The Distribution of Position Player WAR by Team, 2002-2011

by Bill Petti on Feb 2, 2012 1:30 PM EST in Research

click to enlarge

Tuesday, I wrote about trends in negative WAR position players in the league since 2002.

Generally speaking, about 20% of all players that accumulate >=100 plate appearances in a season will finish with negative Wins Above Replacement (using FanGraphs' measure for WAR).

In that analysis, I ranked teams in terms of the percent of players with >=100 PA's with negative WAR they had on their rosters relative to their total position players during that time frame.

A number of commentators here and at other sites asked about the distribution of positive WAR players by team.

The graphic above shows the breakdown of total negative WAR players and then positive WAR players for various ranges for each team since 2002. The table is sorted on the negative WAR column, from least to greatest percentage. Each column is also heat mapped from largest (dark green) to smallest (white) percentage.

A few observations:

While the Mets had the third-fewest players overall with negative WAR, they ranked first by far in terms of the percent of players with WAR between 0 and 1 (48.2%). So while they have largely avoided negative WAR players, it's clear they weren't always fielding a team of high performers.
The Cardinals ranked first in terms of 7+ WAR players with 7.4%. This was largely a function of having Albert Pujols on the roster, as he accounted for 8 out of the 11 7+ WAR seasons for the team since 2002.
The Yankees came in first in terms of >4WAR players at 27.9%, followed by the Red Sox (23%), Phillies (21.3%), and Braves (20.5%). These were the only teams to have >20% of >4WAR players.
The Cardinals (19.1%), Marlins (16.4%), Rangers (14.2%), Brewers and Rays (both at 13.7%) were the next highest in terms of >4WAR players.
Sadly, the Royals had the fewest >4WAR players (5.2%).

0 recs | 4 comments

Comments

We're going to look back in a few years

and realize just how good the Cardinals lineup was in the mid 2000s

MV3 for life

VolsnCards5 - February 4, 2012 reply

This is great!

Any chance you can upload the excel file so that we can sort to our heart’s content?

Naveen Nallappa - February 5, 2012 reply

You dropped a Ray somewhere

I reverse-engineered the raw data from this chart and came up a Ray short. I added it into the negative column to balance the numbers out. Based on how things changed for the Mets in the rankings when you look at WAR less than 1 vs. WAR less than 0, I plotted out the rankings for all possible thresholds:

It’s a bit hard to follow in the middle, but the teams consistently at the top (Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, and Braves) and the bottom (Royals and Pirates) are fairly clear. The Mets combine one of the steepest drops with one of the steepest jumps; the Giants incidentally have a similar characteristic with less drastic slopes.

Also worth noting is that the Mets were tied with the Diamondbacks for the most eligible players in the NL at 141; only the Angels (146) and Twins (148) had more in the AL. The lowest numbers were the Yankees, Marlins, and Pirates at 122; NL average was 130, AL average was 134 (DH effect), NL East average was 128.

mttlg - February 5, 2012 reply

I'd be interested in seeing

the % of a team’s PAs and IPs were given to players w/ negative WAR. If I understand this correctly, this shows the % of players on the team with those WARs. It would be interesting to see how much playing time, relative to that of their teammates, was given to below-replacement level players.

chuckb - February 5, 2012 reply

Beyond the Box Score