MLB Handicapping Concept Series: Offense

MLB Handicapping Concept Series: Offense

In an era of sabermetric data, there is plenty of data to absorb. A handicapper must be able to identify metrics of value then apply them to create edges. Most credible MLB people will spend the majority of their time analyzing the starting pitchers. This remains a staple in being successful today as it has been for several years. No one can affect a baseball game more than the starting pitcher. However, this is a less true statement as the recent seasons have proven. How valuable are bullpens these days? This concept though is going to focus on Offense.

There is a metric labeled OFF or also known as Offensive Runs Above Average. This one metric can summarize a player or a team value towards how many wins they contribute to a season. It is the building block for WAR (Wins Above Replacement) but only looks at the offense, not defense. It is extremely important and should not be overlooked. The reason is the edge. MLB has been a pitching dominant league. The past two seasons are showing a trend towards offensive improvement. there are not many teams that show up in OFF in the positive. In fact, there were only 9 of them in 2017. It gives those 9 teams a significant edge in winning games. Wouldn't it be prudent to identify them and value their performance higher? Here is FanGraphs explanation of OFF.

Off is set with league average equal to zero and about every ten runs above or below average is equivalent to one extra win. If you combine Off with a player’s fielding runs, positional adjustment, replacement runs, and the league adjustment, you only need to divide by that year’s runs per win to arrive at the player’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR). If you want to know how much value a player has added on offense, Off is the place to look.

3 years ago (2015) MLB batting average was .251. The past 2 seasons have seen it increase to .256. Even with all those strikeouts, the hitting is getting better. In 2015 there were only 6 teams that had positive OFF rankings. That has increased to 8 in 2016 and 9 last season. The number one team on the list was HOU +161.8. It means their offense contributed 16.2 wins above average teams. If that was not included in your handicapping, the edge was missed. Their pitching was terrific too creating 20 wins above average but if you only looked at the pitching their HUGE edge was completely missed. The NYY were 2nd with 72.8 OFF. Their offense contributed 7.3 wins over the average team. HOU was 9 wins better than the 2nd place team! After you get through the 9 positive teams, you'll find 21teams that had negative numbers. It means their offense took wins away versus an average team. SFG was 30th with -133.5. Their offense took away 13.5 wins compared to the average team. Betting is all about EV+ (expected value positive) situations. Exploiting the offense because there are few teams excelling is an area that proves its worth!

MLB handicapping is a daily grind. Using the OFF is very helpful but it is also big-picture oriented. It is my preferred measure of how to rank team offense performance. Let's get into the details though. Each day that becomes a week then several weeks can see teams/players get into streaks hot and cold. My daily hitting data is derived from last 7 days data. It is not important to know that a team was batting .330 for 7 days in April if we are handicapping a game in July. I jot down the short list of players with WAR totals over 1.0. This list is generally from a low of 2 to a high of 7 players. The more players on the list, the better the team is hitting. The important part is knowing who those players are. Certainly, there is team data reflecting the same performance, but are they the "key" players. 

Identifying the "key" players is significant because they are either the run scorers or run producers. If they are not the "hot" players on your list, the impact is not the same. Sure an 8th hole batter can get hot, but it is not the same as the 3rd hole hitter. It is also important because there is pitcher vs hitter data that can support the "key" players role in the games. If he is great against the pitcher he is facing for that day, it can provide even more edge. Identifying the hot "key" hitters is another area to exploit EV+ edges.

Hope you find some of this important, but at the least interesting.

Good Luck as always

Scott Webb