Crowdsourcing Team Risk

In my Tuesday chat this week, a commenter asked me about the Mariners bullpen, which has already endured some key injuries this spring. I responded as such:

Six of 10 worry points is more than half the worry points. I can’t say for sure even how worrisome that is, because worry points are a thing I made up at 12:27 p.m. EDT on March 22, 2016, but I can say for sure that it’s more worrisome than a team whose bullpen deserves just four out of 10 worry points.

People seemed to like the worry-points concept, and a few commenters expressed a desire for a worry-point article, with a couple even giving me ideas. I didn’t use either of those specific ideas, but the silly worry-point concept did get me thinking about team risk, and how that can influence our perception of different ballclubs before the season begins.

Like, say you’ve got two teams, each projected for 85 wins. But one of those 85-win teams has one super-elite star that comprises a bunch of their value on his own, and therefore that team is just one injury away from losing a big chunk of those projected 85 wins. And not only that, but the supporting cast around that star is littered with players over 30, guys with past injury histories, and a couple guys coming off bad seasons who are being counted on to bounce back. The other projected 85-win team, on the other hand, is pretty clean — lots of guys in their 20s, little injury history, everyone is coming off pretty standard seasons.

On pure talent, both teams are projected to be equal, but that first team has worry points through the roof. It’s easy to see where things could go wrong. The other team feels safe. This could wildly change our (sub?)conscious perceptions of these otherwise equal-looking teams.

I’m kind of thinking about the Dodgers right now, but I’m also kind of not. I’m mostly wondering what the spread is? Every team has areas of concern. Some seemingly more than others, but then at the same time, every team has guys who feel as safe as can be that will inevitably become injured or underperform this year. This game is almost impossible to predict.

This is going to be one of those posts Jeff likes to run with a bunch of polls and then a crowdsourced follow-up, because the opinions of 1,000 of you on something none of us really know about are worth more than the opinions of one of me. Who am I to assign worry points to every team in baseball? The results of this will be interesting now, and they’ll be interesting later. You’ll all put your brains together, and you’ll determine a handful of teams that seem riskier than the rest, and a handful of teams that seem safer than the rest. And at the All-Star break and at the end of the season, it will be interesting to look back and see what happened to those risks. Did the risky teams succumb and/or underperform? Did the safe teams stay clean and/or overperform? Will there even be a noticeable spread in the results of this poll? Is any one team actually riskier than another? These are all questions I can’t answer on my own, but would like to see answered. I’m thankful not only to write for an audience, but a smart and engaging audience.

It’s time to dole out some worry points. Except, for the sake of clarity, I’ll be referring to them as risk points. I encourage you to leave comments below for use in the follow-up post as to why you voted the way you did for any particular team about which you felt strongly.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things to consider:

• This isn’t about how good or bad a team is. The Braves shouldn’t automatically be more risky than the Cubs just because they’re a worse baseball team. Try and think of each team’s amount of risk in a vacuum, relative to its own general skill level.
• How much of this team’s value is tied up in one or two players? Is this team an injury away from being decimated?
• How many injury risks are present on this team? How much is being counted on from the injury-risk guys? Are key players already banged up?
• What’s the depth look like on this particular team? Are there adequate replacements to fill in for the potential loss of some of the riskier players?
• What’s the average age of the players on this team? What’s the average age of the key players?
• Is this team counting on bouncebacks from key players, who were most recently disappointing?
• Is this team counting on key contributions from young players, who have proven very little?
• Does this team have a history of injury prevention? Injury susceptibility?
• Style of play?
• Any other things you can think of that might make a team risky! Risk is subjective, and so are its causes!

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