IMO, the two best and most complete offenses belong to the Dodgers and the Braves. Lets take a look.
For this comparison, I am only looking at offensive value. I am using the FanGraphs (OFF) metric for comparison purposes. I am sure that MLB Network’s Brian Kenney would not stop at this metric for his Shredder, but then again he is making a lot more $$$ than me and can afford to follow and comment on all of the algorithms. I am also using Steamer projections. I have no idea if they are more meaningful than ZIPS.
For those who want an even more detailed explanation and calculation, here you go…
https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/off/
I could have used wRC+, but (IMO) base running is part of offense, and wRC+ does not measure base running.
The Dodgers and the Braves have been the two best offenses for the last several years and 2024 figures to be more of the same. They are overwhelmingly the two best offenses in MLB.
The next closest starting lineup is Houston, whereas NYY has a better graded overall offense because of their superior bench (or Houston’s underwhelming bench). The Juan Soto addition really pushed NYY near the top of the AL offensive supremacy.
See the chart below for some of the top 2023 offenses and the 2024 projections.
Besides the Dodgers, only the O’s do not have a player in the starting lineup that is not a negative OFF metric. They just do not have a Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr., Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, or Yordan Álvarez in the lineup. The O’s bench is grading out better than NYY.
One team that surprised me (although perhaps it should not have) is Philadelphia. They have the stars in Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, but they have 5 out of 9 players in the projected starting lineup that grades out negatively with this metric. Besides their starting pitching, they have arguably the best (without doing all the research) clutch player today…Bryce Harper. Career WRISP = .292/.438/.512/.949. Career WRISP/w 2 outs = .281/.465/.499/.964. Career Playoffs = .276/.383/.613/.996. Kyle Schwarber also comes to play in the playoffs. Starting pitching and clutch hitters bode well for a good playoff run.
In the NL West, San Diego has the 2nd best offense which makes sense. With Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, and Ha-Seong Kim, the team is going to score runs. Their OFF total is 62.0 for the starting lineup and 49.3 for the full position player roster. It is hard to finalize their final grade, since it is possible that the Padres will still add an OF and/or DH (once Machado gets back to 3B). Their LF and CF are definite positions that need a significant upgrade.
The Giants are also a team that does not appear to be finished offensively. They are currently looking at Jorge Soler, and are still tied to Matt Chapman. Presently they have one of the weaker offensive teams with a starting lineup OFF of 19.5, and a full roster total of 16.9. Neither Soler nor Chapman are going to change the Giants outlook that much. Their highest graded offensive player? Jung-Hoo Lee.
Perhaps the worst offensive team in all of MLB is Colorado. Eight out of nine starting lineup players have a negative grade. Only Nolan Jones grades out positively and did so with a 39. Colorado has a -37.1 grade for the starting lineup and -50.8 full roster.
Projections tend to spark commentary…some find them helpful while some find them rather insignificant. If you stay away from the individual numbers and look at the team totals, you can get a feel for the better offenses. Just for kicks, I decided to look at both LAD and ATL with wRC+ and fWAR.
wRC+ simply grades the hitting component of the offense. This is another FanGraphs metric which is defined as follows:
fWAR takes into the full offensive (including baserunning) and defensive metrics to calculate a total.
- Position players – To calculate WAR for position players you want to take their Batting Runs, Base Running Runs, and Fielding Runs above average and then add in a positional adjustment, a small adjustment for their league, and then add in replacement runs so that we are comparing their performance to replacement level rather than the average player. After that, you simply take that sum and divide it by the runs per win value of that season to find WAR. The simple equation looks something like this:
WAR = (Batting Runs + Base Running Runs +Fielding Runs + Positional Adjustment + League Adjustment +Replacement Runs) / (Runs Per Win)
Both of these metrics continue to show that the Dodgers and Braves are very close in terms of projectable talent, and they are ahead of the class. At some point I will look at the comparisons for pitching projections.
Here is how the rest of the NL West stacks up in wRC+ and fWAR.
It’s not perfect, it may not even be meaningful to many. But projections clearly put the Dodgers at the top of the NL West again, and should be in the NLCS against Atlanta. Both are once again huge favorites to reach the NLCS. Has not worked out the last two years…maybe this year.
Nicely done Jeff.
It’s meaningful to me. I love reading this stuff. I was just looking at fangraphs team WAR and saw the Braves at 53 and the Dodgers at 51. If there is any sense to the playoffs this year, those two teams will meet in the NLCS. But as we know from past results, the short series playoffs are roll of the dice.
The results of 162 games will produce the best teams and align them in brackets that allegedly give advantage to those best teams. We know advantage doesn’t exist in a short series. What to do about that has been discussed, I’ve read some good ideas in here, but there will be no significant changes in MLB scheduling. At this point I think the season could be shortened back to 154, or even 148 games with more attention given to playoff structures. That isn’t going to happen.
All the good teams, and we know who they are, are adding depth to their rosters in hopes that starting lineups will remain healthy and reasonably rested for October. Good luck with that. Roster expansion should be discussed, including a flexible floating roster for additional arms during the second half of the season.
The West will finish as it did last year. Nobody will overtake the Dodgers. The playoffs? Great seasons can end abruptly.
I want the Braves. Last year we feared them and never even faced them. This year bring it on.
Great analysis Jeff!
The Braves and Dodgers both have impressive and deep lineups. Looks like the Braves lineup projects to be slightly better, just like last year. The biggest differences to me though are the Braves have a much younger lineup and they are signed to long term deals at lower cost compared to the Dodgers. The average age of the Braves position players is 27 compared to 31 for the Dodgers.The Dodgers have the star power, but the Braves have youth and stability in their lineup.
The Braves have been proactive in signing their young players to long term deals early, while the Dodgers have converted to signing/trading for veteran players. A good example is how the Braves extended Sean Murphy last offseason to a 6 yr $73 million contract. The Dodgers have not extended Will Smith who is a similar age, and a homegrown player with even better performance. In fact, this year MLBTR projected Will for an arbitration salary of $9.3 million, but the Dodgers negotiated him down to $8.55 million. It seems shortsighted to reduce Smith’s salary by $750k, when you just paid $1.2 billion to Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Glasnow. I fear that this may negatively impact the ability to extend Smith.
It is likely that the Braves and Dodgers meet in the playoffs this year after both have under achieved in the last two postseasons. That would be an epic series and hopefully a replay of 2020.
Cool stuff, Jeff.
Without geeking out on advanced metrics like fWAR, we can also simply look at the ’23 team stats and then estimate the impact of changes in the lineups.
The Braves’ offense was absolutely awesome in ’23. Their team OPS was a ridiculous .845, a full 50 points higher than the Dodgers’ impressive .795. (I bet several teams didn’t have a single starter with an OPS of .845.)
The wide OPS margin helps explain why the Braves led the majors with 947 runs to the Dodgers’ 906. The correlation between OPS and run scored shows in the top five ’23 offenses, with the Dodgers followed by the Rangers, Rays and Astros. The Phillies had the sixth-best OPS, but ranked 8th in runs scored.
Can the Dodgers’ offense catch up to the Braves?
I certainly think so, for three reasons: Shohei, Teoscar and Lux.
The Braves added Jared Kelenic, hoping he lives up to the hype. The Dodgers are upgrading at three spots in the lineup. While JDM had an excellent season (why hasn’t any team signed him yet?), the LF platoon led by David Peralta was pretty meh, and Rojas lived up to low offensive expectations at SS.
Something else to consider: Shohei, Teoscar and Lux are all pretty damn fast. A whole lot faster than the guys they are replacing. How many more runs will Shohei score than the lead-footed JDM? This has been an overlooked advantage of the new, improved Dodgers.
Roberts reportedly has said he expects to bat Mookie, Freddie and Shohei in that order. This trio should wind up in the Hall of Fame.
The next three are expected to be Will Smith, Max and Teoscar–each of whom has been an all-star.
The final three will likely include the veteran RF mashup of Heyward/Taylor/Margot and the team’s relative youngsters in Outman and Lux, both age 26.
It will be fun to see what this lineup can do.
But the pitching and defense is equally important.
Interesting. I tend to instinctively look at wRC+ when assessing players and don’t pay much attention to Off because wRC+ is a rate state and not a counting stat. I suppose when you’re looking at a team’s performance over an entire season it doesn’t really matter.
Still, what do these stats all mean?
Looking at last years team stats, the Braves had an Off score of 202.4. The Dodgers had an Off score of 134.0. The Rays were actually better than the Dodgers here at 147.3 even thought the Dodgers scored more total runs (the Dodgers had more total plate appearances).
wRC+ scores for the Braves, Rays and Dodgers for 2023 are:
125
118
116
So, wait! Based on last years Off score, the Braves were roughly 50% better than the Dodgers? That’s a lot!
What about wRC+?
The Braves were 7.76% better than the Dodgers. That’s more reasonable, but still. How does that compare with reality?
Just for giggles I did some calculating.
The Braves scored 947 total runs last year. The Dodgers scored 906 total runs last year. The Braves scored 4.53% more runs than the Dodgers.
Ok, but how do the total numbers compare to the total number of games or plate appearances by both of those teams? What about the rate of run production?
So, dividing the total plate appearances by each team by the total number of runs, we get this:
Total plate appearances/total runs for the Braves and the Dodgers …
6249/947 = 6.60
6333/906 = 6.99
So it took the Braves 6.6 plate appearances to produce a run. It took the Dodgers 7.0 plate appearances to produce a run. It actually took the Rays 7.2 plate appearances to produce each run even though their offense rated higher in both wRC+ and Off.
It took the Braves 5.58% fewer plate appearances to produce each run, so, I suppose one could say they were 5.58% better at producing runs as a rate stat.
My point? LOL. Not quite sure. I just went down a little rabbit hole … but, I think one thing to remember is that all of these sabre nerd stats – they are helpful, can give insight, and may have a mild predictive utility to them – but they don’t necessarily reflect reality. They are arbitrary constructs.
Per Joel Sherman Kershaw is resigning with the Dodgers and will take a physical on Thursday
He’s Baaaaacccckkkkkkk!!!!!!!
Country legend Toby Keith has passed away at age 62 from stomach cancer. RIP
I am honestly shocked that Clayton Kershaw came back after the Dodgers did that horrible anti-Christian Gay Pride event.
I thought he was a good Christian Man.
Great to hear Kershaw is coming back!
Best signing of the offseason IMO only!
Talk about a high and low day for me. I got excited seeing the notification come across my phone that #22 is back for at least his 17th season. But then I got the news my favorite Cowboy has lost his battle with stomach cancer at the age of 62.
Toby Keith, I will miss you. RIP Cowboy!!!
https://twitter.com/Dodgers/status/1754921587516834157?s=20
Bill Plunkett of the Daily News is reporting that the new Kershaw contract will include a player option for 2025.
No $ details yet.
Get ready to pay. ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros and Discovery will be forming a joint sports streaming service.
Pecota projections.
101-61 tied with Braves for best record in MLB. The Dodgers are ranked slightly better with a 101.1 win projection against the Braves 100.7 projection. Pecota projects only two other teams with 90+ wins: Houston 95.0 wins and NYY with 94.4 wins.
Projected playoffs:
NL
AL
The Dodgers are projected to score 879 runs this year, ahead of the Atlanta Braves (855), Houston Astros (839) and New York Yankees (827) as the only teams with 800 or more runs.
On the pitching side, the Dodgers are expected to allow 685 runs, placing them behind the Braves (671), Baltimore Orioles (675), Tampa Bay Rays (681), Minnesota Twins (681) and the Yankees (684).
Run differential:
These are the only teams with run differential projections in excess of 100 runs.
FWIW, since 2017, the Dodgers have won more than the Pecota projected wins in every year other than 2018, the year without Corey Seager. I will take the over in 2024.
Both LAD and ATL have a 99.8% chance at making the playoffs. The Dodgers are slightly more favored to win their division, but Atlanta is 18.7% chance at winning the WS while the Dodgers are at 17.1%. Next closest is Houston at 12.1% and NYY at 10.8%.
Neither may win the WS, but clearly the two best teams in MLB are the Dodgers and Atlanta.
Astros extended Altuve for 5 years. Bregman is next. Good thing, no one would want to trade for that cheater. One writer says he thinks the Dodgers will trade Maddux Bruns to get Jansen back. Doubtful. Going to be playing some music with friends on Saturday here in my building. Great change of pace.
Can anyone point me to this Tweet or article about Bruns for Jansen?
I can’t seem to find it.
Gary Sanchez to Brewers on a one year $7m deal.
Now that is a deal we should have made.
Massive offensive upgrade on Barnes, and a proper Back Up should something unforeseen happen to Will.