The RPM Report — September 24, 2018 (week 26)
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 25), 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 26 — September 17th through September 23rd)
- All regular season data up to and including September 23rd 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 26)
Verlander and Snell make their 4th appearances in the top weeklies, joined by Gonzales and Williams for their 3rd and Ray for his 2nd. Only 2.5 RPMs separate these folks!
The lowest starting pitcher RPM total of the week was -59.7 RPMs.
The Top 10 Relief Pitchers (week 26)
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 2 relievers reappeared this week, Alexander for his 4th and Venditte for his 3rd. About 20 RPMs separate these relievers.
For reference, the lowest Relief Pitcher RPM value this week was -93.8.
The Top 10 Batters (week 26)
Yelich, a top 25 player, makes his 4th appearance on this list, while Gurriel, Voit and Wong make their 2nd. Aaron Hicks, another top 25 player finally makes his first best of. About 5 RPMs separate these batters.
The lowest RPM for this week was -42.9.
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 24th of September.
We’ve got a number of interesting charts ranging from top players, team rankings and where last year’s top 25 players sit this year.
Top 25 Players to September 24th
Ramirez, still in the lead, is losing ground to Betts who is now 50% closer than last week to matching him. Trout is also catching up again, but still in 3rd, this time trailed by Martinez instead of Bregman. Most of the names are the same, but in slightly traded places. At the bottom of the chart we see Chapman and Votto have fallen off, but Blackmon has finally come back in along with Turner. Our still solo Pitcher on the list deGrom holds on to position 12.
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.
He’s done, Blackmon breaks back into the top 25, but Votto has just fallen out! We can see Rendon, Sale, Votto and Altuve all within 6 spots of the chart as well. Mostly everyone else is around where they were last week, but there are still a few days for this to change up before the regular season finishes!
This week we hold at 9 players in the top 25.
Team Rankings as of September 24th
Houston slides into 1st this week, almost effectively trading ratings with Boston, who are clearly the better batters, but much worse pitchers. Oakland continues their impressive climb. We see a lot of movement in the middle as the Angels fall 2 spots, while Arizona, Texas, Pittsburgh and the Mets follow suit with a single spot each. Near the bottom Kansas City and Miami trade spaces.
Right now the Angels are the spitting image of the average team, sitting at 15th with a rating of just 0.1. Interestingly enough, the worst team is a fair bit worse than the best team is good.
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
