I initially created Baseball Graphs to develop new and better ways of presenting baseball statistics. The 2003 season was my first full-season attempt, and it turned out pretty well. I now spend a lot of my time creating and formatting the baseball stats at The Hardball Times.

Along the way, I've also picked up the writing bug. I spend most of my energy writing for THT, but sometimes I like to write about more geeky stuff, baseball research and things like that. That's what this blog is for.

I'm very interested in graphics and other information display, so I'll probably post links to creative stuff like that. I also plan to write historical articles that complement the historical graphs. And I have inexplicably developed an interest in baseball win-related stats, such as Bill James's Win Shares and something called Win Probability Added. So you can expect a few posts about that stuff too.

If you're interested, I've created a complex spreadsheet full of WPA logic, which you can download at ftp.baseballgraphs.com/wpa. If you'd like to read more about Win Shares, try these links:

Win Shares Intro
What They're Good For
Mathematical Details
Archives
December, 2008
April, 2008
March, 2008
January, 2008
January, 2007
December, 2006
November, 2006
October, 2006
September, 2006
August, 2006
July, 2006
June, 2006
May, 2006
April, 2006
March, 2006
February, 2006
January, 2006
October, 2005
September, 2005
July, 2005
May, 2005
April, 2005
March, 2005
February, 2005
January, 2005
December, 2004
November, 2004
October, 2004
September, 2004
August, 2004
July, 2004
June, 2004
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March, 2004
February, 2004
January, 2004
December, 2003
November, 2003
October, 2003


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If there is any aspect of WPA, Win Shares or baseball graphics you're interested in, drop me an e-mail and I'll look into it. Syndicate Baseball Graphs:

All-Time Franchise Win Shares

March 06, 2004

A quick look at which franchises have amassed the most batting, pitching and fielding win shares.

Another fun thing you can do with Win Shares is to figure out which franchises have been the best throughout baseball history.  I’m not talking about total Win Shares for each franchise—that would just mimic total wins—but which franchises have the most batting, pitching and fielding Win Shares?

I looked at all teams that have played 5,000 or more games.  That threshold includes all the AL and NL original franchises, of course, but it also includes some of the more recent expansion teams, such as the Padres and Brewers.  I pulled the total Win Shares for each, separated them into batting, pitching and fielding, and calculated total Win Shares type per game played.

Based on this approach, the top four batting franchises are the Yankees, Giants, Dodgers and Astros(!), in that order.  The worst are the Expos, Mets, Royals and Orioles (bottom up order).

The top four pitching franchises are the Yankees, Royals, Red Sox and Cubs.  The bottom four are the Padres, Rangers, Brewers and Phillies.

Top four fielding teams?  The Royals, White Sox, Reds and Yankees.  Bottom four?  Padres, Rangers, A’s and Brewers.

I probably should exclude all the expansion teams to get a better picture.  And this is just a simplified version of what should probably be a rigorous exercise.  But, hey, the name of the blog is “Fun with Win Shares,” right?

I’ve attached the entire table, so you can copy it into Excel and play with the basic data if you want to.

This is a list of all baseball franchises with 4,000 or more games played (I lowered the threshold for data purposes). Each team is marked by its "franchise" ID, so that the Minnesota Twins' time in Washington is included in the totals (as an example).

The first column contains the number of games played by each franchise. Each of the following columns contains the total number of Win Shares achieved by that team, divided by games played.

Team	Games	Total WS	Bat WS	Pitch WS	Field WS
NYY	15,990	1.69	0.857	0.567	0.263
SFG	18,418	1.61	0.817	0.541	0.250
LAD	18,337	1.56	0.747	0.554	0.260
STL	18,542	1.53	0.733	0.542	0.259
BOS	16,001	1.53	0.711	0.558	0.261
CHC	18,952	1.53	0.718	0.555	0.257
CLE	16,015	1.52	0.730	0.538	0.255
CIN	18,535	1.52	0.714	0.540	0.263
PIT	18,498	1.52	0.726	0.533	0.257
DET	16,040	1.51	0.744	0.518	0.248
CHW	16,009	1.50	0.690	0.551	0.264
KCR	5,533	1.50	0.664	0.565	0.267
HOU	6,680	1.49	0.745	0.506	0.238
TOR	4,253	1.49	0.660	0.564	0.265
ATL	18,918	1.48	0.697	0.535	0.250
ANA	6,839	1.46	0.675	0.531	0.251
MON	5,540	1.46	0.652	0.546	0.258
OAK	15,976	1.44	0.724	0.484	0.237
MIN	16,021	1.43	0.685	0.496	0.245
SEA	4,251	1.42	0.682	0.504	0.237
BAL	16,015	1.42	0.664	0.509	0.249
NYM	6,672	1.42	0.662	0.517	0.241
MIL	5,542	1.41	0.700	0.478	0.237
TEX	6,825	1.39	0.691	0.475	0.226
PHI	18,345	1.39	0.671	0.483	0.237
SDP	5,545	1.37	0.694	0.452	0.220

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