Strength of five playoff contenders
The Yankees, who lead the majors with a 44-16 record, who have a commanding lead in baseball’s once-division, are a prime example.
Take last weekend: they beat the Chicago Cubs in three games by a combined run score of 25-8, including an 18-4 win on Sunday. The day before, it was an 8-0 win, and perhaps the quintessential example of their great start.
Aaron Judge connected for two home runs, Giancarlo Stanton connected on a 119.8 mph laser straight out of a Bond movie for the most-hit ball in the majors this season and Gleyber Torres, Jose Trevino and Anthony Rizzo joined the party.
“I’m a fan of a good play: doubles in the gaps, runners in scoring position,” Judge said after the game. “But six home runs? That’s pretty good, too.”
The Yankees have a league-leading 98 home runs, 14 more than the second-place Atlanta Braves. They are also tied for the fewest home runs allowed in the majors with 48 with the Braves and San Francisco Giants. That’s a pretty good formula for success.
New York is rolling as we approach the start of the summer, but so are other teams. Let’s break down some numbers to see what each of these five contending teams is doing best above .500 right now.
New York Yankees: home run differential.
The Yankees have amazingly doubled their opponents’ home run production, giving them a plus-130 season pace, which would break the plus-116 single-season home run differential held by the 1927 Yankees (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri). The 2019 Minnesota Twins, who hit a record 307 home runs, are second with plus-109.
With 24 home runs in 60 team games, Judge is on pace for 65 homers. Rizzo, Stanton and Torres are also in double digits, while the bullpen has been stingy with just 11 home runs allowed in 200-plus innings, the best home run rate of any bullpen in the majors.
New York Mets: hitting for average
The Mets are third in the majors in runs per game at 5.10, behind only the Dodgers (5.15) and Yankees (5.12). But the Mets are doing it with a decidedly un-2022 style of play: they’re getting hits instead of home runs. The Mets rank 21st in the majors in home run rate, 19th in isolated power and 17th in walk rate.
The Mets, however, lead the majors with a team batting average of .265, well ahead of the Dodgers (.249) and Yankees (.250). They did the same in 2020, when they gave up .272. Jeff McNeil (.312), Mark Canha (.301) and part-timer Luis Guillorme (.327) lead the way. The Mets also have the league’s highest average in balls in play at .311.
What’s a little interesting here: I’m not exactly sure how the Mets are doing this. They are not among the leaders in Statcast metrics like hit rate (22nd in the majors). Their batting average in line drives is .607, actually below the major league average of .630. Their key seems to be their .278 batting average in runs, in which they lead the majors, with the Cardinals second at .259 (the major league average in runs is only .234).
What the Mets have are hitters, like McNeil, Guillorme and Brandon Nimmo, that you really can’t trade against. All three are left-handed hitters who don’t hit the ball very hard. All three are hitting above .300 in slugging (as is Canha, though he has no history of doing so and hit .199 in slugging in 2021). It’s possible the Mets regress in this area; if so, they’ll have to start hitting more home runs.
Los Angeles Dodgers: controlling the strike zone.
A few weeks ago, baseball statistician Bill James did a study on whether controlling the strike zone is as important now as it was in the Ted Williams era. He came up with a simple formula that fairly accurately predicts a team’s winning percentage based on bases on balls and strikeouts alone.
In his study, he explained that 90 teams had a strike zone winning percentage of .613 or higher, with an average of .638. Their actual winning percentage was .595. The worst 109 teams had a strike zone winning percentage of .363 and an actual winning percentage of .377.
In other words, knowing nothing about a team other than how well it controls the strike zone is a strong indicator of how good or bad the team is.
Heading into Sunday’s games, the top three teams in strike zone winning percentage:
- Yankees, .629
- Dodgers, .627
- Astros, .573
