Leadoff Rankings: Week 8

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

The eighth weekend of the 2011 season has come and gone, and we're changing up the way we do our rankings. For the first time, our Leadoff Rankings have been determined not by my all-knowing power, but by the use of a formula. Similar to what we did on Thursday with our Rotation Rankings, we set all the statistics relative to league average, and then weighted each statistic to mean more or less than others (OBP means more than slugging percentage, for example). This gives us an overall average of 1.000, with lower scores correlating to above-average performance. More a fan of pitching? Check out our Rotation Rankings, published every Thursday, where we rank each team by the performance of their starting pitchers. The rankings are based on season performance (90%), with a small bias towards recent performance. The stats come from each team's first and second batters every game, regardless of the name on the back of the jersey. To see how things turned out this week, hit the jump!

Leadoff Rankings: Week 6

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

The sixth weekend of the 2011 season has come and gone, and the Leadoff Rankings are starting to settle out. The division leaders are all in the top-10 (along with two last-place teams), while the bottom 10 is filled with truly offensively challenged clubs. More a fan of pitching? Check out our Rotation Rankings, published every Thursday, where we rank each team by the performance of their starting pitchers. The rankings are based on season performance, with a small bias towards recent performance. The stats come from each team's first and second batters every game, regardless of the name on the back of the jersey. To see how things turned out this week, hit the jump!

Leadoff Rankings: Week 5

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

The fifth weekend of the 2011 season has come and gone, and the Leadoff Rankings are starting to settle out. More a fan of pitching? Check out our Rotation Rankings, published every Thursday, where we rank each team by the performance of their starting pitchers. The rankings are based on season performance, with a small bias towards recent performance. The stats come from each team's first and second batters every game, regardless of the name on the back of the jersey. To see how things turned out this week, hit the jump!

NFL Draft Preview: AFC South

Welcome to the 2011 AFC South draft preview, part three of an eight-installment series looking at each NFL division leading up to this Thursday’s NFL Draft (ESPN, 8 P.M.)

The AFC South was a mediocre division last season, top to bottom. Peyton Manning and the Colts emerged as champions (again) with a 10-6 record, but they lost their aura of invincibility they had had in previous seasons. Jacksonville was wildly inconsistent all season long, finishing with a .500 record but losing by more than 20 points four times while never winning by a margin that large. And both Houston and Tennessee took large steps backward throughout the season, and enter this year’s offseason with a lot of uncertainty. So how will each team approach the draft? Hit the jump to find out.

Leadoff Rankings: Week 4

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

The fourth weekend of the 2011 season has come and gone, and the Leadoff Rankings are starting to settle out. More a fan of pitching? Check out our Rotation Rankings, published every Thursday, where we rank each team by the performance of their starting pitchers. The rankings are based on season performance, with a small bias towards recent performance. To see how things turned out this week, hit the jump!

Leadoff Rankings: Week 3

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | Week 2

The third weekend of the 2011 season has come and gone, and the Leadoff Rankings are starting to settle out. We're seeing a few of the better teams beginning to rise to the top, while the teams that are struggling are beginning to sink to the bottom. This week, as the sample sizes begin to approach something we can call useful (every team is over 105 ABs, with some approaching 130), we can also really start calling out important players who have really been struggling (or over-performing) in the first fifteen or so games thus far. There were a number of positive signs around the league, however, for teams that had been struggling (Tampa Bay) or missing something (Cleveland). The re-emergence of Johnny Damon and the return of Grady Sizemore both produced big boosts for the two American League teams--but just how big? To answer that question, hit the jump for this week's rankings!

Leadoff Rankings: Week 2 (Still Slightly Early Edition)

Shane Victorino had a huge series against Atlanta,
but how'd the Phillies do in the rankings?

Welcome back to another edition of our world-famous Leadoff Rankings. Now, we realize that last week's rankings were based on far too small of a sample size for any reliable ranking. Now, however, every team has played at least eight games, so our sample size has started to take on the smallest measure of meaning. For those of you knew to our Leadoff Rankings, they're based on the statistics of each team's 1st and 2nd hitter every night, regardless of the name on the back of the jersey. These rankings are not dependent on injuries, slumps, lucky seasons--they're only based on performance of how we believe the top hitters in a lineup should hit. That is, by getting on base and scoring runs, with a few other useful stats to sort things out. We use season statistics, with a small bias towards more recent performance. The theory is, giving your best players the most at-bats leads to more overall success, and therefore teams that are hitting well at the top of the lineup should score the most wins. Then, combined with our Rotation Rankings that come out every Thursday, we'll come up with an overall performance ranking to let all our baseball fans know just how their teams are doing in two critical areas. Last week, the Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs, and Pittsburgh Pirates sat atop the rankings. This week, only one of those three remains in the top five! To see how the week went atop the lineup for teams around the majors, hit the jump!

Stat Line of the Day: March 24th

Now we're back to what will be the more common format of this daily feature: only 1 Stat Line of the Day.  Some days, multiple performances are good (or bad or interesting) enough to warrant the top spot.  Usually, though, we're going to stick with one top dog and a couple of runners-up for the best/worst/coolest statistical performance of the day.  Here's what we thought was pretty awesome/terrible/weird from yesterday, including a center who put up his first career triple-double...find out who after the break!