Who's Who in the Playoffs

Now that the first round of the playoffs is complete, it seems as good a time as any to talk a little about the players themselves who made the playoffs. It's also a good time to introduce the somewhat outdated and unwieldy method of player evaluation that I've dabbled with for the better part of this decade.

When I learned how to calculate it and started using it, the system was called "SWP" (short for "Small World Points") because Small World Fantasy Baseball was the web service my friends and I used at the time. I think the site was since bought by The Sporting News, because I've seen similar systems labeled "TSNP." Like all methods of evaluation in fantasy sports, the swp system measures and quantifies on-field accomplishments, giving different weights to different outcomes. This process makes it easier for a group of fantasizers to compare how the players on their respective fantasy teams are doing, and rank them against their competitors. Here's the breakdown for swp:

For Batters
OUTS: -1
RUNS: +5
1B: +5
2B: +10
3B: +15
HR: +20
RBI: +5
BB: +3
SO: -1
SB: +10
CS: -5

For Pitchers
W: +30
L: -15
SV: +30
IP: +15 (+5 for each 1/3)
H: -5
ER: -10
BB: -5
K: +3

If you have squabbles about how accurately this system quantifies actual on-field worth, do me a favor and don't dwell on them or take out your frustrations on me. I like the system because it's relatively easy to calculate, it gives a single-number evaluation of a player's strengths, and it can keep track of performance cumulatively over the course of a season.

An evaluation of a player always includes two numbers: his full-season swp and his swp per game (in parenthesis). The points/game option provides some context for the full-season number; say a player had an injury shortened season or only spent a short time in the majors.

So now back to the playoffs: out of the list of all the players on post-season rosters, here's a list of the top-ten performing batters in terms of swp (for each league) and the top-five performing starting pitchers (again, one list per league):

AL BATTERS -->

NYY	1B	Mark Teixeira	2,581	(16.5)
BOS	LF	Jason Bay	2,392	(15.8)
MIN	C	Joe Mauer	2,340	(17.0)
BOS	CF	Jacoby Ellsbury	2,323	(15.2)
NYY	SS	Derek Jeter	2,306	(15.1)
LAA	RF	Bobby Abreu	2,222	(14.6)
BOS	2B	Dustin Pedroia	2,210	(14.4)
NYY	2B	Robinson Cano	2,180	(13.5)
LAA	1B	Kendry Morales	2,179	(14.3)
BOS	1B/3B	Kevin Youkilis	2,168	(15.9)

NL BATTERS -->

STL	1B	Albert Pujols	3,196	(20.0)
PHI	1B	Ryan Howard	2,660	(16.6)
PHI	2B	Chase Utley	2,512	(16.1)
LAD	CF	Matt Kemp	2,347	(14.8)
OAK/STL	LF	Matt Holliday	2,334	(15.0)
PHI	RF	Jayson Werth	2,318	(14.6)
COL	SS	Troy Tulowitski	2,304	(15.3)
LAD	RF	Andre Ethier	2,223	(13.9)
PHI	SS	Jimmy Rollins	2,117	(13.7)
PHI	CF	Shane Victorino	2,077	(13.3)

AL PITCHERS -->

NYY	SP	C.C. Sabathia	2,266	(66.6)
BOS	SP	Jon Lester	2,020	(63.1)
BOS	SP	Josh Beckett	1,992	(62.3)
LAA	SP	Jered Weaver	1,837	(55.7)
MIN	SP	Scott Baker	1,621	(49.1)

NL PITCHERS
-->

STL	SP	Adam Wainwright	2,476	(72.8)
STL	SP	Chris Carpenter	2,287	(81.7)
CLE/PHI	SP	Cliff Lee	1,948	(57.3)
LAD	SP	Randy Wolf	1,940	(57.1)
COL	SP	Ubaldo Jimenez	1,904	(57.7)

I realize this is a lot of information to digest, but here's a few quick observations. It just happens to work out that 2,000 swp is a very good season - just how it happens to work out that .300 is a very good batting average and 90 mph is a very good speed for a fastball - with 3,000 reserved for the biggest, (or juicing-est) players of the era: Pujols, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, in their prime.

The system obviously rewards big boppers rather than high-average, high-on base guys: it's very difficult for a guy like Dustin Pedroia to put up numbers similar to Chase Utley, which is one of the reasons his MVP season last year was so eye-popping (Pedroia's 2,455 to Utley's 2,559 despite the former hitting half as many home runs as the latter and posting an OPS 80 points lower).

Workhorse pitchers with high win totals get more credit than hurlers with better peripherals, which, in a sense, makes the swp system a good predictor of who will win the Cy Young award. But sometimes performance (rather than run support) speaks for itself: AL win-(co)leader C.C. Sabathia pulled in 2,266 (66.6) while Sabermetrician favorite Zack Greinke is sitting pretty at 2,726 (82.6). (Their competition and fellow win-leader King Felix Hernandez has 2,671 (78.6), so despite Greinke's 30-point edge in ERA and strikeouts, the award might not be as clear-cut as we all hope it will be.)

I know that many smart baseball people are using much more advanced and accurate metrics to evaluate players than something a fantasy baseballer cooked up and posted on the internet for the enjoyment of his/her clients. But I like the comfort of having a single number to explain a player's season. And while I know it doesn't even come close to telling the whole story (not even offensively... and it doesn't even mention defensive numbers), I think swps, when taken in conjunction with more traditional statistics, can tell us a lot about a player, his fellow players, and the era in which he plays. And I hope you think so too.