Positions of Strength and Weakness 
By Tom Tippett
March 23, 2004
You probably have a very good feel for the positions where your favorite team needs help and where they're pretty well set for 2004, but it's not always easy to keep up with all thirty teams.
As we approach opening day, let's take a moment to look back at the offensive contribution each team received in the 2003 season. We'll break things down by position to make it easier to spot each team's strengths and weaknesses.
Our hope is that this little exercise will shed some light on what happened last year, give us some insight into off-season moves that were made, and identify some moves that should have been made but weren't.
American League
The numbers in the following table show how each team ranked in on-base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS) at each position. (Stats are not park adjusted.)
Team P C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF DH PH ANA 10 12 3 8 9 11 3 11 5 10 2 BAL 12 8 14 7 11 12 2 7 4 14 6 BOS 8 2 9 3 3 2 1 8 1 1 4 CHA 9 6 7 6 7 6 4 10 2 3 11 CLE 7 9 13 14 8 13 7 6 7 5 14 DET 5 14 12 11 13 14 10 13 13 7 3 KCA 3 11 4 13 5 5 11 2 10 12 5 MIN 2 3 6 12 4 8 8 4 8 8 1 NYA 6 1 2 2 10 4 12 3 11 9 10 OAK 14 4 10 9 1 3 6 12 14 11 8 SEA 4 13 11 1 14 10 13 5 6 2 13 TBA 13 7 8 10 12 7 14 9 3 13 7 TEX 11 10 5 4 2 1 9 14 9 4 12 TOR 1 5 1 5 6 9 5 1 12 6 9
Before we discuss these results, let's take a moment to go over how to read this table. You can look down each column to see how the teams (and by extension which players) ranked from top (1) to bottom (14) based on OPS by the players at that position.
For example, at second base, the Mariners (mainly Bret Boone) were number one, followed by the Yankees (primarily Alfonso Soriano) and the Red Sox (mostly Todd Walker with a little help from Bill Mueller, Lou Merloni, and Damian Jackson).
Reading across, you can get a snapshot of each team's offensive strengths and weaknesses. Baltimore, for instance, was very good at the corner outfield positions (second and fourth), very weak (14th) at both first base and DH, and below average on the left side of the infield (11th at third and 12th at short). Conversely, some teams have almost nothing to build on -- the Tigers were tenth or worse at every position except DH and pitcher, and pitcher hitting doesn't really matter for an AL team.
In the remainder of this article, I'll go through the positions and offer some observations about the players who had the biggest impact on these rankings and the teams that made the biggest moves, up or down, from 2002 to 2003. We'll skip the AL pitchers because they just don't get enough atbats to make a difference.
In all cases, the averages cited are OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging average) including only those plate appearances while playing that position, so in most cases they won't match a player's overall numbers. For example, Anaheim's Scott Spiezio had an .835 OPS in 368 plate appearances as a first baseman, a .632 OPS in 187 PAs as a third baseman, and a stellar 1.010 OPS in 11 PAs as a pinch hitter. His stats while at first contribute to the Anaheim 1B totals, his stats at third contribute to the Anaheim 3B total, and so on.
And we're looking only at offense. Defense, baserunning, and other contributions are not included, so this is not an attempt to identify the best overall players at each position.
AL catchers: Jorge Posada (.926) did most of the catching for the top-ranked Yankees, but John Flaherty posted a respectable .743 OPS to back him up ... Boston's Jason Varitek (.861) and Doug Mirabelli (.736) were runners up ... Toronto moved up from 11th to 5th thanks to an unexpected contribution from Greg Myers (.335 average, .952 OPS) ... Seattle dropped all the way from 4th to 13th as Dan Wilson (.611) and Ben Davis (.676) both struggled ... with Ivan Rodriguez moving to Florida, Texas fell from the top spot to 10th ... Cleveland moved up from last to 9th on the basis of three nearly-identical performances by Josh Bard (.662), Tim Laker (.657), and rookie Victor Martinez (.669).
AL first basemen: No surprise here as Carlos Delgado (1.022) carried Toronto to the top spot ... Jason Giambi (1.034) and Nick Johnson (.913) shared the position for the second-ranked Yankees ... surprisingly, Anaheim finished third because Scott Spiezio did his best work at first, Shawn Wooten chipped in (.800 OPS in 105 PA), and Brad Fullmer was a stud (1.071, 72 PA) before he got hurt ... Minnesota advanced from 11th to 6th thanks to Doug Mientkiewicz (.836) ... the popular Kevin Millar had a high profile (Cowboy Up!, Rally Karaoke Guy) but didn't hit enough to get Boston into the top half ... still, that was an improvement over their last-place finish the year before ... in Seattle, John Olerud's subpar year dropped them from 6th to 11th ... Cleveland lost Jim Thome to the Phillies and plummeted from first to second last.
AL second basemen: New York and Seattle swapped positions, with the Yankees (Soriano) dropping to second behind the Mariners (Bret Boone) ... while Boston's Todd Walker (.765) got most of the work, Bill Mueller (1.198) and Lou Merloni (1.139) were the reason why the Red Sox slipped past Texas (mostly Michael Young, .785) for third ... Anaheim fell from 3rd to 8th when Adam Kennedy (.736) was unable to match his career year and platoon partner Benji Gil was pathetic (.452).
AL third basemen: Eric Chavez (.863) was the main man as Oakland repeated in the number one spot ... with Hank Blalock (.875) having a big sophomore season, the second-ranked Rangers would have been first if not for 66 weak PAs from Donnie Sadler (.618) ... a career year from Bill Mueller (.913) carried Boston into third, and they would have been higher except that Shea Hillenbrand's OPS was only .689 and three reserves were awful while playing this spot ... Corey Koskie (.845) rebounded nicely to lift the Twins from 9th to 4th ... same for Joe Randa (.803), whose Royals rose from 10th to 5th with a little help from Desi Relaford (.856) ... Anaheim fell from 3rd to 9th because Troy Glaus got hurt (.801 in 351 PA) and Spiezio (.632) didn't hit while at this position ... the Yankees dropped from 4th to 10th, with the traded-away Robin Ventura (.754) being the only respectable hitter of the bunch ... in Toronto, Eric Hinske slumped (.770) and the Jays fell from 2nd to 6th.
AL shortstops: For the second year in a row, the top four were Texas (Alex Rodriguez, .987), Boston (Nomar Garciaparra, .870), Oakland (Miguel Tejada, .807), and New York (Derek Jeter was at .845 but Erick Almonte and Enrique Wilson were in the .600s) ... the surprise was the Royals, who were last the year before but rode Angel Berroa's bat (.789) to a 5th-place finish ... for what it's worth, Berroa's team ranked higher at his position than did the teams of the other top Rookie of the Year candidates: the Yankees (Hideki Matsui) were 12th in left and the Indians (Jody Gerut) were 7th in both left and right ... the two biggest declines were Anaheim (6th to 11th with David Eckstein at .657) and Cleveland (7th to 13th with Omar Vizquel at .660 and Jhonny Peralta at .615).
AL left fielders: Manny Ramirez (1.054) carried to the Red Sox to the top spot for the second year in a row ... Baltimore moved all the way from 9th to 2nd as Melvin Mora broke out (.916) and Larry Bigbie (.833) carried on after Mora got hurt ... Anaheim's Garret Anderson (.873) slipped from second to third ... Carlos Lee (.830) helped the White Sox rise from 8th to 4th ... nine players shared the position for Cleveland, which moved up six spots to 7th, with Jody Gerut (.882) the biggest contributor ... even though newcomer Randy Winn had a decent year (.765), Seattle dropped from 7th to 13th because the others (Mark McLemore, Willie Bloomquist, and John Mabry) didn't hit at all as left fielders ... Hideki Matsui posted a weak .714 OPS while playing left for the 12th-ranked Yankees.
AL center fielders: Vernon Wells (.909) almost single-handedly carried the Blue Jays to the top spot, racking up all but 7 of the team's PAs at this position ... the Jays were 7th in 2002, which was Wells' first full year ... KC moved up one step to 2nd behind Carlos Beltran (also at .909) ... Bernie Williams (.785) wasn't at full strength in 2003, but the Yankees finished 3rd anyway because Matsui (.975) was a much better hitter while playing center than while playing left ... by the way, our defensive analysis indicates that Matsui was (a) better in center than he was in left and (b) better than Bernie in center ... we're convinced that New York would have been a stronger team if manager Joe Torre had these two players switch positions, especially after Bernie's knee surgery ... Baltimore moved up from 12th to 7th when Luis Matos (.830) had a very good year and Melvin Mora (.972) kicked in 45 high-octane PAs ... Rocco Baldelli (.743) got a ton of hype in Tampa Bay, but the Rays dropped from 4th to 9th when he couldn't come close to the production of his predecessor, Randy Winn (.827 in 2002).
AL right fielders: Trot Nixon (.984 overall, 1.058 versus RHP) put the Red Sox RFs in first place this year, but he didn't do it alone; Nixon still doesn't hit lefties well, but Gabe Kapler (.886) and Kevin Millar (.981) picked up the slack when Nixon was sitting ... Magglio Ordonez (.921) powered the White Sox to second place, down one spot from 2002 ... when Tampa Bay moved Aubrey Huff (.966) to right, it spurred a rise from 10th to 3rd; seven other guys played some RF for the Rays, but as a group they were below the league average ... the Orioles climbed from 9th to 4th, with Jay Gibbons (.821) getting most of the action ... the midseason acquisition of Jose Guillen (.847) wasn't enough to keep the Athletics from dropping into the basement after finishing 5th in 2002; Jermaine Dye (.546) and Terrence Long (.631) didn't get the job done early ... with Ichiro getting almost all of the playing time both years, Seattle repeated its 6th-place finish.
AL designated hitters: Teams tend to rotate a lot of players through this position, so these rankings are often more of a group effort than an individual achievement ... David Ortiz (1.075) and Manny Ramirez (.808) led the top-ranked Red Sox ... the remarkable Edgar Martinez (.899) carried Seattle into second ... Chicago's Frank Thomas (.903) had a very good year to bump the White Sox up from 4th to 3rd ... the only big move was Anaheim's fall from 3rd to 10th; in both years, Brad Fullmer and Tim Salmon saw the most action as DH, and both saw their OPS fall by 70-100 points ... for the second year in a row, Baltimore brought up the rear; Marty Cordova and Chris Richard headed up an 11-man crew, but both were league-average hitters, and that's not good enough at this position.
AL pinch hitters: Minnesota was the league's top pinch hitting team for the second year in a row thanks to several remarkable performances: Lew Ford, 1.905 OPS in 7 appearances; Michael Cuddyer, 1.375 in 8; Bobby Kielty, 1.250 in 10; Justin Morneau, 1.223 in 16; AJ Pierzynski, 1.100 in 6 ... the rankings in this category tend to be volatile, and this year saw Baltimore go from 14th to 6th, Cleveland from 9th to 14th, KC from 5th to 10th, Oakland from 3rd to 8th, and Tampa Bay from 2nd to 7th ... at last, we've found something the Tigers did well; led by Eric Munson (1.950 in 8 attempts), half of Detroit's 20 pinch hitters posted an OPS of .800 or better.
National League rankings
Team P C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF DH PH ARI 13 9 15 9 6 4 3 3 14 7 2 ATL 5 1 10 1 7 3 6 4 1 14 13 CHN 1 13 8 7 13 8 10 9 6 9 15 CIN 16 10 14 11 9 13 13 10 7 10 4 COL 3 5 1 13 14 9 7 2 8 2 1 FLO 9 3 5 8 2 5 15 12 13 8 3 HOU 8 16 4 2 5 10 5 11 2 13 12 LAN 11 7 16 12 12 16 16 14 9 16 14 MIL 10 11 3 5 3 15 8 7 15 5 10 MON 12 12 13 3 16 2 12 15 3 4 6 NYN 15 6 12 16 11 14 9 16 11 11 16 PHI 6 2 2 6 15 6 14 6 5 15 8 PIT 7 4 11 15 10 12 4 5 4 6 7 SDN 4 15 7 4 4 11 11 13 16 12 9 SFN 14 8 9 10 8 7 1 8 12 3 5 SLN 2 14 6 14 1 1 2 1 10 1 11
NL pitchers: More than any other team, the Cubs pitchers -- led by Carlos Zambrano (.637 OPS, 80 PA) and Mark Prior (.635, 79) -- helped themselves with the bat; Kerry Wood's batting average (.164) was nothing special, but he contributed a pair of homers, tying for the league lead (with Zambrano and four others) among pitchers not named Brooks Kieschnick ... it'll be interesting to see how they do in 2004; the Cubs were 14th a year ago with mostly the same guys ... Woody Williams (.670) and Brett Tomko (.618) were the biggest reasons why the Cardinals ranked second.
NL catchers: Last year, we raved about Mike Piazza's ability to put his team on top of this list every season except the year he was traded to New York, but Piazza (.867) missed half of the 2003 season and would have been second to Atlanta's Javy Lopez (1.095) even if he'd been healthy ... thanks to Lopez, Atlanta rose all the way from 15th to the top ... for the second-ranked Phillies, Mike Lieberthal deserves most of the credit (.825 OPS in 559 PA), but backup Todd Pratt (.843) was even better ... Colorado rose from 13th to 5th, with Charles Johnson (.775) getting most of the playing time ... Montreal dropped from 3rd to 12th as Michael Barrett and Brian Schneider were unable to match their strong 2002 seasons.
NL first basemen: For the fourth straight year, Todd Helton (1.089) led the Rockies to the top spot ... this time, second place went to Philadelphia, where newcomer Jim Thome (.957) lifted the team all the way from a 14th-place rank in 2002 ... Milwaukee's Richie Sexson (.927), who was the only Brewer to bat as a first baseman in 2003, put his team into the top five for the third consecutive season; with Sexson now with Arizona, it will be up to Lyle Overbay to extend this string ... with Arizona falling from 3rd to 15th at the position, it's no surprise that they went after Sexson ... the Giants (mainly Andres Galarraga and JT Snow) gained ground, rising from 15th to 9th ... the Dodgers may have thought they'd solved their first base problem by trading for Fred McGriff (.749), but that didn't work out, and Robin Ventura (.792) wasn't enough help after his midseason acquisition.
NL second basemen: Marcus Giles (.916) blew away the competition in leading Atlanta from worst to first in one season ... Houston spent a lot of money to acquire Jeff Kent (.864), who lifted them from 5th to 2nd ... the Giants, who lost Kent via free agency, dropped from 1st to 10th when Ray Durham (.817 in 462 PA) produced but Neifi Perez (.676, 173) and Eric Young (.503, 78) did not ... Jose Vidro (.861) helped the Expos into the #3 spot, giving the club four straight top-threes ... Mark Loretta had his best season at the plate, and that was enough to improve San Diego's position from 13th to 4th ... Arizona was down from 2nd to 9th when Junior Spivey couldn't match his breakout 2002 season ... Cincinnati slid 7 places to finish 11th after Todd Walker moved on to the Red Sox last winter ... the Mets' dropped from 8th to dead last when Roberto Alomar continued his late-career slide and nobody else could do any better after Alomar was traded to the White Sox ... in Chicago, Alomar replaced D'Angelo Jimenez, who wound up in Cincinnati, but Jimenez outproduced Alomar by 121 OPS points the rest of the way ... he had outproduced Alomar before these moves were made, too.
NL third basemen: Scott Rolen (.911) had a big year in his first full season with the top-ranked Cardinals ... Florida's Mike Lowell (.880) was the main reason why the Marlins repeated in the second spot, but there was no dropoff when Lowell got hurt and Miguel Cabrera (.886) took over ... Wes Helms (.782) and Keith Ginter (.804) combined to put Milwaukee into third ... the big gainers were San Diego, up from last to 4th when Sean Burroughs had a nice sophomore season and four reserves (Lou Merloni, Dave Hansen, Ramon Vazquez, and Keith Lockhart) outproduced the starter in brief stints ... Atlanta's Vinny Castilla bounced back after a poor 2002, and the Braves moved up from 14th to 7th ... Pittsburgh rose five places, from 15th to 10th, but the guy who did that (Aramis Ramirez, .778) was traded away ... the big loser was Philadelphia, Rolen's former team, which fell from 3rd to 15th when David Bell (.577) had an awful year and Placido Polanco (.606) didn't do much better ... the Mets sank from 4th to 11th after Edgardo Alfonzo left for the west coast ... Colorado dropped from 6th to 14th.
NL shortstops: After years of steady but unspectacular play, Edgar Renteria busted out with career highs in batting average (.330), doubles (47), and walks (65) ... I'm always a little surprised when I see Montreal's Orlando Cabrera batting 3rd or 4th in the lineup, but he did carry his team to 2nd in the SS rankings with a .297 average, 47 doubles, and 17 homers, albeit with help from a pair of great hitter's parks ... in Arizona, Alex Cintron's .832 OPS (as a SS) overcame 229 plate appearances that were wasted on Tony Womack (.599) early in the year to help the team climb from 11th to 4th ... with the departure of Jose Hernandez, Milwaukee dropped all the way from 1st to 15th ... keeping Herndandez may not have been the answer, though, as he did very little with three different teams in 2004.
NL left fielders: Barry Bonds led the Giants to the top spot for the 4th straight year ... this time it was the Cardinals and Albert Pujols who grabbed the runner-up spot ... Lance Berkman's move from CF to LF accounts for the biggest gain, with Houston rising from 11th in 2002 to 5th in 2003 ... Milwaukee rose five spots with Geoff Jenkins healthy enough to get more than 75% of the playing time ... the biggest drop, ten spots, was in Philly, where Pat Burrell slumped all season ... Adam Dunn didn't struggle as much as Burrell, but Dunn's Reds were down seven spots from 2002.
NL center fielders: Jim Edmonds and the Cardinals are making a habit of topping the CF rankings ... Preston Wilson's move from Florida to Colorado propelled the Rockies from 13th to 2nd ... Arizona (mostly Steve Finley) and Atlanta (mostly Andruw Jones) traded places, with Arizona sneaking into 3rd in 2003 after finishing 4th the year before ... Corey Patterson and Kenny Lofton helped the Cubs move from 16th to 9th ... before he was traded, Lofton got things started in Pittsburgh, then Tike Redman finished off a season that saw the Pirates leap from 12th to 5th ... the flip side of Berkman's move to LF is that Houston plummeted from 2nd to 11th when Craig Biggio took over in center.
NL right fielders: In Atlanta, Gary Sheffield's monster year fueled a rise from 6th to the top ... Houston's Richard Hidalgo helped the Astros rocket from 12th to 2nd ... Montreal dropped from 1st to 3rd when Vladimir Guerrero missed a couple of months ... Pittsburgh rounded out the top four when Reggie Sanders, Matt Stairs, and Craig Wilson all topped the .900 mark in OPS; the Pirates were 15th the year before.
NL pinch hitters: Once again, there was lots of movement in these rankings ... moving up were Florida (15th to 3rd, led by Todd Hollandsworth, Lenny Harris, and Ramon Castro), the Giants (16th to 5th, mostly Andres Galarraga), Arizona (9th to 2nd, Felix Jose, Lyle Overbay, Carlos Baerga), Cincinnati (10th to 4th, nine players with an OPS over 1.000 as pinch hitters) ... the biggest declines occurred in Los Angeles (1st to 14th), New York (5th to 16th), Milwaukee (2nd to 10th), St. Louis (3rd to 11th), and Chicago (7th to 15th).
Major League rankings
Here are the overall major league rankings, with teams listing in order of their 2003 finish to give you a slightly different look. Bear in mind that limited playing time makes the inter-league comparisons largely meaningless at pitcher and designated hitter.
Team P C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF DH PH NYA 16 2 3 3 22 6 25 6 22 18 21 BOS 23 3 22 7 5 2 2 19 2 5 4 TOR 1 11 2 13 12 15 13 2 23 15 20 BAL 28 20 28 18 23 24 9 18 12 29 7 TBA 29 19 20 25 26 10 29 21 9 28 10 MIN 5 5 13 28 6 13 19 13 18 17 1 CHA 25 18 14 16 15 9 12 23 5 9 24 KCA 6 24 10 29 7 8 22 3 21 24 5 CLE 18 21 27 30 17 27 17 15 15 12 30 DET 15 30 26 26 27 30 21 28 29 16 3 OAK 30 7 24 23 3 4 15 27 30 22 17 SEA 8 27 25 2 28 18 28 14 14 7 27 ANA 26 25 9 22 20 22 11 25 13 20 2 TEX 27 22 12 10 4 1 20 29 20 11 26 ATL 9 1 17 1 13 7 7 7 1 26 23 FLO 13 6 7 12 2 12 27 20 25 13 9 PHI 10 4 4 9 29 14 26 9 7 27 15 MON 19 17 21 5 30 5 23 26 4 4 13 NYN 22 10 19 27 19 26 14 30 19 21 29 CHN 2 23 15 11 24 17 16 12 8 14 28 HOU 12 29 6 4 10 20 6 17 3 25 22 SLN 3 26 8 21 1 3 3 1 17 1 19 PIT 11 8 18 24 18 23 5 8 6 8 14 CIN 24 15 23 17 16 25 24 16 10 19 11 MIL 14 16 5 8 8 28 10 10 27 6 18 SFN 21 13 16 15 14 16 1 11 24 3 12 LAN 17 12 30 19 21 29 30 24 16 30 25 ARI 20 14 29 14 11 11 4 5 26 10 8 COL 4 9 1 20 25 19 8 4 11 2 6 SDN 7 28 11 6 9 21 18 22 28 23 16
A few observations come to mind as I look over this table ...
Setting aside the positions (pitcher, DH) for which inter-league comparisons don't make sense, the Tigers managed to finish in the bottom five at seven positions and in the bottom ten at the other. But they were dead last only twice, and while that's not easy to do, the Dodgers outdid them with three last-place rankings. Remarkably, the Braves were first at three positions.
The one team with enough money to put a star at every position was surprisingly inconsistent. The Yankees made the top six at five positions and the bottom nine at three others.
Oakland struggled at first, second, and two outfield positions. In response, they added two outfield bats this winter (Bobby Kielty and Mark Kotsay) and signed Eric Karros to share time with Scott Hatteberg at first base.
Montreal was in the bottom third at four positions and may have fixed them all by promoting OF prospect Terrmel Sledge, trading for 1B Nick Johnson, and signing of 3B Tony Batista and OF Carl Everett.
San Francisco was in the top ten at only one position, but that should change with the acquisition of catcher A.J. Pierzynski.
