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 7

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

The seventh 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!

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!

Leadoff Rankings: Week 1 (Way-Too-Early Edition)

In any baseball lineup, there are two spots in the order that get more attention than any of the others--the number four, or cleanup, hitter, and the number one guy--the leadoff hitter. That leadoff guy is traditionally someone who gets on base rather often, and has the speed on the basepaths to put pressure on the defense as the heart of the order comes to the plate. As baseball players have gotten more athletic and more versatile, it's become common for more than one player to have leadoff-type qualities, and there are plenty of very talented number two hitters who do a great job of getting on base (Placido Polanco, Derek Jeter, Dustin Pedroia, Freddy Sanchez, etc). Every spot further down in the lineup costs a player about 20 at-bats over the course of a season--so, if the number one hitter bats 600 times, it's expected that the number three hitter would have 560 at-bats, the number five hitter would have 520 at-bats, and so forth. Let's assume a player bats .300 for a season--that amounts to a difference of six hits for every spot in the order he's dropped. So, what that all means is that a team with production at the top of the order should have an advantage over teams relying on more production from their fourth and fifth hitter.

With that in mind, we debut our first ever Leadoff Rankings: a statistical look at which teams are getting production from the first two spots in their lineup--regardless of who is playing. That is, we're not going to rank the teams based on talent level in their top two spots, but by their production instead. Obviously, that means these first rankings, after most teams have played just three games, are not exactly going to be representative of how these lineups will turn out, but neither are any Power Rankings at this point in the season. The list is slightly objective--there's no set formula to decide which team gets the highest ranking, but we look at number of factors. On-base-percentage is very important, as are steals and runs scored. RBIs are nice from the top of the lineup, but that can often be misleading, as American League squads are more likely to have production from the bottom of the lineup (leading to more RBIs for the guys batting first and second). However, it still comes down to all-around performance for these rankings. So, who had a great first weekend in terms of top-of-the-lineup production? Hit the jump to see how your team did!