Who is the Best Team in Baseball? (TeamWARR)

By Will Aimette

(Photo Credit: Fox Sports)

As a sportswriter, I dream of creating my own stat. But how could I? The MLB has almost every stat! Almost. The other day I was sitting on my couch, and I was journaling my ideas, but finally, one stood out. I came up with something called TeamWARR (Team Wins Above Replacement Rankings), which measures how good a team truly is. This is measured by how good a team is on paper, how well that team is playing, and how many wins that team currently has. The first part is measured by a comparison to the other team's same player in that position. So the first baseman will be compared to every other first baseman in the league, and based on their WAR Ranking (WARR), they will gain points. Say we are measuring the Phillies, and we are on designated hitter. Schwarber is ranked the second best DH in all of baseball. Because of this, he would gain +2.9 WARR for his team. Why? Because he is ranked higher than 28 other DH’s in baseball.

So if he is the best at his position, he would receive 3.0 WARR, if he was the second best, 2.9 WARR, if he was the third best, he would get 2.8 WARR, all the way to the worst getting 0.1 WARR.

So, the goal for a team is to have the most WARR possible. So for each position, including their starters and their closer, we would do this exercise. For a platoon, their WAR will be combined and then put into the rankings. For starters, they are measured based on their position in the staff, meaning an SP2 will only go against another SP2. I also settle ties with their OPS, a telling sign of a good player. But what if their team on paper is very good but they don’t play well together? Well, that’s where the second part of this stat comes in. 

Next, I will be doing the same thing with different stats. This shows not only how good their team is on paper, but how well they are playing. For hitters, I will be using OPS (OBP + SLP), since it takes both On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage, two of the most important stats for hitting in baseball, using the same point system shown above. The team with the best Team OPS will get 3.0 WARR, while the team with the least Team OPS will get 0.1 WARR. I will do the same with ERA, WHIP, K/BB Ratio for pitchers. And finally, I will do the same with Fielding Percentage and BSR (Baserunning), and evaluate how much WARR each team will get based on their stats.

Lastly, I need to incorporate how well they actually have been doing this season. I will be doing this by taking the amount of wins a team has and dividing it by four. Why four? Because the average team’s wins divided by four equals the average team’s Wins Above Replacement Ranking points. This means that all three ways of getting WARR points will be equal.

So, how do we find out the best team in baseball? Well, we do this by adding up all three ways of scoring points (Position by position WARR, Team stats WARR, and Wins WARR), and the team with the most WARR is the best team in baseball.

*I will eventually release an article about the best team in baseball using this stat, though it might take months to determine. I am currently working on it and will have it done by the end of the regular season.