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October 7, 2008

Prospectus Hit and Run

Big Gains, Big Losers

by Jay Jaffe

The season's final Hit List is in the books, much to my relief. But before packing it away for the winter, I'd like to run it through a few paces, starting with one inspired by a reader question pertaining to the final set of rankings: is the Tampa Bay Rays' jump from their 2007 ranking the largest ever?

The Rays advanced to the American League Championship Series with a victory over the White Sox on Monday, and finished third on this year's Hit List, 24 rungs higher than they finished last year. That's the largest year-to-year leap of any team since I began running the Hit List back in 2005. Here are the top and bottom fives in that time span:

Year Team       Rank Prev  Diff
2008 Rays         3   27    +24
2006 Tigers       2   21    +19
2008 White Sox   10   28    +18
2007 Cubs        11   27    +16
2006 Dodgers      8   24    +16
2007 White Sox   28    6    -22
2008 Rockies     22    4    -18
2008 Padres      27   10    -17
2007 Twins       18    3    -15
2006 Cardinals   17    2    -15

Note that one team, the 2007 White Sox, figures on both lists, first as a sudden (but not unforeseen) drop last year, and then this year's surprising recovery. Also among the droppers are the 2006 Cardinals, who managed to win a World Championship despite that fall, and the two teams from last year's Game 163 showdown, the Rockies and Padres, who appear to have both fallen from Pike's Peak into the depths of this year's list.

As interesting as all of the above is, it does only account for four years of Hit List history. Expanding the field to incorporate the retroactively calculated Hit Lists in my historical Adjusted Standings spreadsheet reveals that the Rays don't hold the claim of the biggest year-to-year gain of all time:

Year Team      Rank Prev  Diff
1999 D'backs     1   27    +26
2008 Rays        3   27    +24
1995 Angels      5   28    +23
1991 Braves      4   25    +21
1993 Giants      2   23    +21
2001 Cubs        8   29    +21
2000 White Sox   2   21    +19
2002 Angels      1   20    +19
2006 Tigers      2   21    +19
2008 White Sox  10   28    +18
1978 Brewers     4   22    +18
1991 Twins       2   20    +18
1998 Padres      4   22    +18

The honor for the top year-to-year improvement in Hit List ranking belongs to the 1999 Diamondbacks. After finishing 27^th as a 65-win expansion club in 1998, they signed free agents Randy Johnson and Steve Finley, pulled off a historically lopsided deal (Karim Garcia to Detroit for Luis Gonzalez), won 100 games, took the NL West flag, and topped that year's Hit List in just their second year of existence. The list also includes a few other notables, including the two rags-to-riches teams that met in the 1991 World Series, upstart pennant winners such as the 1998 Padres, 2002 Angels, and 2006 Tigers, and one of the great near-miss teams of all time, the 1993 Giants, who finished second in the NL West by a game despite notching 103 wins.