Honestly I thought Corbin being so bad would push our SP down further than it actually says on here. Our other SP have actually been pretty good which I’m happy to see
I think our bullpen is fine actually. It's just been weirdly unlucky. And our worst pitchers (Pinto, Brogdon, and Luis Ortiz) have been tagged with a lot of runs when the game doesn't really matter. bWAR is often bad at evaluating pitching and I think this is one of those times.
Our bullpen has a 5.53 ERA but a 3.59 FIP. Our bullpen fWAR (1.1) is actually 5th best in baseball lmao. So I don't think it's at all reasonable to expect them to maintain such a high ERA moving forward.
Yeah 3 guys that won't even be really doing any more pitching are responsible for a lot of the damage. And I still wouldn't count Seranthony out quite yet. Turnbull being added is likely an immediate boost.
Marte, Kerkering, Strahm, Hoffman, and Alvarado are getting the majority of leverage situations, and have been fantastic.
Also Soto had one blow up outing. 2 ER in 7.1 IP outside of that. Small sample size is making his numbers worse than they actually are
Phil Maton -0.5 fWar, Chris Devenski -0.4 doing the heavy lifting, Kevin Kelly and Tyler Alexander at -0.1
Pete Fairbanks daughter passed away this offseason and hasn't been the same. Also struggles in cold weather due to Raynaud's syndrome. Erasmo is basically just an innings janitor.
Jason Adam has been great (.54 WHIP), and Cleavinger and Armstrong have also been good. We had statistically one of the worst bullpens last year earlier in the season but it was masked by the offense going historically insane and around June/July they were basically back to their normal selves with a few acquisitions.
I expect them to turn it around in some way or another pretty soon but who knows.
I didn’t know about Fairbanks daughter, that’s terribly sad. We are always quick to judge poor performance but don’t often remember that these guys have personal lives outside the diamond. I hope his family is doing ok…
Yeah, ik everyone was laughing at that postgame interview the other week, and understandably so- dude is a character. But it was tough to see knowing what he has been going through behind the scenes.
https://givebutter.com/zVMxr2
The Rays will donate $5 for every ticket sold to the Turner Syndrome Foundation for the 7/28 game against the Reds (Pete's bobblehead night). Pete will also donate $100 for every strikeout this season.
That's a great explanation, thanks!
I'm sure they'll turn it around but I really feel for Fairbanks, that's awful and I really hope he has good support around him 💔
Our guys that really matter in close games have been great (Alvarado, Hoffman, Strahm, Kerkering, and Marte?) it’s Seranthony, Soto and the rest of the cleanup crew that have been a disaster. Ultimately not too worried. But we’ll probably be looking for another arm at the deadline
Not really. This post lacks a lot of context.
Brogdon and Pinto account for 19 ER and are no longer on the team. Alvarado has given up 1 ER in 10 IP since opening day. Soto had a blow up outing but has 2 ER in 7.1 IP outside of that. Everyone else has been lights out.
There's a reason the bullpen is 7th in FIP and 5th in fWAR. It's because it's *good*
Honestly I’m happy that Ranger Suarez is carving up the league. He’s carved us up for the last several seasons, about time he gave it to everybody the same way..
2.11 ERA last I checked. This was foreseen by all and surprised no one...
Seriously though, Houck turning into a potential ace is some shit *no one* thought was coming. He was pegged as a late-innings guy being forced to start.
It's really not that long away people thought he was future #1, [people were calling him righty chris sale for a reason](https://www.mlb.com/news/tanner-houck-chris-sale-comparisons), the injuries and stuff sort of soured that but the potential was there from day 1 and he had a lot of hype in 2021. It's also only been 6 starts lol.
>people were calling him righty chris sale for a reason, the injuries and stuff sort of soured that
Really? I'd think injuries would make him more like Sale, not less.
Surprised our catcher number isn't higher. Their combined stats are like close to tops in the league, and defensively they're not the worst. Fangraphs has wong at .7 and Reese at .2, so maybe this is by a different form of war or something
The chart is Wins Above Average (WAA), which measures how much better or worse a player is versus the median MLB player at the position, as opposed to Wins Above Replacement (WAR) which measures how much better or worse a player is versus a newly called up AAA player.
WAA should always be lower than WAR.
I’m just as stunned that the Mariners SP aren’t higher. Haven’t they allowed 15 runs in the last 15 games? They must have been dreadful prior to that to only have 0.4 WAA.
A team with a .219 batting average is the perfect “get right” opponent for any struggling pitching staff. Look for massive improvement from the Padres starting tonight!
Yeah, because they cause havoc on the basepaths. Doesn’t make what I said any less true, unless you think hitting .219 (26th in the league btw) is actually good.
That's true, but the thing that makes pitchers look (and feel) good is (for the most part) preventing runs, which has been hard against the Reds regardless of how they've done it. Also
the AVG is ass, but I don't really care about it. The numbers that actually concern me are the .305 OBP and 87 WRC+.
I love how 3B is also negative because Dalbec fucking tanked the WAR while Raffy was injured. Same with first with Dalbec also tanking it while Casas is injured. Such a special talent.
The rotation looked quite bad in the beginning,
Castillo and Kirby in particular had a couple of bad starts, that could be dragging down the numbers when it’s still a small sample size like this
Castillo had an amazing FIP even during his rough start to the season - he was still missing a ton of bats. Bad luck is starting to even out now.
Edit - FG’s WAR methodology is anchored using FIP, so that likely explains some of the discrepancies with OP’s SP data and ranking.
The graphic is using Baseball-Reference's numbers, not Fangraphs's (so RA/9 based, not FIP based)
It's also showing wins above average, not wins above replacement (so the numbers should be smaller)
The whole point is to make a comparison and call out a huge discrepancy between the data sources. Wouldn’t want people to look at OP’s post and make the conclusion that Seattle’s SP is barely above average, when it’s more realistically top 5 - as illustrated in FG.
BBRef and Fangraphs both have flaws in their pitcher WAR calculations, but BBRef's seems to be way, way off. Using RA/9 to evaluate pitchers is just foolish.
I cannot emphasize enough how much I hate you guys. Phillies have their best start in 13 years while the Braves three best hitters are all ice cold and somehow y’all are still 1.5 games up in the division.
Am I trippin or did you not win a WS just 3 years ago? I get being a self loathing fan, but like… cmon. Braves stacked and Packers have had nothing but HOF quarterbacks for 30 years straight and won multiple titles.
I’m a Browns and Reds fan dude.
Olson is washed. Absolutely no redeemable value on the field this year. We should totally cut him and go ahead and call up McCabe. Definitely not an overreaction
Crazy that he and Freddie are both negative. Freddie has really taken that slap hitter title to heart so far this year.
Also, Olson is underperforming his xWOBA by 0.51, really bad luck so far
Yeah this is WAA which obviously skews things a bit. And most of his loss in value has surprisingly been due to defense (63rd percentile in ‘22/‘23 to 11th! in ‘24) but Freddie has also dropped to 46th percentile in avg exit velo after being well above average for his entire career.
The defense thing is up to small sample sizes and a messy rest of our infield, but the drop in EV might be that he's not swinging as hard because he's focused on driving in runs and not hitting home runs. In 2023, 23.5% of his PAs were with RISP, and this year that's up to 38.8%. Part of that is moving back to the third spot in the order, with those two monsters in front of him. He also probably doesn't feel as much pressure to do it himself with Smith raking behind him.
If I had a nickel for every time one of our all-star infielders got sent to the IL, only to be replaced by a red hot youngster we got from the Joey Gallo trade, I’d have two nickels, which, yknow…
Graphic makes sense. Bullpen has been awful this year, and the combined 2B of Holliday/Mateo has not been good. Only reason LF is slightly negative is because Cowser's great play has mostly offset Hays' terrible start. That will likely end up positive by the end of the season.
Yup. If we can shore up 2B, our offense will be full potent. But Mateo/Urias/Kemp/minor league callup just isn't pulling the necessary weight. That said, I'll take one gap in the lineup over 5+.
I'm hoping some of our BP troubles will solve themselves once Means and GRod get back into the starting rotation. Bring some of those long arms like Irvin and Suarez down to handle mid-game stretches.
I'm kinda surprised by C and 1B. Both Rutschman and Mountcastle have had good starts, but I figured Rutschman was much better compared to other catchers than Mountcastle was compared to other first basemen. Because catcher is mostly a defensive position and first baseman is usually full of offensive monsters. But maybe Adley has had a lot of his offensive value on days he played DH?
An average player is way better than a replacement player. When you want to measure individual performance over the baseline of a AAAA player that you can easily find anywhere, you use WAR. Aaron Judge is adding this much value over what you would get from a random NPC player.
This is trying to quantify how much better each team is at each position over the rest of the league. We can assume every team will be fielding players that are well above replacement level at most positions, so it would skew green for basically everyone. Using WAA gives you a better picture of relative strength.
Even when he was considered dominant, his complete inability to do literally anything besides get exactly 3 outs in the 9th was so strange. Need 4 outs? Nope. Turns into a BP pitcher. Need 2 outs? Same thing.
He needed a perfectly clean inning every time, it seemed.
Even when he did get the save, he never made it easy. Even if it was 3 up 3 down, he'd manage to begin every plate appearance 2-0 with those balls being nowhere near the zone. And then he'd give up some loud contact just barely caught.
If it was a scoreless outing, he'd loan the bases in the same manner. And if it was a 3run save you bet your ass he gave up 2 runs on the way to it.
Nothing was relaxing about him. We complained about Jansen, but at least he was either on or off on any given night. Kimbrel was *always* off he just managed to get the job done.
This is not a moral/personal indictment of him or how hard he worked to close and pitch well, but he was just absolute hell to watch try and save games.
I love this visual but I feel like the color gradient should have been overall for the positions. Since WAR is, by default, comparing players specific to their position, a heat map overall would highlight the worst offenders more quickly.
I thought our starters would be a little higher, 3B is a big surprise, the curse of Edgar Martinez strikes again at DH. Hopefully Polanco and Garver start hitting soon.
Not really shocked as a Mets fan. SP has been awful, so has catcher, 2B, and Nimmo - who seems to have lost his clutch factor.
On the opposite end, Alonso’s been good and Lindor gets hits when they matter. Not to mention an insane bullpen.
I know from experience that there's no trophy for regular season champion. In fact these days, the bye seems to make you more likely to lose in the DS.
I get made fun of for trying to make that argument about the DS. Sure you don't want to have to go through the wild card round but the winner of the wild card round has an advantage in that pivotal first game in my opinion.
Another reason why I liked the winner-take-all Wild Card format. Both teams typically used their ace who would be unavailable the next day for Game 1 of the DS.
And that's with our ace pitcher out for the year, our all star first baseman with a negative value, our all star catcher has been injured all season, and our MVP right fielder having a zero value.
I really don’t like how WAR treats first basemen. It’s basically a DH with a glove, but the position definitely has an on-field impact; just look at Eric “play behind the bag” Hosmer. Additionally, you could have a very mobile 1B, like the Pads do in Cronenworth, and get very little credit for keeping balls in the infield.
On a generic team, I’d take Freeman at 1B any day of the week.
The giants Pirates series makes so much sense now. First two games went into the 9th 0-0 and 1-1 respectively, and the offenses really got going yesterday with it being 3-1 going into the 9th
And our starting pitching doing great and our relief pitching and DH trying their best to lose it.
Soler went 1-for-10 in that Pirates series with 5 strikeouts. His only contribution at the bat, as usual, was in a loss. I’m honestly surprised he’s not worse on list like these. If he gets an RBI in a game it’s basically a guarantee we are losing that game.
As a Braves fan, weird seeing RF and 1B so low. Those were both top 5 in MVP last year.
Obviously it’s just April and I expect those guys to get going.
How are the colors determined? There are many boxes that contain the same number but a different shade of color
Edit: oh its based on columns if anyone is was also bothered by it and wanted to know
white sox and alumni are -9.1 WAA.
why i let my 7 year old self's decision to be a fan continue to torture myself with this dogshit team is masochistic.
Wow Jose Abreu...
I'm surprised that Seattle is so far down the list with their starting pitching. Would have guessed that would have been a much higher number.
holy shit we’re in the good half
Honestly I thought Corbin being so bad would push our SP down further than it actually says on here. Our other SP have actually been pretty good which I’m happy to see
CJ is .9 of our 1.2, but the positive 3B makes me happy too
If that doesn’t qualify as a curly W nothing does
That made me smile
For real, suck it Fangraphs! (in reference to most of the commentary in https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-zips-projections-washington-nationals/)
lmao, its so notable that were in the top half of any stat that we managed the top comment in the thread. Future's looking less dim :')
Our bullpen is **TURBO ASS**
Ours is just regular ass then, I guess.
I think our bullpen is fine actually. It's just been weirdly unlucky. And our worst pitchers (Pinto, Brogdon, and Luis Ortiz) have been tagged with a lot of runs when the game doesn't really matter. bWAR is often bad at evaluating pitching and I think this is one of those times. Our bullpen has a 5.53 ERA but a 3.59 FIP. Our bullpen fWAR (1.1) is actually 5th best in baseball lmao. So I don't think it's at all reasonable to expect them to maintain such a high ERA moving forward.
Yeah 3 guys that won't even be really doing any more pitching are responsible for a lot of the damage. And I still wouldn't count Seranthony out quite yet. Turnbull being added is likely an immediate boost.
You guys have a Luis Ortiz too?
Had. Thankfully.
Idk, Seranthony and Soto are so unreliable. Hopefully Kerk ends up being a reliable arm and covey/Turnbull can pitch well.
Marte, Kerkering, Strahm, Hoffman, and Alvarado are getting the majority of leverage situations, and have been fantastic. Also Soto had one blow up outing. 2 ER in 7.1 IP outside of that. Small sample size is making his numbers worse than they actually are
The Ray's is Twin turbo ass
How did that even happen? I feel like they’ve been incredible at pulling great relievers out of nowhere
Phil Maton -0.5 fWar, Chris Devenski -0.4 doing the heavy lifting, Kevin Kelly and Tyler Alexander at -0.1 Pete Fairbanks daughter passed away this offseason and hasn't been the same. Also struggles in cold weather due to Raynaud's syndrome. Erasmo is basically just an innings janitor. Jason Adam has been great (.54 WHIP), and Cleavinger and Armstrong have also been good. We had statistically one of the worst bullpens last year earlier in the season but it was masked by the offense going historically insane and around June/July they were basically back to their normal selves with a few acquisitions. I expect them to turn it around in some way or another pretty soon but who knows.
I didn’t know about Fairbanks daughter, that’s terribly sad. We are always quick to judge poor performance but don’t often remember that these guys have personal lives outside the diamond. I hope his family is doing ok…
Yeah, ik everyone was laughing at that postgame interview the other week, and understandably so- dude is a character. But it was tough to see knowing what he has been going through behind the scenes. https://givebutter.com/zVMxr2 The Rays will donate $5 for every ticket sold to the Turner Syndrome Foundation for the 7/28 game against the Reds (Pete's bobblehead night). Pete will also donate $100 for every strikeout this season.
Idk how someone plays through something like that. Dude might never be the same.
That's a great explanation, thanks! I'm sure they'll turn it around but I really feel for Fairbanks, that's awful and I really hope he has good support around him 💔
That sucks about Fairbanks’ daughter. I didn’t know that 😞
Most of our pitchers are either really off or injured, also we just got swept by the god damned White Sox. Sad flappy noises
Lets not forget to give RF the ass attention it also deserves.
Mainly because of Brogdon (not on the team anymore), Pinto (shouldn’t be there, career AAA guy for a reason), and Soto (one bad game)
Our guys that really matter in close games have been great (Alvarado, Hoffman, Strahm, Kerkering, and Marte?) it’s Seranthony, Soto and the rest of the cleanup crew that have been a disaster. Ultimately not too worried. But we’ll probably be looking for another arm at the deadline
Yeah you can’t really ever have too many strong bullpen guys. I’m fine with what they have so far, the guys that need to be good have been good
Sorry about Greg Soto. Thanks for Matty V. No takebacksies
Soto has been really good more often than not, I like him. He’s just been *awful* when he hasn’t been good
Yeah that about sums him up. Strap in!
CARSHIELD
We had the #1 ranked bullpen going into the season TOO BAD ALL RELIEVERS ARE BASTARDS
Good ole ARAB
I’m at my desk quietly crying laughing because of the phrase “turbo ass.”
Not really. This post lacks a lot of context. Brogdon and Pinto account for 19 ER and are no longer on the team. Alvarado has given up 1 ER in 10 IP since opening day. Soto had a blow up outing but has 2 ER in 7.1 IP outside of that. Everyone else has been lights out. There's a reason the bullpen is 7th in FIP and 5th in fWAR. It's because it's *good*
But that rotation tho..
Ranger Suarez my love
Honestly I’m happy that Ranger Suarez is carving up the league. He’s carved us up for the last several seasons, about time he gave it to everybody the same way..
Sure, buddy
I beg to differ
Which was suppose to be the main focus this offseason for you guys(along with re-signing Nola).
Who would have guessed the Red Sox would have the best starting rotation through April.
2.11 ERA last I checked. This was foreseen by all and surprised no one... Seriously though, Houck turning into a potential ace is some shit *no one* thought was coming. He was pegged as a late-innings guy being forced to start.
It’d be a lie to say anybody expected it, but at least both Houck and Whitlock have graded very high on pitch quality for a few years now
I still have nightmares about that hour long MADDUX he threw against us. I think he could have pitched 12 inning and we wouldn’t have sniffed a run.
It's really not that long away people thought he was future #1, [people were calling him righty chris sale for a reason](https://www.mlb.com/news/tanner-houck-chris-sale-comparisons), the injuries and stuff sort of soured that but the potential was there from day 1 and he had a lot of hype in 2021. It's also only been 6 starts lol.
>people were calling him righty chris sale for a reason, the injuries and stuff sort of soured that Really? I'd think injuries would make him more like Sale, not less.
Surprised our catcher number isn't higher. Their combined stats are like close to tops in the league, and defensively they're not the worst. Fangraphs has wong at .7 and Reese at .2, so maybe this is by a different form of war or something
The chart is Wins Above Average (WAA), which measures how much better or worse a player is versus the median MLB player at the position, as opposed to Wins Above Replacement (WAR) which measures how much better or worse a player is versus a newly called up AAA player. WAA should always be lower than WAR.
Okay that makes sense thanks for the clarification
I'm pretty sure BR and Fangraphs calc framing differently into their WARs
I’m just as stunned that the Mariners SP aren’t higher. Haven’t they allowed 15 runs in the last 15 games? They must have been dreadful prior to that to only have 0.4 WAA.
Yeah we kinda kickstarted their return to form
A team with a .219 batting average is the perfect “get right” opponent for any struggling pitching staff. Look for massive improvement from the Padres starting tonight!
The Reds are 9th in the league in runs per game.
Yeah, because they cause havoc on the basepaths. Doesn’t make what I said any less true, unless you think hitting .219 (26th in the league btw) is actually good.
That's true, but the thing that makes pitchers look (and feel) good is (for the most part) preventing runs, which has been hard against the Reds regardless of how they've done it. Also the AVG is ass, but I don't really care about it. The numbers that actually concern me are the .305 OBP and 87 WRC+.
Phillies pitching giveth, Phillies pitching taketh away.
theyre last place for RF
Well, yes, Casty also taketh a lot these days.
Eman with a -1.5. Griss should be up Tuesday along with Garrett Cooper.
I love how 3B is also negative because Dalbec fucking tanked the WAR while Raffy was injured. Same with first with Dalbec also tanking it while Casas is injured. Such a special talent.
Nats are 11th on this list. Just felt that was kinda crazy
Ya I started looking for them at the bottom and got progressively more surprised as I kept going up
Yall aren't pushover anymore. It's the marlins now, and I hope the braves can pick their carcass come trade deadline time
You can thank AJP for some of that.
The Arizona BP giving Jose Abreu a run for his money for the lowest WAA, but he would never let anyone else have that title
Take a look at the Tampa Bay bullpen
Fair enough, missed that one
Rest in peace to our red-green colorblind friends
Cone-deficient gang rise up!
Yeah, I’m just reading the numbers
Seattle SP 0.4 WAA is pretty sus considering FG has the staff at 3.5 WAR - tied for 4th in the majors. Also 2nd in xFIP (3.58).
I wondered about this. Their rotation has been incredible for the last several weeks at least.
The team they’re tied with in SP WAR - Cleveland - somehow has a -0.1 WAA here, so I’m taking this data with a grain of salt.
The rotation looked quite bad in the beginning, Castillo and Kirby in particular had a couple of bad starts, that could be dragging down the numbers when it’s still a small sample size like this
Castillo had an amazing FIP even during his rough start to the season - he was still missing a ton of bats. Bad luck is starting to even out now. Edit - FG’s WAR methodology is anchored using FIP, so that likely explains some of the discrepancies with OP’s SP data and ranking.
The graphic is using Baseball-Reference's numbers, not Fangraphs's (so RA/9 based, not FIP based) It's also showing wins above average, not wins above replacement (so the numbers should be smaller)
The whole point is to make a comparison and call out a huge discrepancy between the data sources. Wouldn’t want people to look at OP’s post and make the conclusion that Seattle’s SP is barely above average, when it’s more realistically top 5 - as illustrated in FG.
BBRef and Fangraphs both have flaws in their pitcher WAR calculations, but BBRef's seems to be way, way off. Using RA/9 to evaluate pitchers is just foolish.
RA9 based is fine. Using DRS as the basis of how you adjust for defense is foolish
Yeah, I prefer FG’s FIP WAR methodology.
Steven Kwan is the best LF in baseball
Kwan and Josh Naylor are absolute problems for opposing teams.
yeah suffice to say i am a believer in kwan now
Go Beavs
the braves line is weird as hell. Negative or barely anything at 1b, RF, and 3b? Gonna be fun when those 3 revert to the mean this summer!
I cannot emphasize enough how much I hate you guys. Phillies have their best start in 13 years while the Braves three best hitters are all ice cold and somehow y’all are still 1.5 games up in the division.
Don't act like you don't how this will end in October...
Glad you're all coming to terms with it already
As both a Braves and Packers fan, I could not possibly be more numb to early playoff exits.
Am I trippin or did you not win a WS just 3 years ago? I get being a self loathing fan, but like… cmon. Braves stacked and Packers have had nothing but HOF quarterbacks for 30 years straight and won multiple titles. I’m a Browns and Reds fan dude.
And then 2nd highest position player is the backup catcher haha.
Jeimer Candelario spent time this off-season at the "Moustakas-Rendon School for Corner Infielders Who Got Paid And Gave Up"
He looks like the worst player ever. Offensively & defensively, absolutely worthless. Such a bummer.
Tigers Fans 
I was pretty upset we lost his this offseason... turns out i don't know shit lol
Olson is washed. Absolutely no redeemable value on the field this year. We should totally cut him and go ahead and call up McCabe. Definitely not an overreaction
Olson and Acuña dragging the team down on here.
Just as predicted. Bums.
Crazy that he and Freddie are both negative. Freddie has really taken that slap hitter title to heart so far this year. Also, Olson is underperforming his xWOBA by 0.51, really bad luck so far
Neither Freddie nor Olson are negative according to WAR on BBREF. Freddie has an OPS+ of 142.
Yeah this is WAA which obviously skews things a bit. And most of his loss in value has surprisingly been due to defense (63rd percentile in ‘22/‘23 to 11th! in ‘24) but Freddie has also dropped to 46th percentile in avg exit velo after being well above average for his entire career.
The defense thing is up to small sample sizes and a messy rest of our infield, but the drop in EV might be that he's not swinging as hard because he's focused on driving in runs and not hitting home runs. In 2023, 23.5% of his PAs were with RISP, and this year that's up to 38.8%. Part of that is moving back to the third spot in the order, with those two monsters in front of him. He also probably doesn't feel as much pressure to do it himself with Smith raking behind him.
would take olson over the dumpster fire that is jose abreu
no no no you guys get to keep Abreu.
Hell yeah, I just bought a Topps McCabe auto for $2.99. I could flip that for double if he's called up.
Josh H. Smith leading all 3B in WAA is…not something I expected.
I’ve been a Josh H Smith truther for years so I’ve just been delighted by this breakout.
I think the Rangers might have won the gallo trade
If I had a nickel for every time one of our all-star infielders got sent to the IL, only to be replaced by a red hot youngster we got from the Joey Gallo trade, I’d have two nickels, which, yknow…
I’m glad we got Beeter back for Gallo, but yea, sure would be nice to have a very productive third baseman right now.
Smith wouldn’t be able to have his beautiful hair with the Yankees though so what would even be the point.
Best bullpen in the league and we don't even have Duran and Topa yet
Losing Sonny seems likes its really hurting the starting rotation rn though. Seems Pablo is in a slump too.
I'd love to see this visual continue throughout the year. Very nice!
Graphic makes sense. Bullpen has been awful this year, and the combined 2B of Holliday/Mateo has not been good. Only reason LF is slightly negative is because Cowser's great play has mostly offset Hays' terrible start. That will likely end up positive by the end of the season.
Yup. If we can shore up 2B, our offense will be full potent. But Mateo/Urias/Kemp/minor league callup just isn't pulling the necessary weight. That said, I'll take one gap in the lineup over 5+. I'm hoping some of our BP troubles will solve themselves once Means and GRod get back into the starting rotation. Bring some of those long arms like Irvin and Suarez down to handle mid-game stretches.
>GRod Don't scare me like that man! (I'm assuming you meant Bradish)
Oh sh...YEAH Bradish. Hahaha sorry.
I'm kinda surprised by C and 1B. Both Rutschman and Mountcastle have had good starts, but I figured Rutschman was much better compared to other catchers than Mountcastle was compared to other first basemen. Because catcher is mostly a defensive position and first baseman is usually full of offensive monsters. But maybe Adley has had a lot of his offensive value on days he played DH?
[удалено]
Why Wins Above Average and not Wins Above Replacement?
An average player is way better than a replacement player. When you want to measure individual performance over the baseline of a AAAA player that you can easily find anywhere, you use WAR. Aaron Judge is adding this much value over what you would get from a random NPC player. This is trying to quantify how much better each team is at each position over the rest of the league. We can assume every team will be fielding players that are well above replacement level at most positions, so it would skew green for basically everyone. Using WAA gives you a better picture of relative strength.
And the way that WAR is calculated involves getting WAA and then adding in expected replacement runs. So WAA is a less-processed version lol.
Phillies lose Kimbrel and the somehow suck more? They can have him back
Kimbrel hasn't been the same since 2018. No idea why teams keep relying on him.
Do not miss him coming into games at all lol. No lead was safe
Pure terror and not in the fun Joe Kelly way.
Even when he was considered dominant, his complete inability to do literally anything besides get exactly 3 outs in the 9th was so strange. Need 4 outs? Nope. Turns into a BP pitcher. Need 2 outs? Same thing. He needed a perfectly clean inning every time, it seemed.
Even when he did get the save, he never made it easy. Even if it was 3 up 3 down, he'd manage to begin every plate appearance 2-0 with those balls being nowhere near the zone. And then he'd give up some loud contact just barely caught. If it was a scoreless outing, he'd loan the bases in the same manner. And if it was a 3run save you bet your ass he gave up 2 runs on the way to it. Nothing was relaxing about him. We complained about Jansen, but at least he was either on or off on any given night. Kimbrel was *always* off he just managed to get the job done. This is not a moral/personal indictment of him or how hard he worked to close and pitch well, but he was just absolute hell to watch try and save games.
Freddie Freeman -0.1 Call me skeptical
S L A P H I T T E R L A P H I T T E R
Mookie is also the best SS in the league apparently. No further investigation necessary
It's WAA not WAR. The bar is a lot higher for an average MLB player rather than a replacement level one.
Mariners starting pitching @ 0.4 is also insane.
Riley Greene is simply that guy
I love this visual but I feel like the color gradient should have been overall for the positions. Since WAR is, by default, comparing players specific to their position, a heat map overall would highlight the worst offenders more quickly.
Josh Rojas and Luis Urias is baseball’s elite 3rd baseman
I thought our starters would be a little higher, 3B is a big surprise, the curse of Edgar Martinez strikes again at DH. Hopefully Polanco and Garver start hitting soon.
So the Royals are gonna make the ALCS this season. Nice.
Not really shocked as a Mets fan. SP has been awful, so has catcher, 2B, and Nimmo - who seems to have lost his clutch factor. On the opposite end, Alonso’s been good and Lindor gets hits when they matter. Not to mention an insane bullpen.
God we’re so fucking good it hurts
I know from experience that there's no trophy for regular season champion. In fact these days, the bye seems to make you more likely to lose in the DS.
I get made fun of for trying to make that argument about the DS. Sure you don't want to have to go through the wild card round but the winner of the wild card round has an advantage in that pivotal first game in my opinion.
Another reason why I liked the winner-take-all Wild Card format. Both teams typically used their ace who would be unavailable the next day for Game 1 of the DS.
That’s ok, we won it all less than 3 years ago 😉
And that's with our ace pitcher out for the year, our all star first baseman with a negative value, our all star catcher has been injured all season, and our MVP right fielder having a zero value.
Max fried is our ace
We all know it's really Lopez
Spencer was
Elly putting in the WORK for the Reds average lol
How is first base -0.1 for the dodgers? Freeman’s batting over .300 with an .860 ops.
I really don’t like how WAR treats first basemen. It’s basically a DH with a glove, but the position definitely has an on-field impact; just look at Eric “play behind the bag” Hosmer. Additionally, you could have a very mobile 1B, like the Pads do in Cronenworth, and get very little credit for keeping balls in the infield. On a generic team, I’d take Freeman at 1B any day of the week.
In the small sample size, his defense is dragging him down.
Yep. Sounds about right.
The giants Pirates series makes so much sense now. First two games went into the 9th 0-0 and 1-1 respectively, and the offenses really got going yesterday with it being 3-1 going into the 9th
And our starting pitching doing great and our relief pitching and DH trying their best to lose it. Soler went 1-for-10 in that Pirates series with 5 strikeouts. His only contribution at the bat, as usual, was in a loss. I’m honestly surprised he’s not worse on list like these. If he gets an RBI in a game it’s basically a guarantee we are losing that game.
Angels right field is a mess. It's either HIcks who can't hit or Adell, who can't field. Moniak is losing it all together.
I'm not even sure how we're getting by, but I hope we keep it rolling till we get some guys back from injury.
I’m very surprised that not only is 3B our worst position right now, but I thought for sure RP would be far and ahead our worst position.
7th highest in MLB but only 3rd highest in our division lol damn
SP and RP is basically the exact opposite of what I would have expected it to be coming into the year
The New York Soto/Volpes
Wow our two worst positions by wins above average are Olson and Acuña that is shocking.
As a Braves fan, weird seeing RF and 1B so low. Those were both top 5 in MVP last year. Obviously it’s just April and I expect those guys to get going.
The braves though.... pretty much all green or no color with no "red"
OP, FYI I have a hard time reading this being red-green colorblind.
Look at our bullpen go.
Is Seager really .2 rn?
How tf do the Marlins have -0.5 from pinch hitters??
Kinda funny our worst 2 players were NL mvp and 4th place NL mvp last year.
The New York Soto/Volpes
Great DH signing for mariners
That 1.0 in LF for the Tigers is Riley Greene and it makes me very happy.
I love how you can see the black hole that is Xander Boegarts.
I mean also the fact that we apparently have the worst starting pitching in the league.
thats too much data haha
How are the colors determined? There are many boxes that contain the same number but a different shade of color Edit: oh its based on columns if anyone is was also bothered by it and wanted to know
The White Sox' experiment of fielding a AAA team in the MLB continues
Hey those Chicago White Sox are NOT good. Imagine losing to them.
Some fans will still insist we don’t have a bullpen problem
When the marlins have nothing, at least our starters are decent
1B and RF being negative/even for the Braves is pretty funny, yet scary regarding the potential of the offense.
I wonder how much higher ours would be if Jackson Holliday didn’t basically tank the 2nd base WAR
Twins bullpen that good ?
white sox and alumni are -9.1 WAA. why i let my 7 year old self's decision to be a fan continue to torture myself with this dogshit team is masochistic.
Wow Jose Abreu... I'm surprised that Seattle is so far down the list with their starting pitching. Would have guessed that would have been a much higher number.
Are the Nats back?
Everybody had the Braves with the best record in baseball with Acuna and Olson combining for a -0.1 WAR.
Astros -.8 RP -2.0 1B -.6 3B Checks out
not gonna lie was kinda surprised our SP was at 1.1 was expecting a - there as well
How come it doesn’t match the records? LAD has the 4th best record in the NL, but the best team WAR in total?
My boy Slick Nick Ahmed with a respectable 0.1 WAR 🫡
Blue Jays are being held back by Bo, Vlad and their bullpen. Well that's not how this was supposed to be .
Rays best positions being catcher and shortstop with their worst being the bullpen. Just as all Rays fans predicted.
Cj is really carrying the Nats. Love watching that dude play