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October 7, 2008

You Could Look It Up

The Best-Worst Blue Jays versus the Best-Worst Pirates

by Steven Goldman

In Joe Sheehan's Monday chat, he made an off-hand comment about this year's Blue Jays:

mharrop (toronto): joe, in his Hit List season wrap yesterday, Jaffe called the Jays "perhaps the strongest fourth-place team in wild card-era history." your thoughts?

Joe Sheehan: The "perhaps" is unnecessary. The Jays had an amazing pitching-and-defense team this season. I might go so far as to say they were the strongest fourth-place team in the divisional era.

For the record, here is what Jay Jaffe had to say in his season wrap-up:

Perhaps the strongest fourth-place team in wild card-era history, the Jays nonetheless finish far enough out of the money that their early-season mistakes regarding ditching Frank Thomas, burying Adam Lind, and playing Shannon Stewart should haunt them over the winter. J.P. Ricciardi deserves credit for assembling a rotation that's tops in the league in SNLVAR, but the losses to injury of Dustin McGowan and Shaun Marcum (who will miss 2009 with Tommy John surgery) detract from that accomplishment and will send Ricciardi to the drawing board. On that note, the Jays end months of speculation by announcing he will return in 2009, as will Cito Gaston.

Fair enough, Jay and Joe, but here on the dead-guys beat we look for comps, and what I'm wondering is if "the best fourth-place team in the divisional era" was better than a Pirates team that finished sixth in the competitive National League East of 1984.

As with the Blue Jays of 2008, who led the American League in runs allowed per game with 3.77 versus a league average of 4.78, the Pirates of 1984 led their league, allowing just 3.50 runs per game against a league average of 4.06. The Pirates had an adjusted ERA of 117; the Blue Jays were only fractionally better at 124. On offense, the translations are more favorable to the Jays. The Jays, who ranked eleventh in the AL with an average of 4.41 runs per game, had a team EqA of .261 and translated rates of .269/.343/.436. The Pirates averaged 3.80 runs scored per game, 10^th best in the NL, and had translated rates of .258/.317/.398. Both clubs were solid at converting balls in play into outs.

These numbers would seem to suggest an obvious advantage for the Blue Jays, with roughly comparable pitching staffs negated by Toronto's offensive advantage, meaning that Joe and Jay were correct, at least insofar as this particular comparison is concerned. To confirm, let's go through the charmingly subjective and inexact but always amusing position-by-position comparison. In the following list, the Pirates player will always be listed first, with each player's Equivalent Average listed in parentheses. In the case of a team having utilized multiple starters, the combined EqA for the position is listed.