The RPM Report — August 6, 2018 (week 19)
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 18), 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 19 — July 30th through August 5th)
- All regular season data up to and including August 5th 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 19)
This week we see 6 out of 10 pitchers returning to the top 10, a very high amount, with Ryne Stanek making his 5th appearance! Both Cleveland and Boston have 2 pitchers in the top 10. The RPM Range jumps from 3 to about 5.5 this week.
The lowest starting pitcher RPM total of the week was -53.8 RPMs.
The Top 10 Relief Pitchers (week 19)
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.
Only 3 returning relievers this week, each for their 2nd showing. We see the Mets, Cleveland and Atlanta all having 2 relievers make this chart! An RPM range of 5.26 is all that separates these pitchers.
For reference, the lowest Relief Pitcher RPM value this week was -72.
The Top 10 Batters (week 19)
Half the batters of the week make their return with Carpenter on his 3rd showing. Carpenter, Baez, and Harper are all in the top 25 players. The RPM range tightens slightly to just under 3.
The lowest RPM for a batter in week 6 was -53.6.
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 6th 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 6th
Trout’s Rating went from about 3 away from Ramirez down to around 37, so he’s slipping further behind. Baez went from 13th up to 6th and Carpenter from 17th to 7th! Bryce Harper hops from 25th to 15th this week and Lowrie falls from 10th to 16th.
In pitcher-land we’re back up to having 3 on the board, Sale still at the top, although shifted back down from 14th to 18th. We see Verlander back in action as the 2nd best and deGrom still in there at 24th like last week. Looking purely at Pitching we can see deGrom has the highest pitching rating.
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.
Blackmon falls 10 ranks, Altuve falls a bit further from the board, Schoop loses another 23 ranks while Gordon jumps around 80. Andrus sinks further away by 90, Abreu makes some headway by gaining 46 spots, and the rest stay mostly the same.
This week we hold at 9 players in the top 25.
Team Rankings as of August 6th
We see the top 7 teams hold their spots this week, but Houston gets a touch closer to Boston, while Cleveland mostly keeps up with Houston and the Cubs gets very close to the Yankees. We see Washington make a big jump this week going up 4 ranks, and Texas going up 5 as well, while Seattle takes a big hit and loses 5 spots.
We can see the bottom doesn’t seem to like to move much, and even looking at the bottom 10 it’s fairly static this week.
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
