Could This MLB Team Beat an Entire Division? | Beast Takes - The AL West Is A Disaster

the AL Central is the worst division in baseball and it's not even close we are approaching the Midway point of the Season as the All-Star breakage just over a week away and there is not a single team in the AL Central with a winning record every other division has at least two teams with a winning record and most of them have multiple teams over 550. the AL East even has two teams over 600 and the craziest part is the worst team in that AL East Division has a better record than the best team in the AL Central as the Red Sox sit at 40 and 41 and the twins are 40 and 42. now maybe you know just a bad example but things get worse when we start comparing the overall division records when we combine the teams together the AL Central sits at a combined 170 and 232 which is a 0.423 winning percentage the next worst division is the NL Central a full 24 and a half games better at 192 and 205 that's a 483 winning percentage the AL West also has a 483 winning percentage and sits at 195 and 208. the other three divisions are all over 500 the NL West is 206 and 196 with a 512 winning percentage the NL East is 210 and 190 with a 525 winning percentage and the AL East is all the way at 231 and 173. a 572 winning percentage now when we look at how the division has done against other divisions and their non-divisional series the AL Central is 26 58 and 6 with 4 sweeps in comparison the Atlanta Braves one team we are looking at just one team has eight sweeps this season five of which are against non-divisional opponents so not only are they up in sweeps overall but they're up in sweeps against non-divisional opponents on an entire division the Braves also have 19 Series wins in just 26 Series played and if you want my honest opinion I believe that the Braves could probably take down an All-Star team from the AL Central and to prove my point I've set an All-Star lineup hypothetically from the AL Central to go against the Braves you can judge it for yourself but I'm gonna go ahead break it down for you real quick and at catcher for the AL Central we have Salvador Perez from the royals he's batting 260 with a 764 Ops Ops is possibly the most important stat as it mixes your on-base percentage with your slugging percentage basically how effective are you when you're at the plate at first base we have Josh Naylor from the Guardians he's batting 294 with an 809 Ops second baseman we are staying with the guardian Andre Jimenez 242 batting average and a 682 Ops on third another Guardians player we have Jose Ramirez batting 297 with an 893 Ops at Short it's Bobby Witt of the Royals batting 244 with a 706 Ops and left we have Edward Olivares from the royals 255 batting average 744 Ops Senator Lewis Robert has a 270 batting average and an 891 Ops and right Matt verling of the Detroit Tigers is batting 267 with a 741 Ops and coming in at DH we have Eloy Jimenez of the White Sox batting 262 with a 778 Ops now let's go ahead and compare that to the Braves batters over here we have Sean Murphy at catcher 289 batting 925 Ops Matt Olson in at first base he's batting 237 with a 888 Ops Aussie Albie's 261. with an 809 Ops Austin Riley 265 with a 777 Ops Orlando arcia is batting 303 he has a 794 Ops Eddie Rosario with a 269 batting average and 8 18 Ops Michael Harris and center with a 266 batting average and a 750 Ops and we have Ronald Acuna Jr at right field batting 331 with a 993 Ops and dhing will be Marcel Ozuna with a 251 batting average and an 825 Ops so just going through that the Braves already look much better but then we get to the picture for the AL Central All-Stars it's going to be Sony gray as the number one pitcher of the twins 2.67 ERA with a 1.29 walks plus hits per inning pitch Joe Ryan is the number two also of the twins 3.44 era 0.97 whip Lucas gelato of the White Sox is the number three he has a 3.53 era and a 1.18 Whip and Shane Bieber of the Guardians with a 3.69 era and 1.23 whip is their fourth pitcher on the brave Side of Things We Have Bryce Elder with a 2.44 era and a 1.13 whip Spencer Strider with a 3.73 era and a 1.11 whip Charlie Morton with a 3.81 era and a 1.48 whip and the fourth pitcher is going to be Colby Allard with a 0.00 era and a 0.86 whip so I went ahead calculated the batting average and the Ops for each one of these teams the AL Central team comes in with a batting average of .266 and an Ops of 0.779 the Braves they're betting 275 with a 0.842 Ops beating out the AL Central in both categories and by quite a bit in the Ops and when you look at it these advantages are pretty easy to see the Braves have five out of nine positions it comes to batting average and they hold seven out of the nine positions when it comes to Ops so offensively Atlanta has a huge Advantage as they are getting more hits they're getting on base more and they are snagging more bases per at bat on the other hand the pitching battle is kind of a toss-up and in my opinion I think it would probably go to the AL Central the overall calculations of era and whip would probably be way down for the Braves if we factored in Allard so I'm going to go ahead and take him out of the equation since he only has one start and we're only going to use the top three players I feel like that's a little bit more fair for calculating their their era and whip with that said the Braves have a 3.33 era and a 1.24 whip compared to the a-house central equivalent 3.33 era and a 1.17 whip so they have a slightly lower walk plus hits per Innings pitch but both teams have an equivalent era so yes the AL Central does look like they might have the advantage when it comes to pitching but this is all depending on how Colby Allard plays if he plays well then the Braves have the advantage if he doesn't then the AL Central has the advantage either way if it's just one game Bryce Elder versus Sony gray Elder takes that in a three-game series would be a 2-1 split either way but when it comes to a playoff series five or seven games it it's a toss-up but I think that I'm going with the Braves on that because when you look at it we are left with a battle of better batting against slightly better pitching and the Braves have already faced two of the AL Central pitchers which are Sony gray and Joe Ryan and they both happened within this past week and what happened in those appearances well the Braves put up nine runs during their 9.2 Innings that they were on the mound the Braves averaged almost a run per inning that gray and Ryan combined for while they played them in the series that just finished up this week now we're gonna look at how the Braves pitching staff has done against the top seven teams in batting average they've played the Rangers the pitchers we're only using the four pitchers that are on the team for purpose of this comparison the Rangers with the best batting average of 0.273 the Braves have 11.2 Innings pitched against them and allowed four runs the Diamondbacks and blue jays are tied for third best batting average at .264 Braves have 13 Innings against the Diamondbacks and allowed five runs and allowed three runs in 11.2 against the Blue Jays against the Marlins who ranked sixth in batting average with a 0.263 the Braves have 27.1 Innings pitched and have allowed five runs and against the Nationals who are seventh in batting average with a 0.261 the brace have 11.1 Innings and another five earned runs based on this data the Braves are likely to give up about 0.3 runs in inning whereas the AL Central team's top two as we already saw would be giving up close to one based on those numbers it seems the Braves are likely to win the series as they seem to over perform when the stage is the biggest when they're playing top competition the Brave shine and it really seems insane that you would say that one team could beat an entire division but I'm saying it right now and I wouldn't be so sure that this is the only team that can beat that division now I'm not going to take a super in-depth look but I'm sure that the Rangers and Rays could both hold their own and possibly beat this AL Central team as well but anyways the AL Central is so bad they did not have a single player make it past the first round of All-Star voting let alone be selected to be a starter every other division excluding the NL Central which only has Nolan erinado from the Cardinals representing them has at least three players in the All-Star Game this division is just extremely disappointing and underperforming so very much now defensively on the mound the division looks alright but when you look at the statistical categories on offense let's just bring them up alright average on base percentage slugging percentage runs home runs and stolen bases the top team in average is the Guardians ranking 16th the White Sox are 22nd the Royals 24th the twins 25th and the Tigers 28th an on-base percentage the Guardians are 22nd there's not a single team in the top 20. given their six teams per division which means that even with average the Guardians are where a third place team should be now we're looking at where a fourth place team should be and on base percentage that is absolutely insane but it gets worse because they also have the two worst teams in on base percentage as the Royals are 29th and 30th the twins are 23rd the tigers are 26th slugging percentage the twins barely cracked the top 20 as they are 19th the White Sox are 22nd the Guardians 26th the Royals 27th and the Tigers 29th when it comes to runs the twins what do you know we're back outside the top 20 they're 21st the White Sox are 22nd the Guardians are 26th the tigers are 28th and the Royals are 29th so far this division is averaging three teams in the bottom six if all the divisions are for say equal you should have one team in that bottom six not three home runs there's finally a top 10 stat as the twins are eighth the White Sox are 11 so they're up there too but the tigers are 25th and the Royals are tied for 25th the Guardians are dead last the Guardians have so little home runs that the Braves have hit more in the past 30 days than they have in the entire season and then when it comes to stolen bases there are two Top Ten teams The Royals are seventh the Guardians are tenth the White Sox 23rd twins 28th and the Tigers 29th now it's no doubt that this AL Central will go down as one of the worst divisions ever if they keep this up but if they stay on this pace where will they rank first second or third because I mean there's really only two divisions we're comparing them to at this point they are Central 2018 is typically considered the second worst they have the worst combined winning percentage at a 0.435 but there was one team that was over 500 and that was the Indians in comparison to that division the AL Central is worse and both of those categories because they do not have a single team over 500 and their winning percentage is much lower however it's very debatable and it all depends on what you want to focus on when it comes to what's the worst division because we have to go against that 1994 AL West Division their best team was 10 games below 500 the Rangers sat at 52 and 62 but the overall combined winning percentage of that division was 0.437 which is even better than what the AL Central was in 2018 so it's really what you want to focus on and in my mind the tiebreaker comes down to the fact that whoever wins the Division this year is guaranteed a play off spot so that has to make this division worse because you are getting somebody into the playoffs like that that's what makes this division really it's going to be Infamous bottom line is AL Central is just a dumpster fire like no other

Channel: Beast Sports Network

Views: 2,610

Keywords: MLB, Baseball, Braves, Twins, WhiteSox, Royals, Guardians, Tigers, ALCentral, AmericanLeague

Id: addLc_eHpeg

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023