A New Perspective

So far, we've been using Batter Impact to look at individual players, especially those among the top 25 batters in the league. However, for the last week, I've been experimenting with Batter Impact as a tool to look at teams as a whole. In this post, I'll show you some of the interesting things I've discovered and share some of my predictions for the rest of the season.

I first began to look at a statistic which I'm calling Team Batter Impact, essentially the sum of the individual BIs for each player on a given team. I looked to see if there was a correlation between Team BI and Winning Percentage. A scatterplot is shown below.

There seemed to be a decent correlation between Team BI and Win Percentage for all 30 teams. A few outliers were of course present (namely the Giants, Brewers, Braves, and Cubs), but we'll get to those shortly.

After further experimentation with Team BI, I noticed that pitchers, more than other players, were greatly hurting their team's BIs. Therefore, I calculated Team BI30, basically a Team BI stat using data only from players with more than 30 plate appearances. Below is the table of results of Team BI30. Click to enlarge.

For our convenience, I have organized the table based on divisions and designated every team's Team BI30 and Win Percentage as green (top 33%), yellow (middle 33%), or red (bottom 33%). Team names marked in red are teams I expect to drop in win percentage or in their division standings. Team names in green are teams who I think will climb in their divison standings or increase their winning percentage. Here are details on these teams below:

• I expect the Brewers to hold on to win the NL Central, especially since they are on a hot streak right now. However, I think their win percentage is unsustainable for a team with their BI30. They will not finish as a .600 team, more likely as a .525 or .535 team.
• As sad as I feel to saying this, I expect my beloved Giants to come crashing down as well. They have the best record in baseball but only a 7.4 BI30, 8th best in the league. Unless they give up their farm system at the deadline, there is no way  they can sustain their .655 season. The Rockies are just so much better in BI30 and though much of that is probably attributable to their home stadium, I still think the Rockies will claim the division by season's end.
• The Padres should be worse than they are. They have the worst BI30 in baseball and I expect their record to dip down to around .400, especially after the trade deadline when they jettison their best players. I have no doubt that Arizona will surpass them in the NL West by the end of the season.
• I think Kansas City is as good as their record suggests, but I think that they will be surpassed by the Indians in the AL Central standings. They are far and away the worst team in their division and the Indians are a lot better than their record suggests.
• The Angels and A's are neck and neck in terms of BI30 and will be like this for the rest of the season. It will definitely be one of the most exciting division races to follow. Right now, the Halos are in second and even if they are eventually unable to capture the AL West, I expect them to nab a Wild Card spot, especially if Josh Hamilton returns with the same productivity as before he went down to injury.
• Cubs fans rejoice! I don't think Chicago's .365 record reflects their BI30; their record will improve. The team is still horrible, don't get me wrong, but I think that the Cubs have a chance to pass the Reds and maybe even the Pirates (don't hold me to that one) by the end of the season, as long as they don't hold a firesale at the deadline.
• The AL East is exactly as it should be in my opinion so no changes there. Toronto deserves to win the division.

You may have noticed I failed to mention the NL East and that is because I think it needs its own breakdown. I honestly cannot explain why the NL East standings are as they are. The division leader has the 3rd worst BI30 in baseball while their 2nd place team has the 3rd best. The last place team featured a player who was consistently in the Top 10 in BI up until a few weeks ago when he came down hard. Suffice to say there are no guarantees when predicting the NL East.

To make this analysis easy, I have plotted the distribution of the NL East's 5 teams. The higher the bar for a specific range of BI, the more players that team features with BIs within that range. These graphs include only players with 30 or more PAs.

Of the 5 teams, Miami clearly has the best distribution and I predict them to win the division, which would be amazing given how horribly the team played last year. I think Washington will follow them in second place. The Mets, Phillies, and Braves are hard to distinguish. Atlanta will probably finish third due to their hot start to the season. I think the Mets will finish in fourth and the Phillies in fifth simply because New York has more players in the positive BI range. Honestly though, Atlanta is a conundrum that BI has yet to solve. We shall see if it turns out to be right.

Of course, none of my predictions are set in stone. As different players get hot and different teams start slumping, BIs will undoubtedly change and along with them, my predictions. Stay tuned for a reflection in August to see which of these predictions come true.