Potential Keys to Rising in the AL West

The 2016 version of the American League West looks like it will be one of the toughest divisions in all of baseball. Every team made additions at key positions, and there’s a case to be made for any of the five squads making the playoffs. It’s impossible to know how things will shake out this year until the season gets under way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look for clues in last season’s numbers. Based on 2015 numbers, what would the Angels theoretically need to improve on to catch the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros?

[table id=155 /]

First off, let’s take a look at how the Rangers were able to come away with the division crown. It was not done with pitching, as Texas had arguably the worst pitching in the division (the rankings are more or less the same by FIP):

[table id=156 /] [table id=157 /]

So if the Rangers sucked at pitching yet still won the AL West crown, they had to have been doing other things remarkably well. One part of the game the Rangers excelled at was defense; they had the best defensive squad in the division. This ability was key for the Rangers in that it gifted the Texas pitchers some extra outs, kept the Texas pitching from being worse than it was, and kept the team close enough in games so that their offense could pull out victories.

[table id=158 /]

With the worst pitching in the division but with also the most wins, it’s obvious that the Rangers must have been good at scoring runs. And they were, topping off the division in this category:

[table id=159 /]

So how did Texas score so many runs?  Well, part of it is probably the result of their hitting-friendly home park, but they didn’t exactly mash the ball relative to the rest of the division:

[table id=160 /]

What they did to generate the division-leading run tally was to get on base and then get aggressive:

[table id=161 /] [table id=162 /]

What you can see by looking at all of these tables is that the Angels had good pitching last year, they had good defense last year, they were average in power, but they sucked at getting on and stealing bases. Coming into the 2016 season, the Angels pitching looks to be as good, if not a tick better than last year’s pitching. The addition of Andrelton Simmons at shortstop looks to assuredly make their defense better.  The Angels did not appear to improve their power with their off-season acquisitions, so they look to remain in the middle of the pack in that category.

As the Rangers showed last year, power isn’t the only way to score a bunch of runs. If the Angels want to improve their chances of winning the division in 2016 and land a spot in the playoffs, and we assume everything in the above paragraph to be accurate, the key could be to better their OBP and baserunning. So the big question is, can they do it?

Here are the 2015 OBP and stolen base totals for the current projected starters and platoon players in the Angels’ 2016 lineup:

[table id=163 /]

Among the returning players, it wouldn’t be too far a reach to expect that Kole Calhoun and Albert Pujols can improve in this area. Calhoun’s OBP has dropped each of the three years since he has been a starter, but on the flip side his power production has increased in each of the past three seasons. Hopefully Calhoun can strike a balance between his power and his propensity for making outs so that 2016 will see an increase in his OBP. Pujols, with his surgically repaired foot, can hopefully increase his OBP a bit by getting down the line a little quicker.

The better news is that the new players who will see the most playing time for the Angels should drastically improve on the team’s .307 OBP mark from last year. Yunel Escobar has a .350 career OBP, so even if he doesn’t match his impressive .375 from last year, he should still provide a big bump over Freese’s 2015 total (.323). And the Daniel Nava/Craig Gentry platoon in left, sad as it is, should bring an improvement in OBP as well. Gentry has a .338 career OBP, Nava is at .358. The two guys with the most at-bats in left last year, Matt Joyce (.289 OBP) and David Murphy (.280), pale in comparison.

In addition to third base and left field, the shortstop and catcher positions also look to be sources of increased OBP for the Angels. Simmons’s .321 OBP in 2015 was significantly higher than Erick Aybar’s .301, and it won’t be hard for Carlos Perez to beat Chris Iannetta’s miserable .188 OBP from last year. A full season of Perez will hopefully see at least average on-base production, with an assist from Geovany Soto (career .331 OBP). In a situation where one of those two either gets hurt or falters with their production, waiting in the wings is Triple-A catcher Jett Bandy, who had a .347 OBP for the Salt Lake Bees last season.

That makes at least six spots in the lineup that could (and should?) provide the 2016 Angels with a moderate to significant OBP upgrade over last year’s marks.

Now for the stolen bases. The top two teams in the AL West last year, the Rangers and the Astros, were also the top two teams in OBP and in stolen bases. It is a simple formula that produces runs—get on base, steal a base to get into scoring position, then score. While the OBP situation for the Angels looks very promising, the stolen base (and overall baserunning) forecast is a bit murky. The Halos didn’t just have the fewest stolen bases in the AL West last year, they also had the worst SB success rate (60%) in baseball. They were as aggressive as always on basepaths, it just resulted in outs more often than not this time—their 71 TOOTBLANs was worst in the West by a mile.

We heard from Trout that one of his goals this year is to steal more bases. If he is able to commit to this goal, that is a plus because Trout will score many more runs (and avoid rally-killing GIDPs) from second base when Pujols or Cron hits a single than he would standing around first base. The increase in Trout’s stolen bases, if they appear, will help to balance out the loss in stolen bases from the shortstop position. Aybar had 15 swipes for the Halos last season, while Simmons only had five for the Braves. Their best chance at making up ground in the stolen base department is probably Craig Gentry. From 2011 through 2014, he averaged 19 stolen bases a season. Then again, he is not expected to be a full-time player, so it may depend on how often he gets to pinch run late in games.

The past few years it seems as though the Angels have either shifted their philosophy on stolen bases and no longer believe it’s an important weapon in an offense’s arsenal, or they just don’t have the right coaches needed to teach the fine art of stealing bases. If either of these two situations were to change, it would be reasonable to see a significant rise in stolen bases team-wide, and it would especially show up in Calhoun and Simmons’s stolen base totals. (Editor’s note: Not having Gary DiSarcina run players into so many outs at third and home anymore might also help the team’s general productivity on the bases.)

So there you have it. Though general manager Billy Eppler and company didn’t sign a big money free agent this offseason, they still made minor upgrades across the roster that’ll hopefully close a few of the gaps between them and their division rivals. Only a month to go before we start to find out for sure.