Sports fans are weird creatures, we always look to way to prove that our favorite team is better than yours…and that the competition said team plays is tougher than that other team. One of the ways that fans can show that their team plays tougher competition is by looking at the win-loss record of the conference/division and making broad statements about the strength of the division based off of those numbers.
Unfortunately, win-loss records aren’t always the best way to say which division is the best; and that’s where this series of posts comes in — these will be going up once a month.
We will be using three sabermetric statistics to figure out which division is the best in baseball. The three stats that will be used are wOBA, K/BB (I have no clue how to find a division’s FiP), and UZR. Each division will earn points based on how they rank in each category — first place gets six points, second gets five points, third gets four, so on and so forth — and then those points will be added up at the end of the post.
The division with the most points at the end of the season is the best in baseball!
wOBA
| Rank | Division | wOBA | Points Awarded |
| 1 | AL Central | .320 | 6 |
| 2 | AL East | .316 | 5 |
| 3 | AL West | .311 | 4 |
| 4 | NL East | .309 | 1.5 |
| 4 | NL Central | .309 | 1.5 |
| 6 | NL West | .309 | 1 |
Strikeout/Walk Ratio
| Rank | Division | K/BB | Points Awarded |
| 1 | NL East | 2.80 | 6 |
| 2 | AL East | 2.70 | 5 |
| 3 | NL Central | 2.66 | 4 |
| 4 | NL West | 2.65 | 3 |
| 5 | AL West | 2.24 | 2 |
| 6 | AL Central | 2.09 | 1 |
UZR
| Rank | Division | UZR | Points Awarded |
| 1 | AL West | 11.8 | 6 |
| 2 | NL East | 3.7 | 5 |
| 3 | AL East | 2.9 | 4 |
| 4 | NL Central | 2.8 | 3 |
| 5 | NL West | -0.3 | 2 |
| 6 | AL Central | -4.7 | 1 |
Points Total
| Rank | Division | wOBA | K/BB | UZR | Points awarded this month | Total Points |
| 1 | AL East | 5 | 5 | 4 | 14 | 14 |
| 2 | NL East | 1.5 | 6 | 5 | 12.5 | 12.5 |
| 3 | AL West | 4 | 2 | 6 | 12 | 12 |
| 4 | NL Central | 1.5 | 4 | 3 | 8.5 | 8.5 |
| 5 | AL Central | 6 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 8 |
| 6 | NL West | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 6 |
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Categories: MLB Divisional Power Rankings
If you can come up with something like this for the college conferences in March Madness, we might be able to make ourselves a little money from Mr. Warren Buffett.
Bwahahaha, that would be really cool except for the fact that I’m not good with advanced college basketball stats.