Christmas for baseball nerds

sporting goods

Hardball Times has updated its Win Shares page for the first time in 2005. For those that don't know, its in short a way of measuring how many wins an individual is responsible for as a result of their hitting, pitching, and fielding. There is a lot more on the site in terms of background for those interested, but I've pulled out a few nuggets from the first release of this data (all stats through 5/18)

Top five players in the ML
1. Brian Roberts
2. Jon Garland
3. Derek Lee
4. Bobby Abreu
5. Roger Clemens

Two notes on that: First of all, I would have given you unbelievable odds on those top 2 guys even being in the top 25 this late in the season. Also, it is tough for pitchers to keep up with everyday players in Win Shares, showing just how impressive Garland and Clemens have been. The top 5 win shares in 2004 all came from the NL: Bonds, Pujols, Rolen, Beltre, and Abreu. Huh. Abreu is really good.

Top five Red Sox
1. Johnny Damon
2. Trot Nixon
3. Manny Ramirez
4. Jason Varitek
5. Bronson Arroyo

What, no Edgar Renteria? Actually, when compared to win shares against baseline (comparing actual results to what you would expect an average player to generate in the same playing time), Renteria is the one regular who puts up a negative number. Millar, Bellhorn, and Mueller round out the blah infield by putting up 0 win shares above expected baseline. Based on this metric, Keith Foulke is having the worst year of any Red Sox player. You won't get much argument from me on that one.

Top five Mets
1. Carlos Beltran
2. Cliff Floyd
3. David Wright
4. Mike Cameron
5. Victor Diaz

At number 5, you really have a tie between Diaz, Pedro, Roberto Hernandez, and Piazza. Pedro would be much higher but he hurts himself with the bat. Looking at win shares against expectation, Floyd, Beltran and Cameron all put up really nice numbers, which would probably place the Mets among the best outfields in the majors so far this year. Too bad they can't find room for Diaz. Jae Seo actually shows up pretty high here, while Reyes puts up a -3 which is quite bad. By win shares, Reyes and Glavine have been the worst Mets this year, really hurting the team.

Top five Yankees
1. Gary Sheffield
2. Alex Rodriguez
3. Tino Martinez
4. Derek Jeter
5. Jorge Posada

I'm sure nobody is surprised that the Yankees are led by hitting, though Johnson and Mussina show up next on the list. Sheffield was last year's AL win shares champion. Giambi, with all his struggles, has actually been OK with the bat. At least he gets on base. Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright bring up the rear with their piss-poor pitching.

I'll play with this more later, that's a start!