Week 2 FANGRAPHS Wins and Values

I am going to set this up power ranking style to start and breakdown from there.  The rankings are solely derived from fangraphs team dollars data.  The top 10 teams are:

As you can see, our beloved Rays were the big dropper after a less than stellar week.  The Royals shot up the most going to 14th to 4th on the strength of their pitching.  What else can we find out?

You can follow THIS LINK to see the workbook in it's entirety. 

On the pitching side, you can see that our Rays currently sit 22nd at $3.30.  Not good, to say the least, though we are 4th in Start-IP behind only the Twins, Jays, and M's. 

You may notice that each of these teams are in the top-10 in total value. 

Like last week, for the positional players I want to break it down by batting and fielding.  The Rays just missed the cut here with 10.1 Value Runs.

You may notice, indirectly, that each of the teams mentioned so far have had either a real gem of a start or an offensive onslaught.  With it being so early in the season, I think the values are more likely to favor quality over quantity.  What I mean by that, is that, a standout performance is really going to raise a teams dollar value.  This is all the beauty of small sample size theatre, but think of it as slow drying concrete, as the weeks go by, this data is going to be more and more solid and less likely to make a mess. 

As for fielding, this is where we get to see our name on the wall.  The Rays have the second best fielding team according to fangraphs. 

I think the first two, and the Tigers to a lesser extent, are not really surprises, but when did the Brewers and Rangers start to get the idea that defense actually kinda matters a little bit?  Last week the Rangers were 10th, the Tigers were 13th, and the Brewers were 18th.  Apparently, GG'er Michael Young being moved off SS wasn't as crazy as him or his agent thought it was.  Elvis Andrus is a -.1 UZR so far vs. the -5.8 UZR out of the Gold Glover last year. 

Much was made of getting Everett (-.8) and Inge (1.4) out on the left side to help the pitchers out for the Tigers, but the best move made might have been picking up Josh Anderson, who has already put up a 2.6 and has got to help Granderson (whom has to at least shade over to help out slow-footed-RF-of-the-day) as far as covering spacious Comerica.  With the Rays playing the M's this week it could be a good chance to check out teams that don't allow anything soft.  Especially the get-away-day game featuring James Shields and Felix Hernandez.

Next week will give us a chance to see the data continue to smooth itself out, but in the meantime, here are the rest of the Power Rankings.

The Rays may have some room for improvement, but my word, at least we aren't Nationals fans.