BtB Power Rankings: Week 2

"On Paper" Playoff Slot Leaders

* indicates new team this week

American League: E=Blue Jays*, C=Twins*, W=Athletics, WC=Yankees
National League: E=Phillies, C=Cardinals, W=Rockies*, WC=Dodgers*

This Week's Breakdown

As would be expected in this sort of exercise, using more than 3 games worth of data results in a huge change to most teams' performances.  Big surprise!  In fact, aside from the Phillies at the top of the rankings, and the Astros and Indians at or near the bottom, all teams moved in the rankings, and often substantially.

Two of the biggest gainer this week, in terms of our Team Performance Index (essentially just a component-based estimated winning percentage, adjusted for league), were the Twins and Dodgers.  The Twins have had a tremendous opening week, winning 6 of 8 games including a blowout 10-1 win over the Angels.  While real wins and runs don't factor into these rankings, the underlying stats do, and the Twins look solid in hitting, fielding, and especially fielding.  This week we're using for the first time FanGraphs' new fielding stat, Defensive Runs Saved.  The Twins rank second overall in DR at +9 overall excluding catching, which I have at +3 runs thanks to Joe Mauer.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, haven't seen the wins pile up in reality, but the games they have won have been by sizable margins, whereas they've gone 0-3 in one-run games over the past week.  The result is a sizable surge in their ranking, despite what some in Dodgertown may view as a mediocre start to the season.

The biggest losers were the Braves, who have dropped 4 of 5 games after starting the season with a pair of wins.  Other teams have had similar fates in the W/L column, of course.  What makes the Braves different is what happened on Monday night.  Ouch.

Finally, let me close by saying that I'm aware that there seems to be a "centering" issue with the data, as the average team has a TQI well over 0.500.  The issue is in the runs allowed estimates, which have teams saving 5 runs more than they actually have, on average.  I haven't determined the source of the issue yet, but half of it is coming from the DRS data: the average team DRS right now, neglecting catcher fielding, is +1.9 runs.  Will work on this further for next week.

Converting Runs to Wins

Team Offense & Defense

RS = Actual Runs Scored
eRS = Estimated Runs Scored: wRC + EqBRR
wOBA = The Book's statistic, but park adjusted, and using data from both wRC and EqBRR
OBP = On Base Percentage (Times on Base / Plate Appearances)
SLG = Slugging Percentage (Total Bases / At Bats)
wRC = From FanGraphs, with baserunning removed, after park adjustments
EqBRR = Dan Fox's composite baserunning statistics from Baseball Prospectus
Clutch = "Clutchiness" measure from fangraphs; difference between actual WPA and expected WPA based on component statistics.  We report this in runs.

RA = Actual Runs Allowed, after park adjustment
eRA = Estimated Runs Allowed: tRuns - Field - Catch
ERA = Straight-up Earned Run Average
FIP = Fielding-Independent Runs, based strictly on K-, BB-, and HR-rates.
xFIP = Experimental Fielding-Independent Runs from FanGraphs.  Like FIP, but with HR/Outfield Fly Ball rates regressed completely to league average.  xFIP is as predictive as any other DIPS-like stat.
xFIPrns = Pitching Runs Allowed, based on xFIP
Field = Team DRS, minus rSB since I calculate catcher fielding separately.
Catch = Catcher Fielding Runs, based on SB's, CS's, WP's, PB's, and E's.  The methods are essentially those described here.  But I'm using B-Ref data this year, and so there are slight tweaks to the methodology, generally in ways that should lead to greater precision.
BABIP = Batting Average on Balls In Play.  Fluctuates at the team level with fielding, although chance events can have effects as well.