NL West 2021 review

The Giants won a fight to the death, but my computer says the Dodgers were better

The Los Angeles Dodgers were powerful in 2021. No surprise there. They had qualified for the playoffs the previous eight seasons, capped by a World Series title in 2020.

The San Francisco Giants were equally powerful last year. Shocking is the best adjective in their case. They hadn’t even reached .500 (or made the playoffs) since 2016.

Yet there they were, battling all year for the lead in the National League West Division. San Francisco seized the advantage late in the season, cruising to a five-game lead in mid-August. But the Dodgers shifted into comeback mode, pulling within a single game when the schedule ran out.

The Giants finished with the most victories in their history (107) and their first divisional crown in nine years. The 106-win Dodgers were shunted off to the wild-card game, though they rallied nicely to oust San Francisco from the NL Division Series, three games to two.

My computer analyzed this unusually tense division race — and it has concluded that the Dodgers were a touch better. That rating is based on my calculations of team score (TS), determined by each club’s winning percentage, its differential between runs scored and allowed per game, its differential between bases per out (BPO) attained by batters and allowed by pitchers, and its postseason success (if any). TS is plotted on a 100-point scale.

I reviewed 2021’s other five divisional performances on previous Tuesdays, which means today is the time to wrap up the series with the NL West.

Here are the divisional standings, based solely on TS:

• 1. Los Angeles Dodgers (106-56), 75.648 TS

• 2. San Francisco Giants (107-55), 73.634

• 3. San Diego Padres (79-83), 46.026

• 4. Colorado Rockies (74-87), 38.902

• 5. Arizona Diamondbacks (52-110), 16.829

The Dodgers and Giants fell short of their ultimate goal — a world championship — yet they still finished with the two best team scores in the National League. That’s highly unusual. The league champion almost always leads the way in TS, especially when it also wins the World Series.

But Los Angeles and San Francisco were so strong in 2021 that they outranked Atlanta, the overall winner. Here’s how they shook out in TS: Dodgers 75.648, Giants 73.634, Braves 73.126. All three ranked among the top 7% of all big-league teams since 1961.

Look below for a review of divisional performances by NL West clubs and individuals in six categories.

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Team batting

The experts envisioned big things for San Diego in 2021. The Padres were poised to level a devastating offensive attack on the rest of the NL West, led by their slugging infield duo of Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr.

But it was the Giants who (unexpectedly) unleashed the greatest firepower. They hit the most home runs (241), posted the best slugging average (.440), and reached the highest proportion of bases per out (BPO, .745) for any team in the division.

That last stat is particularly important, since it directly determines each club’s base value (BV), which reflects the team’s output in comparison to big-league norms.

BV is calculated in three steps: (1) Count the number of bases a team (or individual batter) attained through hits, walks, hit batsmen, stolen bases, and sacrifices. (2) Total up the number of outs the team (or batter) made. (3) Compare the total of bases to the number that an average big-league team or hitter would have reached under the same conditions.

The Giants piled up a division-leading total of 3,202 bases, while making 4,299 outs. If we multiply the latter figure by the major-league BPO of .690, we learn that a typical team would have attained 2,966 bases in San Francisco’s circumstances. That leaves the Giants with a surplus of 236 bases, which is also known as their BV.

Here’s the divisional breakdown:

• 1. Giants, 236 BV

• 2. Dodgers, 225

• 3. Padres, 18

• 4. Rockies, 10

• 5. Diamondbacks, -220

Individual batting (best)

Fernando Tatis Jr. led the NL West — indeed, the entire league — with 42 home runs. He also topped the division with a .611 slugging average, just four points behind the top dog in the National League, Bryce Harper of the Phillies.

Those stats go a long way toward explaining why Tatis dominated the NL West in base value. He finished the season with a surplus of 139 bases, the only batter to reach triple digits. Max Muncy of the Dodgers posted a highly respectable BV of 95, yet found himself a distant 44 behind the leader.

These were the NL West’s top five batters last year:

• 1. Fernando Tatis Jr., Padres, 139 BV

• 2. Max Muncy, Dodgers, 95

• 3. Brandon Crawford, Giants, 84

• 4. C.J. Cron, Rockies, 83

• 5. Brandon Belt, Giants, 82

Individual batting (worst)

Remember when Cody Bellinger was the National League’s Most Valuable Player?

It wasn’t that long ago. Bellinger smashed 47 homers, drove home 115 runs, and batted .305 in 2019. He was only 23 years old, and his future seemed limitless.

But limits appeared soon enough. Bellinger slumped to an incomprehensible .165 batting average in 2021. He struck out 94 times, managing to rap just 52 hits.

The numbers turn downright ugly when we count Bellinger’s bases. He reached only 133 and made more than twice as many outs (269). The typical batter with a .690 BPO would have reached 186 bases under Bellinger’s circumstances. But his anemic .494 BPO left him with a BV of minus-53, the worst in the division.

Here are the standings from bottom up:

• 1. Cody Bellinger, Dodgers, -53 BV

• 2. Nick Ahmed, Diamondbacks, -50

• 3. Joshua Fuentes, Rockies, -41

• 4. Victor Caratini, Padres, -33

• 5. Ha-Seong Kim, Padres, -24

• 5. Tim Locastro, Diamondbacks, -24

Team pitching

BV, of course, can work both ways. It’s as good a measure of pitching effectiveness as of batting efficiency.

The one difference is the scale. Hitters want the highest BV they can reach, while pitchers prefer to dwell in steeply negative numbers.

It should be no surprise that the two best teams in the NL West were blessed with the two best pitching staffs. The Dodgers were a bit better than the Giants in traditional stats like earned-run average (3.01 vs. 3.24) and strikeouts (1,599 vs. 1,425).

Los Angeles also held an edge in BV, surrendering 488 bases fewer than the typical major-league club. The Giants were nearly as stingy with a BV of minus-426. No other team in any division did any better than the NL Central’s Milwaukee Brewers at minus-320.

The other three clubs in the NL West, as you would imagine, were unable to compete with the frontrunners:

• 1. Dodgers, -488 BV

• 2. Giants, -426

• 3. Padres, -8

• 4. Rockies, 172

• 5. Diamondbacks, 432

Individual pitching (best)

The Dodgers ended the season with a pair of triple-digit threats in their rotation. Walker Buehler finished 2021 with a BV of minus-107, with Max Scherzer on his heels at minus-106.

The difference was that Buehler spent the full season in Los Angeles, while Scherzer was a trade-deadline pickup from Washington. The final BV standings for the NL West reflect only the two months that Scherzer spent with the Dodgers, which drops him out of the top five.

No matter. Another of Buehler’s staffmates, Julio Urias, moves into second place, with a trio of Giants rounding out the top five:

• 1. Walker Buehler, Dodgers, -107 BV

• 2. Julio Urias, Dodgers, -89

• 3. Kevin Gausman, Giants, -87

• 4. Anthony DeSclafani, Giants, -69

• 5. Logan Webb, Giants, -65

Individual pitching (worst)

Nobody really enjoys pitching in the rarefied altitude of Denver, and Chi Chi Gonzalez has a particular reason to be unhappy.

Gonzalez wasn’t effective for the Rockies at home or on the road in 2021, finishing 3-7 with a 6.46 ERA. But his outings were especially rough in Coors Field, where he was rocked for a .327 batting average, as opposed to .294 on the road.

The bottom line for Gonzalez is that he yielded 261 bases at a rate of .864 BPO. That was 53 bases more than an average pitcher (.690 BPO) would have given up, saddling him with the worst BV in the NL West:

• 1. Chi Chi Gonzalez, Rockies, 53 BV

• 2. Humberto Mejia, Diamondbacks, 33

• 3. Yency Almonte, Rockies, 30

• 3. Matt Peacock, Diamondbacks, 30

• 5. Corbin Martin, Diamondbacks, 29

• 5. Riley Smith, Diamondbacks, 29

• 5. Alex Young, Diamondbacks, 29