The Rays kept rolling last season, further cementing their reputation for consistent excellence.
Tampa Bay posted its fourth straight winning percentage above .550, while winning its second consecutive divisional title. Nobody could plausibly deny that the Rays were the best club in the highly competitive American League East in 2021.
Just look at the standings. The Rays finished eight games ahead of the runner-up Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees and nine in front of the fourth-place Toronto Blue Jays. That should say it all.
But I can offer further proof. I have developed a stat known as team score (TS), which is based on four factors: winning percentage, the differential between runs scored and allowed per game, the differential between bases per out (BPO) attained by batters and allowed by pitchers, and postseason success. Each club is scored on a 100-point scale.
The 2021 Rays finished with a TS of 68.089 points. That’s a long way from the best club of the Expansion Era (1961-2021), the 1984 Detroit Tigers with a 97.109 TS, but it’s still quite good. Only 10.3% of all clubs from the past 62 years are judged to have been better than Tampa Bay’s 2021 squad.
Today marks the beginning of a month-and-a-half cycle for this newsletter, featuring a Tuesday review of last season, followed by a Friday forecast of the year ahead. I’m tackling a different division each week, starting (obviously) with the AL East.
Here are the 2021 TS rankings, showing the Rays on top, the Blue Jays (who fell one game short of the playoffs) surprisingly in second place, then a pair of postseason qualifiers, the Yankees and Red Sox, and finally the hapless Baltimore Orioles. Each team is followed by its win-loss record and its team score:
1. Tampa Bay Rays (100-62), 68.089 TS
2. Toronto Blue Jays (91-71), 62.303
3. New York Yankees (92-70), 55.083
4. Boston Red Sox (92-70), 54.899
5. Baltimore Orioles (52-110), 11.059
Our AL East review continues below with breakdowns for six team and individual categories.
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Team batting
No other club in the AL East came close to matching the Blue Jays’ firepower in 2021.
Toronto blasted 262 home runs, which exceeded the divisional runner-up by 40. And the Jays batted a collective .266, topping the Red Sox by five points and everybody else in the East by more than 20.
Those are impressive margins, but if you read this newsletter with any regularity, you know that I put the greatest weight on another stat, base value (BV).
Let me recap: I begin by tabulating the number of bases a team or player reached (through hits, walks, hit batsmen, stolen bases, and sacrifices) and the number of outs the same club or individual made. Then I compare the ratio of bases per outs (BPO) with 2021’s big-league average of .690.
The Blue Jays, for instance, totaled 3,225 bases and 4,198 outs during the past season, producing a team BPO of .768, the best in the majors. A club that matched the normal BPO of .690 would have reached 2,897 bases with the same number of outs.
The resulting surplus for the Jays (3,225 minus 2,897) was 328 bases, the highest BV not only in the AL East but also in both major leagues. That’s a truly powerful offense.
The Orioles, as you would expect, were clearly the weakest AL East team at the plate, reaching 173 bases fewer than average. Here’s the divisional breakdown for 2021:
1. Blue Jays, 328 BV
2. Red Sox, 211
3. Rays, 159
4. Yankees, 6
5. Orioles, -173
Individual batting (best)
If not for the flashy two-way skills of Shohei Ohtani, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. probably would have been named the American League’s Most Valuable Player last year.
The Toronto first baseman smashed a league-leading 48 homers, drove in 111 runs, and batted .311. He also reached 461 bases through hits and other means, exceeding the big-league benchmark by 158, which was far and away the best BV in the AL East. Only two other batters in the division reached triple digits. Here are the top five:
1. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays, 158 BV
2. Cedric Mullins, Orioles, 109
3. Aaron Judge, Yankees, 102
4. Marcus Semien, Blue Jays, 99
5. Rafael Devers, Red Sox, 87
Individual batting (worst)
Several players endured nasty seasons in Baltimore. It takes a full team effort, after all, to lose 110 games.
But nobody did as poorly at the plate as third baseman Maikel Franco, who batted just .210 and reached only .511 bases per out. The latter figure left him with a total of 160 bases, which fell 56 short of the amount that a typical hitter (with a .690 BPO) would have reached.
No batter in the AL East finished with a worse BV than Franco’s minus-56, though teammate Pat Valaika came awfully close at minus-51. Here are the division’s bottom five:
1. Maikel Franco, Orioles, -56 BV
2. Pat Valaika, Orioles, -51
3. Christian Vazquez, Red Sox, -42
4. Marwin Gonzalez, Red Sox, -38
5. Randal Grichuk, Blue Jays, -34
Team pitching
BV is an especially useful indicator because it pulls double duty. It measures productivity not only for batters, but also for pitchers. We simply need to reverse the scale, since a negative base value is obviously to be preferred on the mound.
The traditional stats make it clear that Tampa Bay fielded the AL East’s best pitching staff in 2021. The Rays paced the division with the lowest earned run average (3.67) and the tightest control (3.39 strikeouts per walk).
They also yielded the fewest bases to opposing batters, a total of 2,719, which was precisely 300 fewer than the typical big-league club would have surrendered under the same circumstances. Hence Tampa Bay’s division-best BV of minus-300. The Orioles were saddled with the AL East’s worst pitching BV, an astronomical plus-463. Here’s the rundown:
1. Rays, -300 BV
2. Yankees, -192
3. Blue Jays, -104
4. Red Sox, 116
5. Orioles, 463
Individual pitching (best)
It’s curious that the AL East produced the league’s Cy Young Award winner, though you won’t find him on the list below.
The since-departed Robbie Ray, who took the free-agent route to Seattle, went 13-7 for the Blue Jays in 2021, leading the AL with 248 strikeouts. Those are impressive numbers, but Ray couldn’t match Gerrit Cole of the Yankees in wins (Cole had 16) or BPO (Ray’s .635 was far worse than Cole’s .567).
Cole was also superior in BV, yielding 67 fewer bases than the typical pitcher. That was the best figure for anybody in the AL East, and it was roughly twice as good as Ray’s BV of minus-32. Here is the division’s top five:
1. Gerrit Cole, Yankees, -67 BV
2. Tyler Glasnow, Rays, -51
2. Collin McHugh, Rays, -51
4. Jonathan Loaisiga, Yankees, -49
4. Alek Manoah, Blue Jays, -49
Individual pitching (worst)
If you want to know why the Orioles were the weakest club in the AL East in 2021, look no further than this list.
Only four pitchers in the division surrendered 50 bases more than the typical pitcher under identical circumstances — and all four wore Baltimore uniforms. The very worst was Jorge Lopez, who finished with a horrendous BPO of .843 in 122 innings of work, primarily as a starter.
Lopez’s BV was a depressing plus-56, though the figures for several of his colleagues came dangerously close, as you can see on this rundown of the AL East’s bottom five:
1. Jorge Lopez, Orioles, 56
2. Adam Plutko, Orioles, 54
3. Spenser Watkins, Orioles, 52
4. Matt Harvey, Orioles, 51
5. Garrett Richards, Red Sox, 48