We are just one short day away from Opening Day for Major League Baseball. The games count for real on Sunday, March 31st, when the Texas Rangers travel a little further south to take on the Houston Astros who are making their American League debut against their newfound division rival. I’m excited for this season to begin for multiple reasons, most of which have to do with seeing how the Baltimore Orioles do after last season’s playoff performance. But there are many intriguing story lines to kick this season off:
Is this the year in which the New York Yankees don’t qualify for the postseason and money truly can’t cure what ails them at the deadline?
The Boston Red Sox traded away their veterans with horrendous contracts only to replace them with other, slightly worse, veterans which they overpaid for but over a shorter period of time. Is it enough to keep them out of the basement in the American League East?
The Toronto Blue Jays happily accepted the Miami Marlins core players, whom they lost many games with in that new stadium of theirs, with the hopes that they’ll perform better with them in a tougher division.
The Houston Astros are now calling the American League West home and it’ll be interesting to see if they win 60 games in a tougher division and league.
I could continue to go on but that’s not what this piece is about, this piece is actually about power rankings. I will be bringing you power rankings every week (Mondays), with exception of this preliminary one, with a ranking formula that I developed myself. Here is the formula I use to calculate these rankings:
((W/L)*Strength of Schedule)/(RA/G / RS/G)*100
To show the results of this formula I present to you the final rankings from the end of last season, which are also my rankings for Opening Day simply because no games have been played yet and all we have to go on is past performance. I prefer not to use my opinion or own natural, yet unintentional, bias when putting together weekly rankings so that was my reasoning behind developing this.
I’m showing you how I calculate my power rankings because I want you to know what it is I’m using, or deeming important, when evaluating team performance. These rankings aren’t going to dramatically change from one week to the next because a team goes 4-1 in a week while another goes 1-4 or anything like that. These rankings are based on cumulative performance up to that point in the season and will continue that way until the end of the regular season.
As always, you can reach out to me on twitter @BSLLanceRinker or send me an email at Lance.Rinker@baltimoresportsandlife.com with any questions, comments, or feedback.
