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May 3, 2005

Prospectus Matchups

The Loneliness Factor

by Jim Baker

BEST MATCHUP (opponents with best combined BP Hit List rankings): Florida (1st) @ Atlanta (8th)

Last year, Chipper Jones struck out more times than he walked for the first time since 1997. He seems to have that situation in hand. He’s at 18-8 to the good so far, the kind of ratio that harkens back to his primo days. How reliant on Chipper have the Braves been so far? Last year, I invented a freak show stat called the Loneliness Factor. You can see how well it caught on. I’m sure you were discussing it at the water cooler just this morning. To figure the LF, we take the VORP of a team’s best player, subtract the second-best player’s VORP and divide the remainder by the third-best player’s VORP. That is, if the second- and third-best players’ VORP meets the best player’s when combined. If not, we must reach down to the fourth- and fifth-best or beyond, in extreme circumstances.

The 2005 Braves are, to this point, just such an extreme circumstance. Their Loneliness Factor is nine-plus. Aside from Marcus Giles at 6.0, Chipper’s 17.3 represents the overwhelming bulk of their output so far. All the other Braves combined--including Giles--cannot match him. (For comparison, a more typical number is that of the Diamondbacks. Troy Glaus has a Loneliness Factor of 1.4 since Luis Gonzalez is at 8.7 and Craig Counsell is at 6.7.) This won’t last, of course. Andruw Jones will get up into the 20s by the end of the year and Giles will turn it on and get over 30. When the Braves are still in it come September, though, just remember who kept them afloat way back in April.

You know, sometimes you stumble across things on the web that demand an explanation. The thing of it is, sometimes it’s better not to know that explanation. Sometimes the absurdity should go without clarification. Such a case, for me, would be the eleventh picture down on this page.

I don’t really need to know the circumstances that brought this creation into the world. Knowing that it exists is probably too much in and of itself.

CLOSEST MATCHUP (opponents closest to one another in the BP Hit List rankings): Texas (22nd) @ Oakland (21st) and Los Angeles Angels (17th) @ Seattle (18th)