Quick Excercise - Which Team is Best "On Paper Today"

Nine teams have a winning percentage of .550 or greater, and it stands to reason that one of these is the best team in the league, at least on paper, as of today anyway.

.623 - Oathbinders
.620 - Puff
.620 - Chips
.615 - Death Speakers
.600 - Brews
.588 - Black Diamonds
.583 - Psycho Llamas
.565 - Beau Brummels
.558 - Fanclub

All but one of these teams also have a Pythagorean Winning Percentage above .550 as well. The overall order is much different though (Straight Winning Percentage rank in parenthesis):

.687 - Fanclub (9th)
.672 - Oathbinders (1st)
.647 - Chips (3rd)
.602 - Black Diamonds (6th)
.589 - Death Speakers (4th)
.585 - Puff (2nd)
.567 - Brews (5th)
.565 - Psycho Llamas (7th)

The team that fails to appear in both lists are the Rochester Beau Brummels - we'll eliminate them. We can also widdle down our list by looking at teams that appear in the bottom half of each list, and therefore remove the Brews and Llamas too.

Below are their pertinent team totals for the six remaining teams. The teams are sorted by a crude ranking formula - team offense is ranked based upon R/G, OPS, and Runs Created; team pitching based upon RA/G, Opp OPS, and RCERA. The rank in each category is than averaged together.

Nothing immediately stands out other than the fact the Puff are in the bottom third of each list - lets eliminate them too.

• The team with the best offense has the 4th best pitching
• The team with the best pitching has the 6th best offense
• Lets eliminate Fanclub, though, they might be better than other teams, I am comfortable stating the Chips are better.
  

This leaves the Black Diamonds, Chips, Death Speakers, and Oathbinders.

• The Oathbinder offense doesn't stack up in my view. They have a high R/G but can't back that up with a high OPS, and because of this there's reason to think their R/G score will diminish as the season progresses
• The Death Speakers have the worst pitching staff of any of the team's and we'll eliminate the. Just as important, we've now eliminated any team in the bottom third of either Offense or Pitching rankings

We're now left comparing the DC Chips and the Sonoran Black Diamonds. DC clearly has a better offense than Sonoran but then again, Sonoran has a better pitching staff than DC.

Lets go to superstar potential. The Black Diamonds enter the ring with

- Barry Bonds (8.5 RC/27, 1.009 OPS, 21 HR, 48 RBI)
- Fred Lynn (6.8 RC/27, .878 OPS, 9 HR, 11 2B)
- Jim Thome (6.2 RC/27, .847 OPS, 14 HR)

plus

- Chris Carpenter (79 IP, 1.93 ERA)


Countering them, DC brings:

- Tip O'neill (10.4 RC/27, 1.037 OPS, 22 2B)
- Duke Snider (9.0 RC/27, 1.008 OPS, 12 HR, 45 RBI
- Arky Vaughan (6.0 RC/27, 44 R, Ex Def at SS)

plus

- Frank Killen (70 IP, 1.16 ERA)
- Garland Braxton (73 IP, 1.98 ERA)
- Ken Sanders (66 IP, 2.47 ERA)

It's fairly close, but DC gets the nod thanks to their star power. In a pinch, I would rather this core of 6 over Sonoran's core of 4.

At least on paper, as of May 28th, DC is the best team in the land.