2009 Offensive Positions

I did a quick and dirty rundown of each Royals position from 2009 in terms of offensive production. The point was to see what positions kept the Royals down and which propped them up. It was an exercise to see where the Royals should spend the off season focusing (SS, CF, RF, DH) and where they could stand relatively pat (1B, 2B, C, 3B). I know we are quickly getting closer to 2010 so reviews of the 2009 season are getting to be old hat, but I wanted to finalize this with an overview. Plus, I made some really nerdy graphs that I needed to share.

In the previous posts I have mostly compared the Royals to the rest of the AL, but now I want to focus a little bit more on the AL Central. The stats will be how they rank and compare to the rest of the AL, but I will mostly be focusing on where the AL Central teams rank within the AL. Confused yet?

Quickly, here is a quick chart showing the OPS+ of the Royals at each position. Each position is compared only to the other AL teams at that position. Catchers compared to catchers...etc.

Team	Split	sOPS+
Royals	as C	124
Royals	as 2B	112
Royals	as 1B	97
Royals	as LF	95
Royals	as 3B	94
Royals	as CF	78
Royals	as RF	74
Royals	as DH	67
Royals	as SS	58

At quick glance it isn't THAT bad, right? It kind of follows the bell curve, a couple of good positions a few bad ones and a cluster in the middle. However, the lower end of the bell curve is VERY low. An OPS+ in the 50s or 60s is really bad and one in the 70s is not great, a 100 is theoretically average, so with that in mind the Royals had 5-7 below average and 2-4 above average. So how did they compare to their own division?


The following list is every position in the AL central and what their OPS+ was in comparison to the same position. So the 2B are compared only to the 2B in the AL, etc.

Team	Split	sOPS+
Twins	as C	160
Royals	as C	124
Tigers	as 1B	121
Indians	as RF	117
Twins	as DH	112
Royals	as 2B	112
Tigers	as CF	112
Twins	as 1B	111
Indians	as SS	110
Twins	as RF	109
Indians	as CF	108
White Sox	as DH	107
White Sox	as C	106
White Sox	as RF	104
White Sox	as SS	104
Twins	as LF	102
Royals	as 1B	97
Tigers	as LF	97
Indians	as DH	97
White Sox	as 1B	96
White Sox	as LF	96
Indians	as 1B	95
Royals	as LF	95
Tigers	as 2B	95
Indians	as C	95
Tigers	as RF	94
Royals	as 3B	94
White Sox	as 3B	94
Tigers	as 3B	92
Indians	as 3B	90
Twins	as CF	90
Twins	as SS	89
Indians	as 2B	88
Indians	as LF	87
Twins	as 3B	85
White Sox	as 2B	83
Tigers	as DH	82
Tigers	as SS	79
Royals	as CF	78
Royals	as RF	74
Tigers	as C	74
Royals	as DH	67
White Sox	as CF	63
Royals	as SS	58
Twins	as 2B	54

The 2B and C positions did very well compared to their peers in 2009, but the CF, RF, DH and SS positions were bad, really bad. The Royals had 4 of the worst 7 positions in the division. That is exactly how you have a terrible offensive team. This was pretty obvious if you had watched the team or read my previous posts. However, I think this chart really illustrates how many holes this team had. The Twins showed that you can have a hole offensively and be a pretty darn good offensive ballclub.

Let's look at this more visually. The following is a radar or polar graph of the above chart. Around the circle are positions and the lines represent each AL Central team. The edge of the circle represents the top ranked position in the AL, while the center is the worst.



Ok, I know. That graph is kind of out of control, but give it a minute. I am sure there is a better way to present the data, but once you let your mind absorb the information it is a decent way to show the information at a glance.

The first thing I see is that AL Central teams have lots of the worst ranked positions in the league (Tigers C, Twins 2B, Royals SS, White Sox CF, Royals RF, Royals DH). So in six of the nine positions the worst overall comes from the division. That is a lot of bad hitting.

It also becomes clear that the top two teams (Twins and Tigers) both had one position that led the entire AL (Twins C and Tigers CF). Having a dominant player at a single position can be an enormous difference maker on a team, moreso I think than people realize (see Cardinals, St. Louis).

So enough loooking back at 2009 and the decade of the 2000s.  It was bad, we lived through it and onto the next season and the next decade.  It can't get worse, right?

-------------------------------------------
Email: brokenbatsingle (at) gmail (dot) com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/brokenbatsingle
Itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=354172732