Crunching numbers

One of the hot stats for determining the offensive productivity of a player has become on-base percentage plus slugging percentage. So I was wondering whether OBP+SLG was useful in determining the success of a team.

Last year, Boston (.832), the New York Yankees (.811), St. Louis (.804), and Colorado (.800) had OBP+SLGs of .800 or better. Colorado's figure is most likely inflated by playing at altitude. Boston led the majors in runs and the Yanks were second while St. Louis was sixth and Colorado was 11th.

St. Louis won 105 games, New York won 101 and Boston had 98. Colorado limped home with 68. So then I realized another factor would be to determine their opponents' OBP+SLG. For example, teams posted an .843 mark against Colorado pitchers. So the Rockies, despite their .800 clip were a minus-43 overall.

Boston's foes were .726 (making the Red Sox +106), New York's were .760 (+51) and St. Louis' were .716 (+88). Perhaps it's no surprise Boston and St. Louis met in the World Series.

Atlanta won the NL East by 10 games over Philadelphia. The Phillies actually had a higher OBP+SLG (.788 to .777) but the Braves had the better overall mark (+48 to +10) when factoring in pitching.

The Dodgers (.770/+39) won the NL West by 2 games over San Francisco (.795/+40). Houston (.778/+33) got the wild card spot by a game over the Giants and 3 over Chicago, although the Cubs (.786/+70) and Giants had better marks.

Minnesota (.763/+34) won the AL Central by 9 games over the White Sox (.790/-1) while Anaheim (.770/+29) was 1 game better than Oakland (.776/+35) in the AL West.

Among the also-rans, the Orioles were .777/+25 while Texas was .786/+10, Cleveland was .795/+8, San Diego was .756/+7 and Detroit was .786/+5. All other teams posted an overall minus result.

I'm not sure that this proves anything, but clearly Boston and St. Louis were the best teams. All of the postseason teams had the best overall numbers of any teams in their leagues, with the exception of Houston. The two closest division races also produced the closest OBP+SLG races. The Cubs appeared to underachieve.

Finally, do we watch the also-rans that finished in positive numbers to see if they improve this year in the standings? I guess we O's, Tigers and Phillies fans hope so.