Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
scott@scottlongonline.com
I've always tried to look at baseball in a way that helps me to grasp it. I'm a simple guy and I understand simple things. I try to leave as many complex numbers out of it as possible and I don't have the Excel chops to do graphs or charts, though those just usually confuse me.
So here's a concept -- if each team was a player, who would they be? It's a riff off my idea of "who faces him?" which is simply turning a pitcher's opposing AVG into a player. For instance, Roy Halladay is only allowing batters to hit 273/358 (OPSc) against him. That's the equivalent of Yorvit Torrealba (this year's version, not the fluky 2007 one.) On the other side, Brett Myers is 341/535. That's like facing a lineup of nine Adrian Gonzalez clones.
For teams, it's the same thing. The Red Sox have slash stats of 293/364/450. The most equivalent player is Andre Ethier. The Rays are at 259/330/390, good for the middle pack and the equivalent of Jason Varitek. Bringing up the rear is the Padres, going 234/305/348, which is a lineup full of Rod Barajas.
I don't have time to go through and do the whole list, but you can do your favorites in comments.
** UPDATE: I must have read Scott Lucas' column from November, the one that did a very similar thing to what I did here. He writes about the Rangers' minor leaguers for The Newberg Report, so he deserves the credit. I honestly don't remember the column, but knew I'd seen it somewhere. Thanks to Scott and to Jamey Newberg for reminding me.
All are clearly underperforming, likely to due to age, so either would work. I hope they are more like Vlad, who ought to bounce back, as opposed to I-Rod, 'cuz that's what he is now, and he isn't getting better.
Actually, Varitek (.255/.328/.409) is closer than either Vlad or I-Rod, but that means the Yanks are hitting like the Rays, which can't be true, because the Rays' hitters are full of youth and life and energy and spunk, while the Yanks' hitters are tired, boring, lifeless old men.
Good luck with that one, Salty.
Team: .282/.372/.438
Likes:
B.J. Upton .287/.381/.412
Carlos Guillen .294/.377/.444
Andre Ethier .295/.373/.446
Grady Sizemore .273/.379/.468
Obviously, I was trying to match OBP as closely as possible, but there just isn't a good direct comp. You punt something pretty much everywhere. Like, if you want to be nearly exact with OBP and SLG, then you've got this:
Carlos Beltran .246/.373/.438
The problem there is that you're implying the Cubs have more team power than they really do, since there's such a huge gap in BA. Of course, the other problem is that I'm clearly taking this way too seriously....
They're probably best personified this season by one of its own:
Mark Ellis: .242/.328/.379
Oakland pitching yields: 3.32 ERA, 7.09 K/9, 2.37 K/BB, 1.23 WHIP.
The guy who is closest to that this year is also another Athletic:
Dana Eveland: 3.23 ERA, 6.65 K/9, 1.75 K/BB, 1.25 WHIP
.264 / .331 / .396
This is like facing this season's Alexis Rios constantly:
.263 / .331 / .397
or last year's Scott Rolen
.265 / .331 / .398
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