(Isolated) Power Rankings!
By Kyle Davis
Power Rankings are all the rage in the internet! They look at all the teams and which players are on them and how many games they’ve already won and they rank all of the teams in order of perceived Power. Not like which teams could do the most pushups, not that kind of Power—this is a more metaphorical Power, like the Power of very wealthy and important men who drink fine wine from chalices while feasting on aged, cured meats. This kind of Power is the Power of Hings, the Power of Tyrants. People want to know which teams are the most Powerful in the present moment. They want to know who has the most Power and who has the least Power and who has the medium Power. The internet loves Power Rankings so much, just about every sports website anywhere has their own version of them. If you’re a sports website and don’t have Power Rankings, you might as well just quit right now. Get off the internet, take up mountain biking, maybe start a farm or something, because you are obviously out of your element and you are embarrassing yourself.
Call to the Pen is already all over the Power Rankings. We have our own proprietary version and they are excellent. That is a non disputable fact. You’d be well served to click that internet hyperlink and let the pure, transcendent ranking of Power wash over you. Revel in it and be thankful. The (Isolated) Power Rankings! you are about to examine are an entirely different measure. Less figurative and more literal. Less art and more science. Less nonexistent use of the world “isolated” in parentheses and more existent use of the world “isolated” in parentheses. You see, smarter humans than myself have derived a formula by which to measure an individual player or entire team’s raw Power by way of how many extra bases they hit. They call is Isolated Power, or ISO. Simply put, it’s Batting Average subtracted by Slugging Percentage. There’s a more in depth explanation available here at the FanGraphs Library, if you’re into the sort of thing. The same entry also spells out a general guideline by which to judge any given ISO number in context, with .145 being average, .250 being excellent, and .080 being Nick Punto. Last season’s leader in ISO was Jose Bautista, who put up an insane mark of .306. In 2001, Barry Bonds was good for an ISO of .536. Let’s all take a pause here for some good old fashioned exasperated laughing.
Now, we need north of 500 plate appearances for ISO to stabilize into any sort of real, meaningful figure, but small sample flukes are how Power Rankings roll, so let’s take a look at the current team standings, courtesy once again of our good friends at FanGraphs, and painstakingly exported, copied, and pasted by yours truly. The National League teams are going to be at the (theoretical) disadvantage of having their pitcher’s contributions at the plate counting towards their total number, but you know, that’s just a reality of life, man.
Somehow, I presume, the bulk of these rankings are all Albert Pujols‘ fault.
(Isolated) Power Rankings!
1. Yankees: .203
2. Brewers: .194
3. Rangers: .188
4. Orioles: .183
5. Red Sox: .182
6. Rays: .181
7. Rockies: .181
8. Cardinals: .163
9. Royals: .161
10. Blue Jays: .157
11. White Sox: .156
12. Diamondbacks: .152
13. Braves: .150
14. Giants: .149
15. Tigers: .148
16. Reds: .148
17. Mariners: .137
18. Dodgers: .137
19. Marlins: .136
20. Twins: .134
21. Mets: .128
22. Indians: .127
23. Athletics: .120
24. Astros: .120
25. Padres: .117
26. Angels: .116
27. Phillies: .102
28. Pirates: .102
29. Nationals: .102
30. Cubs: .099
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Kyle writes baseball nonsense at The Trance of Waiting. You can follow him on Twitter @AgainstKyle.