Division Hot Stove

Back to the Hot Stove. With my Game Score+ meanderings I sort of dropped the Roxs. Anyway I think Garett Atkins said it best (when asked about the D-backs signing of Haren),

"Yeah, we needed more good pitchers in the NL West"

Anyway the NL West seemed the most active of any of the divisions in the Senior Circuit. Major signings included Haren to D-backs; Iguchi, Hairston, Edmonds, Wolf, and Prior to San Diego; Jones and Kuroda (not to mention Schmidt's return) to LA; and Rowand to San Fran. Obviously something seems to be missing from this list....hmmmm, yup the Roxs signed no one of significance. Is this good or bad? Well basically what I did was I took last year's Win Shares and see what the addition of these players meant.

A Win Share is statistic developed by James that assigns a single number to each player for his contributions for the year. All pitching, hitting and defensive contributions by the player are taken into account. Statistics are adjusted for park, league and era. A Win Share represents one-third of a team win, by definition. If a team wins 80 games in a season, then its players will share 240 win shares. So for last year based on the team's final standings

	W	L	RS	RA	Ex - W	WS Factor
Arizona	90	72	712	732	79	0.88
Colorado	90	73	860	758	90	1.00
San Diego	89	74	741	666	89	1.00
LA	82	80	735	727	82	1.00
SF	71	91	683	720	77	1.09

So assuming that all the teams current players earn similar Win Shares in 2008 (probably not, but I will assume that some players will go up and some down...this is just a back of the envelope analysis!). So basically looking at the 2008 roster versus the 2007 roster and looking at only starters and players with at least 100 at bats, I determined the Win Shares (divided this number by 3 for wins) returning and then I also adjusted these Win Shares with the WS Factor above. I did this because Arizona's win total last year was way out of whack with the pythagorous win total based on their runs scored and runs against. I doubt very much that they will be as "lucky" as last year especially with them trading Valverde this off-season.

	WS Return	WS Correction
Arizona	82	72
Colorado	81	81
San Diego	60	60
LA	72	72
SF	55	60

So Colorado, which kept its team pretty much intact and only losing Matsui's 14 Win Shares, Carroll's 4 Win Shares, Fogg's 6 Win Shares. What about the other divisional rivals and their additions?

	+ WS Wins	Total Wins
Arizona	6	78
Colorado	0	81
San Diego	8	68
LA	11	83
SF	11	71

Well based on this little exercise it looks like LA has the early club house lead. They had a bunch of good acquistions in Andrew Jones and possibly a full season of Schmidt. The unknown factor is the Japanese pitcher Kuroda. San Diego has a lot of offensive holes to fill with losing Cameron, Giles, and Bradley and trying to make this up iwht Iguchi, Hairston, and Edmonds (who is old!). Haren doesn't solve Arizona's offensive woes (although their young players should start to hit being a year older). What about our Roxs? Well with full seasons from Jimenez and possibly Morales along with a year older Hirsh the pitching should stay fine. The only real hole is 2B. Can Nix get 8 - 12 Win Shares this year (to make up for Matsui's 14)? I think the Roxs will be fine even with the rivals additions.