The NL West From ’08 to ’09

by
December 16, 2009

Instead of going team by team this off season, I will review the divisions as a group. And whereas last year, I used a version of BaseRuns, with some modifications for strength of schedule and the like thrown in, to determine the ranking of teams’ true talent levels, this year I will use WAR as provided here on FanGraphs.

Part Two: The NL West

The ranks last year were Las Angeles (9th), Arizona (14th), Colorado (21st), San Diego (25th) and San Francisco (27th). Like their Western counterparts in the American League, the NL West teams were largely poor and the Dodgers took the division with just 84 wins.

The Dodgers captured the division title once again in 2009, but it took a lot more work to do so, as they finished with 95 wins, three games ahead of Colorado. They stayed atop these rankings as well, with 43 WAR to land them in 5th place. Matching the close finish in the actual won-loss records, the Rockies, at 42 WAR, were just behind the Dodgers, 6th overall in baseball.

Now comes the first curve ball. While in actuality, the rest of the division went Giants (88 wins), Padres (75 wins) and Diamondbacks (70 wins), the WAR rankings have the Giants, then Arizona and finally San Diego. Now that’s not a huge surprise. The interesting part comes in how close San Francisco and Arizona are. The Giants, with 34 WAR, are 16th in baseball, while Arizona, at 33.5 WAR, are 18th. Separated by 18 wins, the Giants and Diamondbacks are just 0.5 WAR apart. The Padres accumulated 22 WAR, for 28th in baseball.

The Rockies’ high rating came as a result of their pitching staff, which graded out by WAR as the best in baseball, just barely ahead of the Red Sox. The Giants also had a strong pitching staff and were generally great at the whole run prevention deal with really good defenders as well. It’s a good thing they could field because the Giants could not hit a lick. Their -121.1 runs to average ranked as baseball’s worst group.

Here’s a summary of the ranks for the NL West teams, with 2008 first.
LAD: 9, 5
ARI: 14, 18
COL: 21, 6
SDP: 25, 28
SFG: 27, 16





 

Matthew Carruth is a software engineer who has been fascinated with baseball statistics since age five. When not dissecting baseball, he is watching hockey or playing soccer.

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Angry Jays Fan
14 years ago

Great post – I wish MLB would move the Jays into the AL West 🙂

Seriously, the Dodgers are going to take a fall given their messed-up ownership situation, and the D Backs will do much better. Right now, I’d go with 1) D Backs. 2) Dodgers 3) Giants (no hitting!) 4) Padres

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Switzlebeegen
14 years ago
Reply to  Angry Jays Fan

The Rockies are moved to the AL East, for the sake of baseball.

1
neuter_your_dogma
14 years ago
Reply to  Angry Jays Fan

Why not scrap revenue sharing and group the divisions by payroll? Top 5 payroll teams go to one division, 6-10 to the next, etc.

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Toffer Peak
14 years ago
Reply to  neuter_your_dogma

Why not?

1. Travel. Teams already fly enough and this has a bad effect on teams, Getting rid of geographical divisions would only make it worse.

2. Loss of geographic rivals. People inherently prefer rivals that are geographically close. LA-Boston will simply never be a strong of a rivalry as LA-Bay Area or LA-San Diego.

3. Loss of Division Consistency. Divisions would need to be realigned every so often to correct for changes in revenue. This would lead to the loss of division rivalries.

4. Boring. Fans don’t want a super-division and a terrible-division they simply want reasonable expectations that any team can have a good season at some point every few years. Having a losers division that gets walloped each post-season is going to little little better than the situation now.

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quincy0191
14 years ago
Reply to  neuter_your_dogma

^You forgot:

5. It’s already bad enough that one division can have three 90-win teams and another division one 85 win team, and the 90-win team gets shut out of the playoffs while the 85 win team gets in because of the division they’re in (and thanks to the large amount of intra-division play, the 85 win team is more than just five wins worse than the 90 win team). This could increase the likelihood of situations in which multiple 90-win teams don’t make the playoffs and sub-.500 teams do, since there’s a pretty obvious correlation between payroll and success (though a payroll clearly does not automatically equal success). So it’s not only that the bad team gets walloped in the postseason, but great teams have less of a chance at making the playoffs than bad teams, which is kind of backwards.

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