National League Team Graphs
Text Box: How to Read this Graph This graph highlights each team's runs scored and allowed per game, adjusted for park factors. Teams on the right side of the graph have strong offenses; teams on the top of the graph have strong defenses (pitching and fielding). The three isobars (dotted lines) represent winning percentages of .400, .500 and .600. Teams can be group according to their position relative to the isobars. Teams in the upper left of each group have stronger defenses, while teams in the lower right have stronger offenses. Though runs scored and allowed are closely related to wins and losses, they are not perfect predictors of wins. The table to the right of the graph lists the number of wins each team has achieved, relative to the number of wins that would be expected, based on actual runs scored and allowed.
Text Box: Commentary Thanks to their series with the Mets, the Cardinals are now the best offensive team in the league, and the best team in general. Their won/lost record does not fully reflect this, because so many of their runs were in the Mets series. The Giants are sinking back to earth, though their won/loss record doesn't fully reflect it. Atlanta is the team most ahead of itself at this time; we'll see if they come back down to earth or surge ahead. Based on this chart, the Cubs and Phils are almost the same team. We'll follow them in the other graphs.
5/4/2003
Team Wins +/-
ARI -1.52
ATL 4.22
CHN -2.01
CIN 2.10
COL -0.26
FLO 0.72
HOU -0.11
LAN -2.77
MIL -0.64
MON 0.21
NYN 1.15
PHI -2.45
PIT -0.12
SDN -0.10
SFN 3.49
SLN -2.66
Team Runs +/-
Text Box: How to Read this Graph This graph lays out the two basic offensive components of each team: getting on base and slugging. Teams to the right have higher On Base Percentages, and teams on the toward the top have higher slugging percentages. The two dotted lines represent the league average for each category. The teams in the upper right quadrant are the best offensive teams, and the teams in the lower left quadrant are the worst. Although these two components are highly related to actual runs scored, they are not perfect predictors. The table to the right of the graph lists the number of runs scored per game above or below the predicted number of runs scored. This table is created using David Smyth's Base Runs formula.
ARI -0.93
ATL -0.29
CHN 0.63
CIN -0.19
COL -0.72
FLO -0.35
HOU -0.65
LAN 0.01
MIL -0.27
MON 0.04
NYN 0.25
PHI 1.04
PIT -0.18
SDN -0.26
SFN 0.34
SLN 0.43
Text Box: Commentary St. Louis' offensive strength shines through. Meanwhile, the Cubs show they are the better offensive team than the Phils, though these stats are not park adjusted. Still, Phils are making hay by beating their run elements more than any other team, and could be due for a slump unless their slugging starts to come around. Arizona may start to pick up the offense soon. Time will tell how much the Randy Johnson surgery impacts their ability to get back into the race.
Text Box: How to Read this Graph This graph highlights the two key, relatively independent functions of defense: pitching and fielding. The horizontal axis plots Tango Tiger's Fielding Independent Runs (FIP), which are a function of the things a pitcher controls: strikeouts, walks and home runs. Teams to the right have better pitching. The vertical axis plots the Defensive Efficiency Ratio (DER) of each team. This is a measure of the percent of balls hit inside the park that the defense actually turns into an out. The dotted lines represent league averages. Teams in the upper right quadrant have good pitching and fielding; in the lower right good pitching/worse fielding; in the upper left good fielding/worse pitching and the lower left is pretty poor pitching and fielding. Some parks are more spacious, have wider foul territory or Astroturf. All of these things have an impact on DER. The table to the right of the graph lists the impact of each park. You would have to add or subtract each number to normalize DER by team.
Text Box: Commentary The Cardinals' other strength has been their superb fielding so far. Cubs and Dodgers are the best pitching teams in the league; no surprise, really. Florida's fielding, on the other hand, has really let them down. Montreal, which is also among the elite teams in the league so far, has gotten there on the strength of both their fielding and pitching. It is their fielding that particularly stands out.
Team DER +/-
ARI 0.006
ATL -0.001
CHN -0.003
CIN 0.001
COL 0.025
FLO -0.001
HOU 0.005
LAN -0.010
MIL -0.005
MON 0.002
NYN -0.006
PHI -0.003
PIT -0.003
SDN -0.005
SFN -0.006
SLN -0.004