Title: The Giants And High-Leverage Dominance
Date: June 6, 2014
Original Source: Fangraphs
Synopsis: This article looked at the dominance of the San Francisco Giants in high-leverage situations and suggested it wasn’t sustainable (it wasn’t).
The San Francisco Giants entered play Thursday with the best record in baseball at 38-21, a game ahead of their cross-bay rivals in Oakland and a full 3.5 games better than any other National League team. Given their recent history of World Series success, maybe this doesn’t stand out to you. If you know the team and have been following along, however, this seems more than a little surprising, because the Giants certainly don’t seem like the best team in baseball.
That’s not to disparage them – they’re a good team, to be sure, and their Pythagorean win-loss record of 36-23 doesn’t indicate that they’ve been benefitted too much from run distribution.
But that’s just based on run differential, and there’s certainly a lot of variance and good fortune that can go into how teams produce runs. For the Giants, well, being the clutchiest bunch of clutches who ever clutched is certainly helping.
The Colorado Rockies blog Purple Row wrote a bit about how the Giants have over-performed in high-leverage situations in the early parts of the season, a team-wide “skill” that doesn’t appear to be very repeatable outside of St. Louis. Chalking high-leverage performance up strictly to luck probably isn’t the best approach, but the degree to which San Francisco has outperformed every other National League team in high leverage situations at the dish is striking:
| Team | PA | wOBA | wRC+ | BABIP | BB% | K% | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orioles | 252 | 0.364 | 129 | 0.362 | 9.9% | 19.4% | 0.838 |
| Indians | 287 | 0.361 | 137 | 0.330 | 8.4% | 16.0% | 0.834 |
| Mariners | 199 | 0.358 | 127 | 0.354 | 8.0% | 22.6% | 0.834 |
| Athletics | 289 | 0.347 | 123 | 0.296 | 10.7% | 16.3% | 0.804 |
| Blue Jays | 148 | 0.344 | 119 | 0.333 | 8.1% | 20.9% | 0.789 |
| Giants | 269 | 0.344 | 121 | 0.325 | 10.8% | 20.1% | 0.821 |
| Tigers | 179 | 0.343 | 117 | 0.300 | 10.1% | 18.4% | 0.796 |
| White Sox | 262 | 0.342 | 115 | 0.314 | 9.9% | 26.0% | 0.799 |
| Marlins | 275 | 0.341 | 117 | 0.337 | 12.7% | 20.7% | 0.781 |
| Rockies | 225 | 0.332 | 93 | 0.254 | 9.8% | 20.4% | 0.770 |
| Reds | 253 | 0.323 | 96 | 0.271 | 8.7% | 19.8% | 0.747 |
| Twins | 254 | 0.321 | 104 | 0.253 | 13.4% | 22.4% | 0.744 |
| Pirates | 312 | 0.321 | 106 | 0.302 | 8.7% | 20.2% | 0.725 |
| Brewers | 243 | 0.321 | 98 | 0.318 | 8.6% | 23.0% | 0.744 |
| Royals | 258 | 0.318 | 96 | 0.307 | 7.8% | 20.5% | 0.730 |
| Rangers | 207 | 0.313 | 88 | 0.299 | 11.1% | 16.4% | 0.730 |
| Phillies | 282 | 0.308 | 91 | 0.314 | 8.9% | 20.6% | 0.717 |
| Diamondbacks | 234 | 0.307 | 89 | 0.300 | 6.4% | 19.7% | 0.714 |
| Yankees | 217 | 0.305 | 89 | 0.322 | 9.2% | 15.7% | 0.695 |
| Padres | 222 | 0.301 | 92 | 0.228 | 11.3% | 21.2% | 0.683 |
| Red Sox | 340 | 0.297 | 84 | 0.286 | 13.5% | 23.5% | 0.675 |
| Rays | 280 | 0.295 | 89 | 0.271 | 10.4% | 15.0% | 0.669 |
| Braves | 243 | 0.295 | 84 | 0.312 | 7.4% | 24.3% | 0.680 |
| Cardinals | 276 | 0.278 | 77 | 0.250 | 9.1% | 19.9% | 0.629 |
| Astros | 200 | 0.271 | 68 | 0.266 | 7.0% | 25.5% | 0.601 |
| Mets | 317 | 0.265 | 67 | 0.262 | 11.4% | 25.9% | 0.606 |
| Nationals | 274 | 0.262 | 61 | 0.262 | 10.9% | 23.7% | 0.596 |
| Dodgers | 237 | 0.256 | 61 | 0.236 | 8.9% | 21.5% | 0.585 |
| Cubs | 257 | 0.246 | 48 | 0.226 | 10.9% | 23.3% | 0.553 |
| Angels | 223 | 0.239 | 50 | 0.220 | 9.9% | 18.8% | 0.545 |
Continue reading at Fangraphs.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 