The Crowd: Angels Have Riskiest Roster in Baseball

Last week, I ran a little crowdsourcing project in which I asked you all to assign some made-up risk points – between one and five of them — to each and every roster in the major leagues. It was inspired by a passing comment from my weekly Tuesday chat, and it got me thinking about overall team volatility.

And, perhaps volatility is the word I should’ve used, rather than risk. I asked people to consider factors like average age of the team, proven vs. unproven players, injury risks in key contributors, and organizational depth. But risk implies you’ve got something to lose, and so even though I included a disclaimer that read, “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,” I should’ve known that, since the Braves aren’t really risking anything this year, they’d show up with a low risk rating no matter what.

So I probably screwed up my own project with a poor word choice and skewed the results a little bit, but we can still talk about some pretty interesting nuggets of information that came out of the results, and if you’re interested in reading that, well, you’ve come to the right place.

Getting back to that projected performance vs. projected team risk topic, here’s a graph plotting the two against one another:

The average risk rating was exactly 3.0. Definitely, worse teams were given lower risk ratings, and better teams were given higher risk ratings. Only three teams projected for a record better than .500 had significantly below-average risk ratings. The six worst projected teams in baseball had risk ratings barely above 2.0.

You see that dot way out on the right, though, and that’s the dot that was at the heart of this whole project. The point was to find the team you all found most risky, and no matter what the results were, there was always going to be a team. That team was the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, with a weighted risk rating of 4.3.

I think we all know the driving factor behind the Angels’ risk. They’re one hit by pitch, one funny step on a bag, one collision with a center-field wall away from being legitimately one of the worst teams in baseball. Even with Mike Trout, the Angels are projected only as a .500 team. Without him, things could get ugly in a hurry.

But I don’t think it’s just Trout. I think it’s the assemblage of starting pitchers, which features an already-injured C.J. Wilson, and whatever it is Jered Weaver is trying to do. Behind Wilson and Weaver is Hector Santiago, who’s been walking a fine line with his peripherals the last few years, Matt Shoemaker, who last year was bad, Tyler Skaggs, who’s already had a setback in his return from Tommy John, and Andrew Heaney, who’s largely unproven in the majors. Aside from Garrett Richards, there’s little in the way of certainty on the Angels rotation, and in fact, that lack of depth can be applied to the entire organization.

The Angels didn’t have a single prospect appear in MLB, ESPN, Baseball America, or Baseball Prospectus’ top-100 lists. When Dan Farsnworth evaluated the system, which some have called the worst they’ve ever seen, he gave only one prospect, Joe Gatto, an above-average future grade, and Gatto has never pitched an inning above Rookie ball.

They’ve got nothing in the way of prospect reinforcements. Skaggs and Kaleb Cowart are the only interesting under-25 players in the minors with a shot at contributing this year. Guys in the high minors with major-league service time are limited to names like Jefry Marte, Rey Navarro, Todd Cunningham, Quintin Berry, Lucas Luetge and A.J. Achter. Even the major-league bench of Geovany Soto, Ji-Man Choi, Cliff Pennington and Craig Gentry leaves something to be desired. The Angels are putting a lot of faith in the health of Albert Pujols and Andrelton Simmons, the platoon of Gentry and Daniel Nava, the ability of Johnny Giavotella and Carlos Perez as everyday players. Injuries are going to happen — no team can avoid them — and it’s almost hard to fathom a team with plans of contention more poorly equipped to deal with them than Los Angeles.

The Angels showed up with the highest risk rating, but they weren’t the greatest outlier. On the graph up top, you see the upper-most left dot, the one that deviates further from the trendline than any other. The team with the highest expected winning percentage that shares the same risk rating as the Padres, Rockies, and Reds. Of course, that team is the Chicago Cubs.

Not only do the Cubs have a young, spry roster, but they’ve also built depth along the lines of the Los Angeles Dodgers, except without all the injuries. Whether you consider the Cubs’ fifth starter to be Jason Hammel or Kyle Hendricks, it’s a No. 3 on plenty of teams, and according to ZiPS, they might have the best sixth starter in the majors in Adam Warren. They’ve got two of the 10 best reserves in baseball in Javier Baez and Jorge Soler, and their bench overall ranks in the top five. And the versatility of guys like Baez, Ben Zobrist and even Arismendy Alcantara in the minor leagues allows them to withstand nearly any injury. Dexter Fowler goes down? Move Jason Heyward to center and stick Soler back in right. Anthony Rizzo hits the DL? Dan Vogelbach looms in the minors. Any infielder gets hurt? Between Baez and Tommy La Stella, a more-than-competent backup exists for every position.

Despite having 108 year’s worth of expectations laid on them, the Cubs are being viewed as one of the safest teams in baseball this year, thanks to their spread of top-end talent, overall youth, versatility, and depth. The Angels? Well. They’ve got Mike Trout.