FanPost

What Does a Winning Team Look Like?

There has been a lot of discussion recently about "holes" in the lineups of the Jays and other mlb teams. At issue is whether a team with strengths in certain positions and relative weaknesses in others can be competitive.

To examine this question, I designed the following test. For each of the eight fielding positions, I ranked the 30 mlb teams in terms of their 2014 fWAR generated. I then summarized the ordinal rankings for each of the ten teams that made the 2014 playoffs (plus the Jays) in the chart below.

Methodology

I used fangraphs’ leaderboard to generate the aggregate fWAR by team by position. There was a problem, however, in that where a player played at more than one position in a year his full fWAR is counted in each position. For example, the Jays’ 3.1 fWAR at 3B was largely due to Brett Lawrie’s 1.7. But that 1.7 was also counted as part of the Jays’ aggregate 1.7 fWAR at 2B.

To compensate for this double counting, I normalized each team’s fWAR to 700 plate appearances. So the Jays’ 3.1 fWAR at 3B – earned over 956 PAs – normalized to 3.1 * 700/956 = 2.27.

This is of course not as accurate as calculating exact fWARs for the time spent by each player at each position, but as the more accurate data was not available I thought that this was an acceptable compromise.

Results

The results are summarized in the table below.

For example, the Giants generated a fWAR of 6.0 from the catcher position in 2014, largely due to Buster Posey. That was 4th best in the majors (after pro-ration), after the Brewers, Pirates and Indians. Catcher was one of three positions in which the Giants had top-10 production (the others were SS and RF) but the Giants’ production from LF and CF were each only 21st best in the majors

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Some interesting observations:

1. Of the eight positions, the average team had only 4 in the top 10 and 2.5 in the bottom half. Every one of the ten playoff teams had at least two of their eight fielding position generate below-median production.

2. The average position on the average playoff team generated the 12th (11.7) highest fWAR in the majors for that position. The average Blue Jays ranking was 11.8.

3. Eight of the ten playoff teams had a higher average ranking than the Series-winning Giants.

Implications for the Jays? Perhaps going into 2015 with a (relative) weakness at CF or 2B – assuming no more a-squared magic – is not as critical as it might first appear.



Editor's Note: This is a FanPost written by a reader and member of Bluebird Banter. It was not commissioned by the editors and is not necessarily reflective of the opinions of Bluebird Banter or SB Nation.