Surprises in the Standings

They traded the best pitcher in the game and suddenly they’re good. Baseball is weird.

Two months of baseball are in the books, and there are some real surprises in the standings, particularly in the American League East and the National League.

Everyone knew that Tampa Bay had a good team before the season started, but at 35-18, with two and a half games of space between themselves and the Yankees, they have exceeded expectations. The Toronto Blue Jays have obliterated expectations for their club, winning 31 of their first 54 games and keeping pace with the Red Sox. Boston struggled greatly in April, but turned things around in May, and even die-hard fans probably are not surprised that they sit two and a half games behind the Yankees. The real shock is that they are in fourth place in the division. Apart from the East standings, there are not many real surprises in the rest of the AL, with the possible exception of Seattle. The Mariners added some really nice players this offseason—particularly Cliff Lee, Chone Figgins, and Milton Bradley—and were a popular pick to compete for the West this season. They have sputtered to a 20-31 record and are probably out of contention.

One third of the way through the season, the real wackiness is happening over in the National League. The preseason consensus for the San Diego Padres was that they were headed for one of the bottom spots in their division. At 31-21, they are sitting in first place and lead the Dodgers by a game. The Cincinnati Reds looked like an improved team this off-season, but it is still a surprise to see them at 31-22 and on top of the powerhouse Cardinals. The two-time NL champion Phillies have faded badly recently and currently trail Atlanta, and the Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers, both of whom looked like .500 teams prior to the season, have been terrible.

The Padres also traded an awesome pitcher, and now they’re good, too. What’s going on here?

Of course, teams have played only 50-something games thus far, so there are bound to be some fluke results. It is far more unlikely for inferior teams to stick at the top of the standings for 162 games, or for good teams to languish at the bottom over the course of a full season. Let’s take a look at the underlying performances teams have received and make some predictions about who will rise and who will fall as the season drags on.

In order to do this, I will look at Wins Above Replacement (WAR), aggregated at the team level. The concept behind WAR, as I have explained in earlier posts, starts with the idea that a player’s performance should be measured against a standard baseline. This baseline is not zero, because teams cannot play without a full squad. Removal of any player from the field necessitates a replacement, and there is value simply in having bodies occupy each spot in the lineup. WAR is based on the assumption that there is an unlimited and freely available supply of borderline major leaguers or decent minor league players teams could insert into the lineup if necessary. The theoretical level of production that such players would provide becomes “replacement level,” and we can then measure the value actual players provide over and above this level.

The details of how to calculate WAR are rather involved, and are available here. For our purposes, it is sufficient to know that a team full of replacement-level players would win just under 30 percent of its games. Using this benchmark, and adding the WAR numbers for pitchers and hitters that FanGraphs lists on its team pages, we get a picture of team performance with some of the lucky bounces and well-distributed hits stripped out. I compared these underlying wins from WAR totals to the actual wins and losses teams have compiled so far. The teams with the largest gaps between the two are in the following table.

The Cubs, Brewers, and Diamondbacks have actual winning percentages significantly lower than one would expect from the individual performances of their players. The Cubs would be a good team, the Brewers average, and the Diamondbacks passable if their win-loss records matched actual performance. All three are likely to perform significantly better going forward. On the other end are the Dodgers, Pirates, and Rays, who have records far better than expected. Some luck—timely hits, line drives against them going directly at fielders, etc.—may have contributed to the hot starts of the Dodgers and Rays. The Pirates’ actual performance was already bad, but they appear lucky not to be the worst team in baseball. These latter three are likely to regress. It may be difficult for the Dodgers to stay near the top of the NL West and for the Rays to hold off the Yankees in the AL East.

Reorganizing division standings by WAR, the Yankees lead the AL East, Minnesota remains on top in the Central, and Texas has the West. In the NL, the Florida Marlins lead the East, Cincinnati the Central, and San Francisco is in a virtual tie with the Padres in the West. Thus, underlying performance lends some support to the records that two of the league’s biggest surprises have compiled. The Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres may stick in contention for most or all of this season. It would be a huge upset of preseason expectations if either were to win its division, but both are in first place and appear to be in solid position going forward.