The Hardball Times updated their Win Shares stats through May 31st, and I’ve updated and enhanced the treemap. Below is the map for the entire AL Central. The lightest color is offensive win shares, the darkest color is fielding win shares, and the in-between color is pitching. To see a larger image just click on the picture. The bigger the box, the more win shares. If you want more explanation for this chart, read this. And if you want to see the inspiration for the chart, click here.
Some things that jump out at me:
- Just how little Kansas City’s pitching has accomplished. Kansas City doesn’t have many wins to begin with, but what they have has been coming from the offense.
- Across the rest of the division pitching and defense appears to dominate with shaded squares out sizing white squares.
- The White Sox offseason acquisitions of Podsednik, Iguchi, and Pierzynski have accumlated a significant portion of the Sox offensive win shares.
- The Tigers and Indians went into the season looking for significant offense from their catchers – it hasn’t happened. Rodriguez has done ok from a win shares perspective, but it’s been mostly defensive. As for Martinez, there’s a reason you can’t find him on the map
This really has been a tough division for pitching.
Take a look at C.C. Sabathia’s plot. That’s a pretty big white strip!
The odd two run jack will do that for you.
I like these things, they make sense to my simple art student mind.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=2076327
I can’t seem to find Ledezma on this map….
blah. I can’t help but feel like the bullpen was mismanaged tonight. In my opinion Tram was too slow to pull Ledezma, then to fast in pulling both Walker and German. Then again, hindsight is 20/20.
Love the article, Jeff. Inge is fast becoming one of my favorite Tigers of all time.
I’m not sure about all-time, but i’m definitely a huge fan. It was probably the knee-high socks (i’m a sucker for “old school”) that caught my attention, but he’s always impressed me.
I must admit though, that I’m shocked by what has transpired over the past 15 months. I thought for sure he was gone when we signed Pudge. It boggled my mind when i heard they were trying to find a new position for a guy whose only asset had been his defense behind the plate. Who in their right mind tries to find a position for a guy batting .200?!!?! Yet, they did and they were right.
I’m not surprised that he’s managed to learn 3B really well, since he was an exception shortstop in college. But I’ll give a million dollars to the man that honestly thought Inge could be a LEAD OFF BATTER!
You can’t compete in this league without a couple pleasant surprises. I think that’s why I’m so confident that they’ve finally turned the corner. Between Inge, Logan, Infante, Guillen, and JJ we’ve had our share of surprises. Now we just have to recover from the injuries and make our run.
Go TIGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!