trails the NL Central in both the geometric and arithmetic average of the rankings

Which although I know has been explained still seems way too big to me.

Fielding has been pretty rough: Lowell, Bay, Lugo, Ellsbury, and Baldelli all rate blow average at their positions.

Offense…will Ortiz get it together?
-j

…but worthless help from position players on offense and fielding. The data support that. It’s 100% a pitching team. The ChiSox are similar, but with better offense and fielding.
-j

Re preamble: luck is mitigated to some extent by using component stats rather than ones substantially impacted by timing, ground balls with eyes, etc. That’s what makes this ranking a bit different from some of the others around the webs.

Re 1: I’m not as convinced that the DH really matters that much. You’d expect it would help hitting but hurt pitching. … and that more or less all comes out in the wash when calculating team winning percentage. I’m careful not to compare offenses or pitching across leagues for these rankings.

Re 2: We’re not predicting who will go to the postseason. We’re assessing how well teams have played, irrespective of actual team wins (or runs). Dan does playoff stuff a bit with his poor-man projected standings, but that’s not the goal here.

Re 3: some strength of schedule adjustments might help with some of this, but that is a non-trivial undertaking to incorporate. I unfortunately only have so much time, and I’m focusing on other things right now. I will say that, because we do use stats that get away from timing, I think these rankings do get a bit closer to true talent then, say, just pythagorean rankings. But I haven’t tested that. The Rays recent success was predicted by the rankings to some degree, but that’s anecdotal.

I think a lot of your critique is just anti-power rankings in general. I think they have their problems, but I still find it interesting to try to rank teams against one another like this. If nothing else, I think these data give us another look at team performance that helps us break down the reasons for their success (or failure) between offense, pitching, and fielding, while removing some (definitely not all) luck-based events from the mix.
-j

As I understand it, this power ranking is a solution to something like " imagine a season where every team plays each other X times..what are the final standings?" However, we are only using results from the actual season to date to give our predictions.

This is more like, “how much talent have teams showcased so far?” They’re not looking forward, which as you note later, could be an issue if you don’t care about that question or want something testable.

The two leagues are not really playing the same game; the DH gives AL teams a significant advantage in team formation, and in any hypothetical head-to-head showdown between all 30 teams playing X games vs. all others…NL teams would all grab DHs, and even if they didn’t spend as much as the real AL does on a DH, just using the spot correctly and not having whoever gets the day off in the field taking the spot would help a fair bit.

NL teams don’t have to spend money/draft picks on a DH. That means they can focus on acquiring more talent at other positions. So when interleague games don’t use a DH, NL teams should have the advantage, because the DH on the AL team turns into a glorified pinch hitter, or takes the field and creates a defensive loss. The NL team hasn’t lost any assets.

Now, that’s pretty simplistic, and I’m open to the idea that the AL has an inherent advantage because of the DH, but the basic argument doesn’t hold.

Problem 2: In the real world, your division and league have a significant effect on your chances of winning the WS. Isn’t this what really matters? As it is constructed, it seems like an exercise to make AL East fans feel better about their predicament.

If you want to answer the question, “who’s more likely to make the playoffs?” then you need to account for divisions and leagues and future performance, definitely. But Justin’s only ranking quality of past performance.

However, stay tuned. There just might be something later in the week that will quench you thirst for this question…

There is nothing to test the rankings on- shouldn’t a ranking formula be attempting to predict final results to some extent? If you go back to prior seasons and run this system at various points, I bet you will find that teams in the same division/league are tied together and "bunched up" more than you would expect, due to exaggerated factors and what seems to be some double-counting.

Again, that just isn’t what these rankings are measuring, for better or worse. While the NL Central might have a bunch of bad teams, it WILL send someone to the playoffs. You seem to want to put that team on equal footing with, the Angels or Rangers, while Justin doesn’t. No worries, different approach.

If I were to make any modifications to these and had infinite research abilities, I’d account for exact schedule, home/away games, strength of opposing pitcher, strength of opposing lineups, etc. etc. Some of those matter more than others. Definitely room for improvement here, but they’re pretty good as is, if you’re into the question Justin’s chosen to answer.

…then the AL would have to field a weaker player at each position (on average) than the NL because they would have to spread the same dollars around to one more player.

The thing is, of course, that they don’t spend the same money. The AL spends more than the NL. That’s a big part of the reason that the AL talent level is greater than the NL talent level…hence the league adjustment we apply here.
-j