Spiegel: These baseball stats reveal the quality teams
We're one month in to the 2015 baseball season, and a few team statistics can now offer a fair representation of overall quality.
A few examples:
The Royals bullpen has a collective ERA of 1.05, far ahead of the distant second-best bullpen ERA at 1.75. Their quartet of game finishers (Jason Frasor, Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland) have combined to give up a total of 1 earned run. Ned Yost once again has the pleasure of converting a sixth-inning lead into a win with relative ease.
The improved White Sox bullpen is sixth, led by the dominant David Robertson. The Cubs, despite several memorable blown leads, are a decent 13th.
The Red Sox starting pitching has a collective ERA of 5.75, well behind the second -worst Milwaukee Brewers. Boston's off-season acquisitions led to their rotation being described as five third starters. It's more like five fifth starters. Joe Kelly has been their best, and his ERA is a brutal 4.94.
The Cubs starters have climbed to 12th after a great week, and the White Sox have fallen to 25th. Jeff Samardzija and Jose Quintana have underperformed greatly.
Back to those Royals. Their offense has the fewest strikeouts in the majors by plenty, standing 30th with just 121. Two other division leaders are in that bottom five — the Cardinals, and the New York Mets. Being a team of contact hitters is in vogue again.
The White Sox are 22nd. The Cubs, as they did last year, strike out plenty, leading the NL with 185.
Getting on base is priority No. 1 for an offense. The Royals lead the majors in OBP, with the Tigers and Dodgers right behind them. Those three teams are a combined 20 games over .500. The Cubs are seventh, which helps make up for those strikeouts.
The Sox are a damaging 27th, with four regulars under .300 in OBP.
Last year the Cubs were 24th in the league in stolen bases with 65. This year they are second overall, first in the NL with 25. This newfound aggression can be seen in every facet of their base running. Extra bases are taken aggressively, and defenses have to respect it. It can lead to errors and distraction, both of which we've seen this week from the visiting Pirates.
The White Sox, meanwhile, were supposed to get a boost from the hiring of Vince Coleman as a baserunning instructor. They have four steals as a team, tied for second to last.
During the Cubs rebuild, I wrote about a key stat for a Theo Epstein team: pitches per plate appearance. Seeing lots of pitches can increase walks, exhaust the opposition, and get to their often weak bullpen sooner.
The 2012 Cubs were 25th in P/PA. In 2013 they climbed to 11th, just above the league average. In 2014, this particular organizational mandate had been achieved. They finished fifth overall, and first in the NL.
And here in 2015, as so many young, smart hitters have arrived, the Cubs again see the most P/PA in the National League. They are seventh overall, the only NL team in the MLB top nine. It's an American League caliber lineup.
The White Sox were 18th in P/PA last season, and are 26th so far in 2015.
While five more months will weed out the truth, it's not too early to say we've learned something.
Maddonisms:
In his weekly appearance on the radio show, I asked Joe Maddon about some recent Cubs bullpen problems in the middle innings, and what goes into his decision making.
“It takes about a month to really get to know your bullpen, and these kids need the opportunity to be great. You need to throw them out there and see if it flies or not. … Furthermore, when you're winning a lot of game, that's when you beat up bullpens. … I'm looking for a couple of ‘middle closers,' and those guys are invaluable.”
Until Justin Grimm and/or Neil Ramirez come back healthy, that search could be an adventure.
• Matt Spiegel co-hosts “The Spiegel & Goff Show” 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday-Friday on WSCR 670-AM. Follow him on Twitter @mattspiegel670.