Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York NL
#19 – Los Angeles NL
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Arizona
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Chicago NL
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta
#7 – Detroit
#6 – St. Louis
#5 – Philadelphia
#4 – Los Angeles AL
#3 – Texas

Boston’s 2011 Ranking: #2

2012 Outlook: 63 (4th)

The Red Sox offense has holes, but will be formidable no matter what. Last season, Carl Crawford and Kevin Youkilis missed time, the team got nothing from right field, had a mediocre starting catcher — Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s .319 wOBA was tied for 15th among catchers with at least 300 plate appearances — and still led the Majors in runs scored. The team may have the very same issues this season, as well as weakened production at shortstop, but even if they don’t lead the Majors in runs scored, they will have a top-flight offense. In Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia, the Sox have four MVP-caliber hitters, and if Youkilis is right, he can be a fifth. They will cure a lot of what ails the rest of the lineup, and even at that, it would be difficult to produce worse wOBA’s than the .214 and .275 marks that Mike Cameron and J.D. Drew posted in part-time play last season. Crawford should also rebound from the nightmarish start to his tenure in Boston.

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Justin Masterson and the Indians played what many would consider an ideal Opening Day game through the first eight innings Thursday against Toronto. The offense produced a solid four runs off Ricky Romero, Masterson struck out 10 and got another 11 batters to ground out in an eight-inning, one-run masterpiece start, and the Indians carried a 4-1 lead into the ninth. But then they handed the ball to Chris Perez, and things went downhill in a hurry.

The Blue Jays needed just five batters to tie the game against Perez; he would face seven overall, allowing three runs on three hits and two walks, recording just two outs. Let’s take it hitter-by-hitter:

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago White Sox
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York Mets
#19 – Los Angeles Dodgers
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Arizona
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Chicago Cubs
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta
#7 – Detroit
#6 – St. Louis
#5 – Philadelphia
#4 – Anaheim

Texas 2011 Rating: #7

2012 Outlook: 68 (2nd)

The Rangers return most of a team that reached the World Series for a second straight year in 2011, and they replaced their only significant departure by bringing in Yu Darvish, billed as perhaps the best international free agent in history. There just isn’t an area of the game where the Rangers are deficient, as they have one of the league’s deepest pitching staffs, best defenses, and an offense that can score runs in bunches. They have a terrific, balanced roster, and they are very likely to contend for their third consecutive World Series appearance.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Unhelpful Previews for Select Games
2. Video: A Baltimore Oriole Eating an Orange
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Minnesota Radio

Unhelpful Previews for Select Games
Here are very brief, and largely unhelpful, previews for five of today’s game — each including the preferred television feed of FanGraphs readers, per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project.

Chicago AL at Texas | 14:05 ET
White Sox DH Adam Dunn was worth almost three wins below replacement last year after averaging about three wins above replacement per season over his first 10 years in the majors. He was excellent this spring. “Will it carry over?” is the question you’ve maybe asked yourself, maybe once this spring. Starters: John Danks and Colby Lewis.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas.

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San Francisco’s front office may have a spotty record when it comes to trades and the free-agent market, but the same can’t be said of their efforts in amateur scouting and player development. The Giants have a solid core of homegrown talent — with reinforcements on the way — and in recent years much of the credit goes to John Barr. A member of the Professional Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame, Barr has been in charge of the Giants’ drafts since 2008.

——

Barr on draft philosophy and trends: “This is what I’ve focused on for 28 years of my life. I’ve been in involved in the draft — and have been in the draft room — every year since 1985.

“From a standpoint of changes over that time… let me first say that you still have to draft good players and they have to be mentally and physically ready to go out. You’re still trying to draft the best players, because you’re trying to add value to your organization. That allows your general manager to have the flexibility to either decide to continue the development of that player — and then have him go to the big leagues for you — or put him in a trade to bring back talent. You can’t draft solely on what the major-league team may need, because that need will change over time as players go through the system.

“That said, there are trends [in the industry]. Read the rest of this entry »

‘What’s to-day?’ cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
‘Eh?’ returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
‘What’s to-day, my fine fellow?’ said Scrooge.
‘To-day?’ replied the boy. ‘Why, Christmas Day.’
— Charles Dickens, 1843

“Happy opening day,” Bobby Valentine says, and then he pauses to reconsider. “Third opening day. Yesterday, Japan and today. Happy third opening day.”
— The New York Times, 2012

For many a year one had no difficulty in answering a version of Ebenezer Scrooge’s simple question: what is today? When does the baseball season start? It starts on Opening Day, of course. But how do we define what is and what is not Opening Day?

Traditionally, we think of Opening Day as a think that happens in April and in America (or Canada). But it has not always been thus. In fact, the first game of the 1871 season was played on May 4, as the Ft. Wayne Kekiongas defeated the Cleveland Forest Citys 2-0, behind a shutout by Bobby Mathews.
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If you run a blog or a website and you’re interested in having live win probability graphs, you can now easily embed a FanGraphs win probability graph that will update in realtime.

Here’s how to do it:

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York NL
#19 – Los Angeles NL
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Diamondbacks
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Chicago NL
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta
#7 – Detroit
#6 – St. Louis
#5 – Philadelphia

Anaheim’s 2011 Ranking: 12th

2012 Outlook: 65 (3rd)

If you want to find a weakness on the 2012 iteration of the Angels, you can. It’s very possible, for example, that the team’s second-best position player is a prospect (Mike Trout) who’s likely to spend a great deal of the season in the minors. It’s very possible, moreover, that one of the players by whom Trout is blocked (Vernon Wells) will fight to produce something north replacement level. Finally, the team lacks a capital-S Starter both at third base and designated hitter, which isn’t — traditionally speaking, at least — a recipe for success.

Here are a couple things the Angels do have, though: probably the league’s best starting rotation and also Albert Pujols. The ZiPS projection system — which, like most projection systems, is conservative by nature — projects the Angels’ top-four starters (Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, C.J. Wilson, and Ervin Santana) to post a collective WAR of about 18.0. By comparison, only three starting rotations (Philadelphia, Chicago AL, Texas) posted WARs better than 18.0 in 2011 — and even the Angels themselves, sans free-agent signing C.J. Wilson, posted a fourth-place 17.8 WAR. As for Pujols, this is a player for whom a 5.1 WAR — what he posted in 2011 — is considered sub-par. All told, Pujols plus the team’s four best starters should be worth close to 25 wins. Were the rest of team to be average, the Angels would be expected to win ca. 96 games.

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In honor of opening day, the FanGraphs iPhone App has been discounted to $0.99 for today only!

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