IP Sports Baseball Rankings: 04/30/2010

Features, Top Story

Power Rankings

A new team on top in the updated rankings…

These aren’t your typical rankings; I look at record, run differential, and farm system. I weigh the scores on all 3; record makes up half the score, the run differential makes up a third of the score, and a sixth of the score is from farm system.

For Run Differential, I use the Pythagorean Theorem formulated by Bill James to see what a teams record should be; you can predict how well a team should be playing by this. In theory, a team should be in about the same range for their Pythagorean Record as their true record.

Rank Team Record Pythagorean System Total Last Week
1 TB Rays 30 30 27 59 2
Easily the best team in the game right now; farm system as strong as the team.
2 NY Yankees 28 28 15 52 1
2 1/2 games back of the Rays, but playing strong ball.
3 STL Cardinals 29 27 7 49 5
Top team in the NL; has only lost 1 series this season.
4 San Diego Padres 27 26 10 48 6
Biggest surprise of the season has been the Padres; they finally built a team to fit the ballpark.
5 Minnesota Twins 26 23 17 47 3
Little adjustment to the new park was needed, as the Twins sit atop of the AL Central.
6 NY Mets 25 25 16 47 18
The Mets are starting to look good, following a strong week. Are they contenders or pretenders?
7 San Francisco Giants 24 29 1 44 9
Only a game and a half back of the Padres; weak performance from their system has hurt them.
8 Detroit Tigers 22 18 23 42 14
Even with a winning record, the Tigers need to increase their run differential (+3) to keep up with the Twins.
9 Philadelphia Phillies 23 22 4 39 4
What happened to Cole Hamels? If he can put it back together, they’ll be ahead of the Mets.
10 Oakland Athletics 20 21 11 38 8
Oakland’s falling back to the pack after a great start.
11 Florida Marlins 16 19 26 37 7
Much like Detroit (+3 run differential), but with less actual success.
12 Colorado Rockies 18 24 8 37 11
Tied with the Giants for Most Under-Performing Team; both should have an additional 3 wins based off of run differential.
13 Seattle Mariners 17 20 19 37 12
Cliff Lee is returning this weekend; should help the pitching a lot.
14 Washington Nationals 21 11 20 35 23
The Nats are winning dispite being outscored this season by 14 runs.
15 Boston Red Sox 14 10 29 30 26
The Sox are seeing a little life come back; a dolid weeks has them up 11 spots.
16 Arizona Diamondbacks 15 17 9 29 19
+2 run differential explains .500 record. At least the Dodgers are playing worse.
17 Toronto Blue Jays 12 13 25 29 15
Toronto continues to drop after a great first week; this was expected.
18 LA Angels 19 7 13 28 20
Tied with the Nationals for the second luckiest team this season; they have 3 more wins than they should.
19 Cincinnati Reds 13 8 24 26 21
Second best team in the weak NL Central; 4 games back won’t end the season at this point though.
20 Texas Rangers 11 16 14 26 24
Rich Harden is this close to officially being a bust signing.
21 Chicago Cubs 9 14 18 24 22
Still looking for Alfonso Soriano. Fan’s have to be hoping for Zambrano to fix something in the bullpen.
22 Cleveland Indians 8 5 28 21 17
Pretty much as bad as expected; at least the system is playing well.
23 LA Dodgers 4 12 21 19 16
Manny on the DL, Kemp getting blasted by the GM in the media; Not much going right in LA these days.
24 Milwaukee Brewers 7 15 5 19 10
How much longer will Trevor Hoffman be the closer if he continues to lead the league in blown saves?
25 KC Royals 2 4 30 15 25
Top farm system in the game won’t console many fans in KC, especially since most of the help is at least 2 years away.
26 Atlanta Braves 3 6 22 14 13
9 game losing streak is sinking Bobby Cox’s fair well tour.
27 Chicago White Sox 6 9 2 13 28
Rumors of Jermaine Dye returning probably won’t help this team.
28 Pittsburgh Pirates 10 1 3 12 27
The luckiest team in the league with 5 wins more than they should have due to the worst run differential in the league.
29 Houston Astros 5 3 12 11 30
The had looked better for a couple of games, but this is a truly bad team.
30 Baltimore Orioles 1 2 6 4 29
If things continue this way, look for a lot of the kids to get more playing time.