Baseball Crank: BASEBALL: Slicing The Pie

June 14, 2004

BASEBALL: Slicing The Pie

OK, I've been on something of a Win Shares kick lately, playing around with the latest data. Here's something else I came up with from looking at The Hardball Times' tables of in-season 2004 Win Shares: the players who are contributing the greatest share of their teams' Win Shares (through Thursday's action). I broke the list between contending and non-contending teams (using .500, for now, as the break, since a team under .500 can't contend unless they improve), and, due to the DH, between AL and NL. I also used un-rounded Win Shares rather than the rounded-off numbers, since it's still early enough in the season that the rounding makes a significant impact. So, who's carrying the biggest load for their team?

NL Contenders:

#	Player	Win Shares	Team	Team Wins	%
1	Barry Bonds	20.1	SF	30	22.3
2	Sean Casey	19.6	CIN	34	19.2
3	Scott Rolen	18.1	STL	34	17.8
4	Bobby Abreu	15.8	PHI	30	17.6
5	Ken Griffey	15.3	CIN	34	15.3
6	Adam Dunn	14.6	CIN	34	14.6
7	Johnny Estrada	12.2	ATL	29	14.0
8	Lance Berkman	13.2	HOU	32	13.8
9	Mike Lowell	13.7	FLA	34	13.2
10	Albert Pujols	13.2	STL	34	12.9

Bonds, as always, dominates these lists . . . You can certainly see that the Reds are heavily dependent on three players for nearly half the team's value, two of whom have underachieved in recent years and the third of whom has been injury prone. Fingers crossed . . . Johnny Estrada? . . . .

AL Contenders:

#	Player	Win Shares	Team	Team Wins	%
1	Vladimir Guerrero	13.6	ANA	34	13.3
2	Michael Young	12.2	TEX	33	12.3
3	Manny Ramirez	12.0	BOS	35	11.4
4	Alex Rodriguez	12.7	NYY	38	11.1
5	Jose Guillen	10.5	ANA	34	10.3
6	Frank Thomas	9.1	CHW	31	9.8
7	Lew Ford	9.5	MIN	33	9.6
8	Curt Schilling	9.8	BOS	35	9.3
9T	Tim Hudson	9.3	OAK	34	9.1
9T	Scott Hatteberg	9.3	OAK	34	9.1

No surprise that Guerrero tops this list . . . As with the NL leaders, there are still some pretenders here (Lew Ford, Hatteberg). There are also fewer winning teams in the AL to pick from. In general, AL teams are less dependent on their stars at this stage, partly due to the concentration of stars on the Yankees.

NL Non-Contenders:

#	Player	Win Shares	Team	Team Wins	%
1	Craig Wilson	11.8	PIT	24	16.4
2	Todd Helton	8.8	COL	21	14.0
3	Randy Johnson	9.9	AZ	24	13.8
4	Luis Gonzalez	9.8	AZ	24	13.6
5	Jack Wilson	9.5	PIT	24	13.2

Like some of the NL leaders, a few of the bad teams are also top-heavy with a few decent contributors.

AL Non-Contenders:

#	Player	Win Shares	Team	Team Wins	%
1	Melvin Mora	13.1	BAL	26	16.8
2	Carlos Beltran	10.0	KC	21	15.9
3	Ivan Rodriguez	11.2	DET	27	13.8
4	Julio Lugo	8.8	TB	23	12.8
5	Carlos Guillen	10.3	DET	27	12.7

Interestingly, these are all up-the-middle defensive players.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 07:25 AM | Baseball 2004 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

Comments

D'oh! Brain cramp. I forgot Mora's a third baseman now.

Posted by: The Crank at June 14, 2004 09:13 AM

Is Detroit really a non-contender right now? They aren't that far out of things in the Central.

Posted by: Josh at June 14, 2004 10:17 AM

I would highly recommend that you use Win Shares Above Average for this exercise. The problem with Win Shares, as you've used them here, is that a team's Win Shares leader could also be its Loss Shares leader.

As an example, Moises Alou leads the Cubs in Win Shares, but Carlos Zambrano leads them in Wins Shares Above Average. He's contributed more than Alou, given their relative "playing" time.

Better example: Joe Kennedy has actually contributed more to the Rockies than Todd Helton, based on WSAA. The best thing to do would be to compute Win Shares Above Replacement, depending on your belief of what replacement level is.

But your approach will always overvalue hitters and undervalue pitchers.

Posted by: studes at June 14, 2004 02:30 PM

I had considered using the WSAA numbers, but I was looking more at the issue of who has carried the biggest load for the contending teams vs. who has made the highest marginal contributions. But maybe a follow-on post would be interesting.

Posted by: The Crank at June 14, 2004 05:31 PM