
I was wrong. In both OPS+ and WAR, the NL dominated. I know
that the OPS+ is adjusted to be consistent in comparing leagues, which removes
some of the difference, but I was still surprised that the NL was flat out
better at hitting and not getting out. Removing the Dodgers, the NL’s worse
team by WAR was the Nationals at 1.15; this would have bested these AL playoff
teams: Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers, and Oakland A’s, with only the Yankees on
top (the Baltimore Orioles of course, are not included).
Read that again: the worst NL playoff team by hitting WAR
was better than three AL contenders, and the best NL teams like the Giants and
Cardinals would have absolutely dominated their AL peers. The Cardinals
colossal WAR of 2.19 is nearly double that of many AL teams. A final note would
be that the standard deviation in hitting is much more similar between the two
leagues, but this is likely due to the fact that both OPS and WAR amalgamate
hitting stats, which smooths the outcome; within a specific stat like
On-base-%, there may be more variability.
A COMPARISON OF TOTAL WAR
As surprised as I was throughout this comparison of leagues,
the final outcome indicates that the leagues are relatively similar. I didn’t
expect that the National league bats would be better but they were, and that negatively
affected their pitching stats (or vice versa). While the NL was slightly better
with a combined pitching + batting WAR of 3.18 to 3.11, that advantage
disappears when you remove Stephen Strasburg from the equation. In fact,
removing Strasburg drops the Nationals from the second-best team by WAR in
either league to a mere 9th at 3.18. The best teams? Judging by stats,
the Chicago White Sox should play the San Francisco Giants for the crown, with
the Giants bats going against the Sox’ vaunted pitching staff. The Rangers and
Yankees / Cardinals and Reds are in contention in the AL/NL, respectively.
Of course, I only got one part of that right. I was almost
spot-on in the NL: The Giants were tested severely in their first round match
against the second-rated Cincinnati Reds before a dramatic seven-game series
against the third-ranked St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS. Both playoff series
were close, exciting affairs marked by enormous comebacks by the Giants, first
from 0-2 against the Reds and then from 1-3 against the Cardinals. The
Cardinals got to the NLCS by beating the aforementioned Washington Nationals in
another great 5-game series that left Nats fans wondering about just a few
outs. Again: the Nats lost by a matter of one out, and Strasburg had a wins above replacement of 4.2. Okay, I’m
done now.
In the AL, the Yankees received much grief throughout the
playoffs for their disappearing bats, and rightly so. But the three
highest-rated WAR teams all achieved that through the strength of their top-3
starters, with none having a particularly imposing batting lineup (all below
average). The best batting team was the L.A. Angels, who were let down by a
disappointing pitching staff. And the team that won the league? Detroit’s OPS+
was solid, but their batting WAR was below average despite the presence of a
triple crown winner. Their pitching WAR was also mediocre, behind the Sox in
their division and also the Rangers and Yankees. So what happened?
On July 11, the Tigers were pitching stats were buoyed by
Justin Verlander’s baseball-leading statistics, but held back by sub-par
performances from Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello, the number 2 and 3 pitchers
by innings. By the end of the season, Scherzer had heated up, allowing only 4
homers and 13 walks from August through the end of the regular season in
October over 65 innings of work. So while this point-in-time analysis gave me
insight into what was probably to happen in the postseason, watching the games is
still important. Scherzer ended the season with a 4.0 WAR compared to 1.0 when
I measured the stat, and once he got hot, Detroit became a two-ace team,
something none in the league could match. Combined with the Yankees
hitting/pitching meltdown, a four-game sweep is what you get.
I think it was useful seeing just how the leagues differed
in 2012. Further study will be needed to see whether these are long-term
trends, or seasonal aberrations. We’ve also come up with some important
questions for further research. But this does it for the 2012 comparison of
leagues. Next, I will briefly compare the two World Series participants using
this analytical framework to determine if the Giants’ 4-game sweep of the
Tigesr was really a blowout or if it should have been closer than it played. See
Part 4 for a World Series Review, as well as the results of a little
competition I had picking baseball teams.
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