The two biggest components of baseball is batting and pitching. Of course there are other aspects such as fielding that are very important. However, some of the best teams in baseball are the best because they have a balanced batting and pitching attack that allows them to put runs on the board while also not giving up many runs to the opposing teams. We are here to see if batting or pitching was more impactful to team success during the 2021 MLB season.
Chart 1 shows each team's win percentage as it relates to batting average(Avg), on base percentage(OBP), and slugging percentage(SLG) for the 2021 MLB season taken from MLB.com. We see that most of the playoff teams are ranked towards the top of the league in OBP and SLG, however, batting average is much more spread out. We see teams such as the Dodgers, Rays, Yankees, and Brewers, who are all playoff teams, be ranked around average or below average in batting average but ranked towards the top of the league in OBP and SLG, with the exception of the Brewers who was still around the average for both. This shows that some of the top teams in the league have found success with a high OBP and SLG despite not having exceptional batting averages. On the other hand, we notice that teams like the Blue Jays and Nationals who missed the playoffs, although the Blue Jays still had a good win percentage, were ranked top 5 in batting average and OBP, and the Blue Jays led the league in SLG. Therefore, a high octane offense does not always mean the team will have a more successful season and vice versa.
Chart 1
Clearly a team's batting statistics cannot show the full story of how a team will perform in a given season, so how about a team's pitching statistics? Chart 2 shows each team's win percentage as it relates to earned run average(ERA), walk and hit per inning pitched(WHIP), and opponent batting average(Opp Avg) for the 2021 MLB season taken from MLB.com. We notice that there is a negative correlation between win percentage and each statistical category in Chart 2. There are also no major outliers in the charts proving that teams with a higher ERA, WHIP, and Opp Avg tend to perform worse on the season. This tells us that having a strong pitching group that collectively can have a low ERA, WHIP, and Opp Avg will contribute significantly to the team's overall success on the season.
Chart 2
After looking and comparing both Chart 1 and Chart 2 we see that pitching had a greater impact on team success for the 2021 MLB season. We can conclude this since some of the best teams had less than stellar batting statistics while other teams that missed the playoffs had elite batting statistics, however, the teams with the best pitching statistics did have better winning percentages. If a team wants to find success in the MLB it must start with pitching, both the starting rotation and relievers. Keep an eye on the teams with exceptional pitching to potentially find the most success this postseason.