The RPM Report — August 13, 2018 (week 20)
Hi all, I’m Ivan Lukianchuk, the CTO and co-founder of RunPlusMinus™️and this is our weekly report about performances of Major League Baseball players and teams.
For last week’s report (week 19), click here.
The RPM Report gives you a unique insight into on-field performances based on the new RunPlusMinus™️ statistic. For more information about this statistic, please go here.
Wondering how we differ from WAR? Read this. Do we use Park Effect? Yes, read more here.
TL;DR — We’ve built a new baseball statistic that allows us to rate all of the players (pitchers, batters, runners, fielders) on the same scale: performance.
This report has two parts:
- The week’s best performers (week 20 — August 6th through August 12th)
- All regular season data up to and including August 12th 2018.
The Best Players of the Week
We’ve reported the top 10 best pitchers and batters of the week. There are separate rankings for starting and relief pitchers.
Players are ranked on the RPM statistic. A total above zero means above average performance for the pitcher or batter. The RPMs in the report have been multiplied by 100 to make it easier to read and compare. The higher the number, the more value and impact that player brought to their team in their role as a pitcher or batter.
In each top 10 list we show how many times a player has made it into a weekly top 10 list, with 1 meaning this is their first.
The Top 10 Starting Pitchers (week 20)
From a high amount of returners last week at, this week we hit 7! Chris sale, one of our top 25 players and current top pitcher makes his 6th return to the charts, narrowly behind Blake Snell. Another top 25 player, deGrom, makes his 3rd appearance in this chart. The RPM range grows from 3 to just over 4 this week.
We’ve got two returners from Boston this week, which isn’t surprising as Boston is currently the 3rd best team for starting pitchers as seen in our recent article “Which team has the best pitching”.
The lowest starting pitcher RPM total of the week was -56.1 RPMs.
The Top 10 Relief Pitchers (week 20)
Not all relief pitcher situations (outs and bases-occupied) are equal threats. Furthermore, relief pitchers generally face fewer batters that starters. Relief pitcher ratings exclude pitchers with fewer than 3 batters faced.
A mostly fresh batch this week with only Wilson and Smith making a reappearance near the bottom of the chart. Spots 1 and 2 are held by the Angels and our first place reliever’s RPMs is double the tenth! A massive RPM range of 19 is what separates these pitchers, whereas last week was only 5.26!
For reference, the lowest Relief Pitcher RPM value this week was -66.7.
The Top 10 Batters (week 20)
Bogaerts, Betts, and Martinez all return and currently sit in our top 25. The RPM range stays true around 3 from the past week. We see three folks in the top 25 all from Boston this week!
The lowest RPM for this week was -58.3.
The State of the Game so Far
We’ve looked at last week, but let’s take a look at the entire season so far up to the 13th of August.
We’ve got a number of interesting charts ranging from top players, team rankings and most overpaid players.
Top 25 Players to August 13th
A surprise turn as Trout slides down from 2nd to 4th place while Ramirez holds his crown well. Betts and Martinez move up and swap spots, but with only a very small gap keeping them apart. We see Carpenter climb up there into 5th moving up two spots, while Lindor jumps 4 from 10th to 6th. Goldschmidt also makes a leap from 12th to 7th. Baez falls from 6th to 13th this week. Votto falls from 19th to 25th, barely hanging in there. Bogaerts jumps into spot 15 from off the charts.
Verlander falls from the list again, leaving just Sale as top overall pitching player with deGrom close behind, who is still the better pitcher.
Things to note: a “rating of 0” is always the average over all active players, with positive values representing above average performance and negative values below average performance. Earned salary is how much of the team’s total salary did that player’s performance justify. Bolded payroll earned means a player is worth more than they are paid (in the context of their own team), and italicized and red means they aren’t. Blank ratings mean the player did not meet a minimum level of participation to be ranked on a specific component.
Where Are They Now? 2017 Top 25 to 2018
2017 brought us over 48 million data points and from that we derived the top 25 player list. How do those players rate in 2018? Below is a chart showing where each player stands today. Note that only 9 players (ranks highlighted in yellow) are still in the top 25! The rankings will change as the season moves forward.
This week keeps the same players in the top 25 as last week. We see Stanton gain around 60 spots this week while Andrus fall by 102. Murphy jumps 241 spots. Not a lot of other big changes this week.
This week we hold at 9 players in the top 25.
Team Rankings as of August 13th
Boston holds the top while Cleveland and Houston tussle over silver and bronze, but it’s a tight race! Atlanta hops over both the Dodgers and the Cubs. Washington holds their spot after leaping 4 ranks last week. Colorado falls back down 3 positions. The rest remains mostly the same.
Until next time…
Stay tuned for our future reports due out every week this season. If you want to be reminded whenever we release new content, please subscribe to our mailing list to be kept up to date!
If you have any questions, comments, requests or complaints, please feel free to add them in the comments below or to email us at info@runplusminus.com
You can learn more about the RunPlusMinus™️ statistic at RunPlusMinus.com
