THT Dartboard: Week Twelve

Dartboard
Divisional Picture

Dartboard

Welcome to The Hardball Times Dartboard, our weekly attempt to rank all the teams in baseball. The Dartboard Factor is how many wins a team would be expected to have at the end of the season if it played a neutral schedule. Next to that, you’ll find the Dartboard Factor from the previous week. An explanation of our method can be found here.

#1 Los Angeles Dodgers (Dartboard Factor = 103, 103): Andre Ethier jumps out against the Mariners in the weekend series opener with a three home run effort, but the Dodgers still end up dropping the series at home. With Colorado and San Francisco surging, getting Manny Ramirez back is becoming more needed.

#2 Boston Red Sox (Dartboard Factor = 97, 95): Three more home runs for David Ortiz, a welcome sign in Beantown, nearly equaled that of the entire rest of the team.

#3 New York Yankees (Dartboard Factor = 93, 92): Some signs of recovery from Chien-Ming Wang and Alex Rodriguez responds with a 1.055 OPS on the week and a pair of home runs.

#4 Tampa Bay Rays (Dartboard Factor = 93, 90): David Price still has some work left to develop. On the good side, B.J. Upton lead the Rays with a whopping five doubles and threw in four walks and dinger to boot.

#5 Toronto Blue Jays (Dartboard Factor = 91, 90): Big weeks from Brian Tallet (seven Ks, one BB over 6 IPs) and Ricky Romero (13 Ks, four BBs over 14 IPs) neither of whom allowed a home run. Adam Lind had a nice week at the plate walking seven times to just one punch out.

#6 Los Angeles Angels (Dartboard Factor = 89, 89): No regular exceeded a .500 slugging percentage on the week and the starting rotation and bullpen were both merely average. Yet the Angels manage to hold on and now have usurped the struggling Rangers for the AL West lead.

#7 Detroit Tigers (Dartboard Factor = 88, 84): A thoroughly run of the mill week for the Tigers’ pitching staff coupled with a good week from the offense to boost the Tigers up in the AL Central.

#8 Texas Rangers (Dartboard Factor = 88, 88): Another poor week for the Rangers’ offense highlighted by Brandon Boggs. Boggs came to the plate 10 times this week and never reached base, striking out a whopping six times.

#9 Colorado Rockies (Dartboard Factor = 86, 84): The second highest rated National League team, the Rockies have avoided a drop off after the end of their remarkable winning streak. Seth Smith needs to find more at bats.

#10 Minnesota Twins (Dartboard Factor = 86, 85): Joe Crede and Michael Cuddyer help cover for poor weeks from the Mauer/Morneau work horses.

#11 St Louis Cardinals (Dartboard Factor = 85, 86): Trading Chris Perez and what is being quoted as a “significant” PTBNL for Mark DeRosa and then not using him to supplant the abonimanable Skip Schumaker at second base? I’m confused.

#12 New York Mets (Dartboard Factor = 83, 86): Just four home runs as a team for the Mets this week and not much offense overall. Mike Pelfrey struck out seven, walked just two and kept 59% of his batted balls on the ground and yet was tagged with eight runs in ten innings.

#13 Chicago Cubs (Dartboard Factor = 82, 83): A touch of the long ball strikes the Cubs starting pitchers this week with eight allowed over 43.2 innings.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

#14 Milwaukee Brewers (Dartboard Factor = 82, 84): Five walks, a pair of doubles and an absolute steal of catch this week for Mike Cameron. Par for the course for one of the most under heralded stars of the past decade.

#15 Seattle Mariners (Dartboard Factor = 81, 79): Welcome back, King Felix Hernandez. On the hitting side, Ichiro Suzuki continues to do it all with another 16 hits this week in 27 at bats.

#16 Florida Marlins (Dartboard Factor = 79, 75): Hanley Ramirez , .400/.464/1.000 for the week, good for a .580 wOBA and roughly six runs over average.

#17 Philadelphia Phillies (Dartboard Factor = 78, 83): The bats went deathly quiet this week, notably Carlos Ruiz (.333 OPS), Eric Bruntlett (never reached base in 12 PAs), and Jimmy Rollings (never reached base in 13 PAs).

#18 San Francisco Giants (Dartboard Factor = 78, 77): Pablo Sandoval launches three home runs and four doubles and draws four walks as well leading to a 1.500 OPS on the week. Tim Lincecum with a ho-hum nine-inning, 12-strikeout gem.

#19 Chicago White Sox (Dartboard Factor = 77, 73): Chris Getz came to bat 21 times this week and reached base just twice, both via walk. Lucky for Chicago, a big week from Jermaine Dye, with six extra base hits, help overcome Getz’s performance.

#20 Atlanta Braves (Dartboard Factor = 76, 78): Rough outing for Derek Lowe with three walks, no strikeouts and a home run allowed in three innings.

#21 Pittsburgh Pirates (Dartboard Factor = 75, 75): Jack Wilson (22 PAs) and Nyger Morgan (22 PAs) combined to strike out zero times this past week. Along the way they netted 12 singles, two doubles, two home runs and five walks.

#22 Cincinnati Reds (Dartboard Factor = 74, 78): A dreadful week for the Reds’ starting rotation. 31 runs allowed, and nine home runs, over just 32 innings pitched. At least Jonny Gomes provided some offense with his .577 OBP and .700 SLG.

#23 Cleveland Indians (Dartboard Factor = 74, 75): Tomo Ohka continues his not so splendid MLB return with a four inning, four walk performance. A week after hitting three home runs, Luis Valbuena puts up a .136/.136/.182 line.

#24 Baltimore Orioles (Dartboard Factor = 73, 72): A good week for George Sherrill out of the Oriole pen as he struck out two and of the eight balls in paly that he allowed, four were on the ground and three were infield pop ups.

#25 Houston Astros (Dartboard Factor = 72, 71): 1.342 OPS on the week from Lance Berkman paced the offense and some solid work on the mound give the Astros a slight boost this week.

#26 Kansas City Royals (Dartboard Factor = 72, 73): Zack Greinke continues to steamroll through baseball, but Gil Meche took a big step back this week with five walks, four home runs and 13 total runs allowed over 8.1 innings.

#27 Oakland Athletics (Dartboard Factor = 72, 72): The entire Oakland offense hit three home runs on the week, two from Kurt Suzuki and one from Jason Giambi. Trevor Cahill allowed five all by himself in just 10.2 innings of work.

#28 Arizona Diamondbacks (Dartboard Factor = 71, 74): Esmerling Vasquez had a miserable week, walking two and allowing a pair of home runs over his 2.2 innings.

#29 San Diego Padres (Dartboard Factor = 69, 71): Kevin Correia strikes out 16, nine looking, over his two starts this week and at one point between his starts from June 10th to June 21st had a streak going of 52 consecutive batters pitched to without pitching from the stretch.

#30 Washington Nationals (Dartboard Factor = 57, 58): Felt the need to get rid of Ryan Langerhans, a terrific defensive outfielder sporting a .381 wOBA in Triple-A Syracuse this season for Mike Morse, a terrible defensive everything with roughly the same offensive output.

Divisional Picture

The playoff picture takes the above ranking and reforms the teams back into their leagues and divisions including the wild card. This is in no ways a prediction, this is an assessment of how teams have played so far this season, not how each team is going to play.

AL EAST
Red Sox – 97
Yankees – 93
Rays – 93
Blue Jays – 91
Orioles – 73

AL CENTRAL
Tigers – 88
Twins – 86
White Sox – 77
Indians – 74
Royals – 72

AL WEST
Angels – 89
Rangers – 88
Mariners – 81
Athletics – 72

NL EAST
Mets – 83
Marlins – 79
Phillies – 78
Braves – 76
Nationals – 57

NL CENTRAL
Cardinals – 85
Cubs – 82
Brewers – 82
Pirates – 75
Reds – 74
Astros – 72

NL WEST
Dodgers – 103
Rockies – 86
Giants – 78
Diamondbacks – 71
Padres – 69


3 Comments
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Nick
14 years ago

Schumaker’s defense is improving week to week and right now the Cards desperately need his bat. In some respects you are correct though. The best use of the Cardinals players right now would be Joe Thurston at 2B, DeRosa at 3B and Skip in LF.

Greg Simons
14 years ago

.300/.360/.400 is abominable?  I’m confused.

Scott
14 years ago

I think the Blue Jays are gonna be up there this year. WIth the club hitting the way the have been especially Hill and Scutaro, it think it means big things