A power ranking of sort
posted in Power rankings, Sabermetrics |Am I late in discovering this? The Tigers currently lead the Hardball Times Dartboard with 106 expected wins, six more than the White Sox.
It’s not really a power ranking. More, it’s a statistical projection of wins based on past results and if a team played a nuetral-strength schedule, using BaseRuns as its projecting statistic. Well, Hardball Times explained it better themselves last month.
Justin Verlander, Jeremy Bonderman, and Nate Robertson are on-pace for career-highs in innings; meanwhile, Kenny Rogers is 41. Will the Tigers pitchers hold up or breakdown, and will Mike Maroth’s return to the rotation help?
In addition, Hardball Times posted its Anatomy of a Tiger (part 2) examining where the different positional players came from and how they came to be Tigers. The bottom line?
he Tigers seem to distinguish themselves by developing good talent and augmenting it with astutely acquired cast-offs and overpaid veteran free agents. If anything, the 2006 Tigers’ story tells us that if you can draft and develop good young (read: cheap) talent, you’re willing to spend some money, gamble on some players with some upside and aren’t completely incompetent, good things will happen sooner or later.
In it, reference is made to this article at Baseball Think Factor, which users other ways to show the Tigers to have the best defense in baseball.
Sphere ItThe Tigers are above average at every position except right field. That’s just incredible. And the difference between the Tigers and the White Sox can be summed up with the leather. The Tigers have a 68-run lead defensively. That’s six wins.
