NL Most Improved and Biggest Disappointments

More than a quarter through the MLB season, we compared our NL Statis-Pro cards to each player's actual stats this season to adjust only the players who are dramatically better or worse than their card.

Adjusting Pitcher's Whose ERA is at least 1.00 Better or Worse than Card

In general, if a player's ERA this season is at least 1.00 better than the projected ERA on his card, then we improve his card's PB by one. (possible PBs from worst to best are 2-4, 2-5, 2-6, 4-7, 2-7, 2-8 and the best 2-9). Jacob deGrom's ERA is much improved, from a project 3.04 to his current 0.68, but he is already a PB: 2-9 so cannot improve.

Likewise if it's more than 2.00 better his PB improves by 2, and if his ERA is at least 1.00 worse then the PB is one worse etc.

Adjusting a pitcher's card actually improves their ERA by about 0.50, so we are giving these pitchers a new PB basically based on the average of the projected ERA used for the card and their current ERA.

We put some limits on it - such as not dropping a pitcher below the average PB: 4-7. Pitchers had to have thrown at least 23 innings (starting pitchers) or in at least 12 games (relievers) to be considered, and if a pitcher had now thrown that much they were considered to have a 5.00 ERA for these calculations.

The San Francisco Giants were by far the most improved staff with Johnny Cueto, Anthony DeSclafani, Kevin Gausman, Tyler Rogers and Alex Wood all improving by two PB. The following is the list of every Giants pitcher's card for which we adjusted the PB, listing what was on the card originally followed by the adjusted PB. The list of all NL pitchers we adjusted appear in the table at the bottom of this blog.

Adjusting Batters Whose OPS is at least 1.00 Better or Worse than Card

For any batter whose OPS this season is at least .150 batters better or worse than the projected OPS used for their cards, we likewise increased or decreased the home run range by two, and then if at least .250 by three, etc. While the Reds pitchers cards were close to the worst hurt by these adjustments, their batters were the most improved. 

Castellanos Home Run Range improved by 2, from 26-33 to 26.35, Naquin improved from 27-32 to 27-34 etc. Adding or subtracting one home run number actually improves the cards OPS by 0.40, so like with pitchers we are basically adjusting these players by averaging their current OPS with the projected one used to make the card.

The adjustments for all affected batters are listed just a little lower in this blog, before the pitchers' adjustments.

When you add up the changes for each team's pitchers and batters, and grade both their bats and pitchers on a scale of +10 to -10, the most improved team cards overall are the San Francisco Giants (0 for batter but +10 for pitchers for an overall +10), and the team that is much worse is the Arizona Diamondbacks (-6 batting and -3 pitching for an overall -9).

 

Team	Bat Improve	Pitch Improve	Overall
ARI	-6	-3	-9
ATL	-4	2	-2
CHC	4	3	7
CIN	6	-2	4
LAD	-5	5	0
MIL	-9	4	-5
NYM	-5	3	-2
PHI	-7	1	-6
SD	-5	5	0
SF	0	10	10
STL	-2	6	4
WSH	-1	0	-1

Our Statis-Pro NL season was proceeding with 10 teams, but with the Giants improving so much we ran the math for the Giants and Phillies as well in consideration of possibly putting them back in the league. Here are all the batters.

All Adjusted NL Batters

PLAYER	TEAM	Change	HR Range	New HR
N Ahmed	ARI	Worse	28-32	28-28
A Cabrera	ARI	Better	27-32	27-33
C Kelly	ARI	Much Better	24-28	24-34
T Locastro	ARI	Worse	31-32	28-28
J VanMeter	ARI	Worse	23-27	23-25
Daulton Varsho	ARI	Much Worse	26-31	26-26
C Walker	ARI	Worse	26-32	26-28
W Contreras	ATL	Much Better	26-28	26-33
T d'Arnaud	ATL	Worse	28-34	28-32
M Ozuna	ATL	Much Worse	28-36	28-33
C Pache	ATL	Much Worse	27-32	27-27
A Riley	ATL	Better	24-31	24-32
K Bryant	CHC	Much Better	24-31	24-33
J Heyward	CHC	Worse	26-31	26-27
N Hoerner	CHC	Much Better	32-33	32-35
J Marisnick	CHC	Much Better	25-31	25-33
N Castellanos	CIN	Much Better	26-33	26-35
T Naquin	CIN	Much Better	27-32	27-34
T Stephenson	CIN	Better	25-27	25-28
E Suárez	CIN	Worse	21-28	21-26
J Winker	CIN	Much Better	26-32	26-35
G Lux	LAD	Worse	27-33	27-31
Z McKinstry	LAD	Much Better	25-27	25-31
E Rios	LAD	Much Worse	22-28	22-23
J Bradley	MIL	Worse	25-31	25-27
K Hiura	MIL	Much Worse	24-32	24-27
O Narváez	MIL	Much Better	25-28	25-32
Daniel Robertson	MIL	Much Worse	25-26	22-22
Christian Yelich	MIL	Worse	25-32	25-28
P Alonso	NYM	Worse	18-28	18-26
M Conforto	NYM	Worse	25-32	25-28
J.D. Davis	NYM	Much Better	26-32	26-35
F Lindor	NYM	Worse	28-35	28-33
J McCann	NYM	Worse	26-32	26-28
Tomas Nido	NYM	Much Better	25-27	25-31
D Smith	NYM	Worse	28-34	28-32
A Bohm	PHI	Worse	32-35	32-33
D Gregorius	PHI	Worse	28-35	28-33
A Knapp	PHI	Much Worse	25-27	24-24
J Cronenworth	SD	Better	31-32	31-33
M Machado	SD	Worse	26-34	26-32
Will Myers	SD	Worse	24-32	24-28
T Pham	SD	Worse	26-31	26-27
Brandon Belt	SF	Worse	25-31	25-27
A Dickerson	SF	Worse	28-34	28-32
B Posey	SF	Much Better	33-34	33-37
M Carpenter	STL	Worse	21-24	21-22
A Knizner	STL	Worse	28-32	28-28
Y Molina	STL	Much Better	31-33	31-35
J Bell	WSH	Worse	24-31	24-27
R Zimmerman	WSH	Better	26-32	26-33

All Adjusted NL Pitchers

 

Player	TEAM	Change	Card PB	New Card
Stefan Crichton	ARI	Worse	2-7	4-7
Chris Devenski	ARI	Worse	2-7	4-7
Joakim Soria	ARI	Worse	2-7	4-7
Ian Anderson	ATL	Better	4-7	2-7
Grant Dayton	ATL	Worse	2-7	4-7
Max Fried	ATL	Much Worse	2-8	4-7
Luke Jackson	ATL	Better	2-8	2-9
Chris Martin	ATL	Much Worse	2-9	2-7
Tyler Matzek	ATL	Better	2-7	2-8
Huascar Ynoa	ATL	Much Better	2-4	4-7
Andrew Chafin	CHC	Better	2-7	2-8
Craig Kimbrel	CHC	Much Better	2-7	2-9
Dillon Maples	CHC	Much Better	4-7	2-8
Brad Wieck	CHC	Worse	2-7	4-7
Tejay Antone	CIN	Much Better	2-5	4-7
Cam Bedrosian	CIN	Worse	2-7	4-7
Luis Castillo	CIN	Much Worse	2-9	2-7
Amir Garrett	CIN	Much Worse	2-7	2-6
Wade Miley	CIN	Better	2-6	4-7
Trevor Bauer	LAD	Better	2-8	2-9
Caleb Ferguson	LAD	Worse	2-7	4-7
Victor Gonzalez	LAD	Much Better	4-7	2-8
Brusdar Graterol	LAD	Worse	2-7	4-7
Kenley Jansen	LAD	Better	2-8	2-9
Joe Kelly	LAD	Worse	2-8	2-7
Corey Knebel	LAD	Worse	2-7	4-7
Dustin May	LAD	Better	2-6	4-7
Jimmy Nelson	LAD	Better	2-7	2-8
Dennis Santana	LAD	Much Worse	2-7	2-6
Blake Treinen	LAD	Much Better	2-7	2-9
Freddy Peralta	MIL	Better	2-7	2-8
Brandon Woodruff	MIL	Better	2-8	2-9
Jacob Barnes	NYM	Much Worse	2-7	2-6
Jeurys Familia	NYM	Much Better	4-7	2-8
Tommy Hunter	NYM	Worse	2-7	4-7
Joey Lucchesi	NYM	Worse	2-7	4-7
Seth Lugo	NYM	Worse	2-7	4-7
Marcus Stroman	NYM	Better	2-7	2-8
Taijuan Walker	NYM	Much Better	2-6	2-7
Daniel Zamora	NYM	Worse	2-7	4-7
Archie Bradley	PHI	Worse	2-8	2-7
Connor Brogdon	PHI	Worse	2-7	4-7
Zack Wheeler	PHI	Better	2-8	2-9
Tim Hill	SD	Better	2-7	2-8
Dinelson Lamet	SD	Worse	2-8	2-7
Mark Melancon	SD	Better	2-8	2-9
Joe Musgrove	SD	Better	2-7	2-8
Emilio Pagan	SD	Better	2-7	2-8
Craig Stammen	SD	Better	2-7	2-8
Ryan Weathers	SD	Much Better	2-5	2-7
Johnny Cueto	SF	Much Better	2-5	4-7
Anthony DeSclafani	SF	Much Better	2-5	4-7
Kevin Gausman	SF	Much Better	2-7	2-9
Reyes Moronta	SF	Worse	2-7	4-7
Tyler Rogers	SF	Much Better	2-7	2-9
Alex Wood	SF	Much Better	4-7	2-8
Giovanny Gallegos	STL	Much Better	2-4	4-7
John Gant	STL	Much Better	4-7	2-8
Jordan Hicks	STL	Worse	2-7	4-7
Kwang HyunKim	STL	Better	4-7	2-7
Andrew Miller	STL	Worse	2-8	2-7
Alex Reyes	STL	Much Better	4-7	2-8
Sam Clay	WSH	Much Better	2-6	2-7
Patrick Corbin	WSH	Much Worse	2-8	4-7
Brad Hand	WSH	Worse	2-9	2-8
Will Harris	WSH	Worse	2-8	2-7
Daniel Hudson	WSH	Much Better	2-5	2-7
Austin Voth	WSH	Much Better	2-5	2-7