The Most Balanced Lineup in the Game - John McDonald

Received this interesting note from Jason B, owner and operator of John McDonald Fanclub: Too good of a question to pass up, even though there’s little doubt I am will butcher the reasoning in my response:

I have a possible idea for a post. My roster does not seem to be very well represented among the league leaders (both hitting and pitching), but I have a hunch that my success this season is because of my team's even production throughout the lineup. Is there some way you can examine this?

Good one there Jason, and thanks in advance the the 3 hours lost work time today.

First, lets check the main assumption that his team isn’t “well represented" among the leader boards. I took a look a the Top leaders in the main offensive categories – Batting Average, On Base Percentage, Slugging Percentage, Runs, Doubles, Extra Base Hits, Stolen Bases, RC/27, RBI, HR, Triples, and Runs Created. That works out to 120 possible players. Of these 120, Fanclub has five Top 10 leaders.

This is certainly a small amount – less than 5% - but not so far out of line with many other teams:

21-WPP
19-RBB
12-ECT
10-DSK
9-RKA
8-JuP
7-CR
6-BDM
5-HH
5-JMF
4-DCC
3-CBS
2-OPR
2-WT
2-WTP
2-BFF
1-WMB
1-P10
1-IMR

However, among teams with at least a .500 record, Fanclub ranks just 10th out of 12 teams and that’s the crux of it all. Fanclub has the 3rd best winning percentage in the game and has the most runs scored of any team, yet only rank 10th in the number of Top-10 leader board categories. Jason is likely on to something.

Another check we can do is to review the raw number of players per team that have a Top-10 appearance. For instance, Tip O’Neil appears 9 times and Babe Ruth 8 times and I am not convinced we shouldn’t take this into consideration. In this view, Fanclub ranks 3rd overall with 4 players appearing somewhere in the Top-10 in any category, with only the Beau Brummell’s and Duke Street Kings ahead of them with 5 players each.

Fanclub’s four are Honus Wagner (Runs), Andy Van Slyke (Triples), Willie McCovey (RBI, XBH), and Dick Allen (RBI).

Now that we’ve established there is a great deal of truth to the premise, we can analyze the overall stability of the Fanclub lineup versus the rest of the league. Frankly, this is where my math skills struggle a bit, but I think they are sufficient enough for this exercise.

I didn’t have the time to look across both leagues, so I narrowed my selections to Vin Scully teams with average OPS scores over .700:

0.778-Fanclub
0.775-Beau Brummell’s
0.722-Handbasket
0.734-Middle Name
0.731-Chips
0.729-Black Stones

We don’t want to take into consideration poor or even average offensive squads because it defeats the purpose of the study – why a team with little star power is scoring so many runs.

First, let’s review the median value. The median gives us a number to separate the higher half of a sample from the lower half. In theory, the higher the median in this case the more spread out the quality of the lineup is.

0.787-Fanclub
0.755-Beau Brummell’s
0.745-Chips
0.724-Middle Name
0.723-Handbasket
0.704-Black Stones

Fanclub easily outpaces the other teams. Let’s compare them to the last team on the list for illustrative purposes:

0.729---0.778---0.775
WMB-----JMF-----RBB
0.840---0.872---1.058
0.810---0.871---0.849
0.802---0.829---0.848
0.787---0.809---0.786
0.704---0.787---0.755
0.702---0.772---0.741
0.656---0.693---0.706
0.648---0.690---0.618
0.610---0.676---0.610

The first row contains the average team OPS scores, and the values below the team acronym are the compiled stats of each slot in the lineup. As can clearly be seen, JMF is in fact more balanced – more balanced the lower tier offensive team White Meadow Lake and more balanced than a team with a similar average OPS – Rochester.

Another way to attack the problem is through standard deviation, which measures the variability or dispersion in sample. In our case, the standard deviation of lineup OPS scores:

0.069-Chips
0.076-Fanclub
0.083-Black Stones
0.105-Handbasket
0.117-Middle Name
0.137-Beau Brummell’s

Here, Fanclub scores very well again as their SD is 2nd “best” among our higher scoring offenses. Even among poor scoring teams, where the Standard Deviation is expected to be low because it’s a lineup of low performers, Fanclub scores rather well:

0.059-Brews
0.063-Black Sox
0.069-Chips
0.076-Fanclub
0.083-Black Stones
0.084-Power
0.088-Fish Biscuits
0.091-Rod Beck
0.105-Handbasket
0.117-Middle Name
0.137-Beau Brummell’s

It’s clear to these eyes that John McDonald certainly has an uncommonly balanced lineup and it is a direct cause for how good of an offensive team they actually are. Here are there stats by lineup slot: