Reiff: A surprising leader in Win Shares

From Brian Reiff at ACTA Sports on November 15, 2019:

Everybody loves a good surprise.

One example might be winning the lottery. You may claim that it wasn’t a surprise, that you knew playing the birthday of your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate was always going to win, but you’d be lying to yourself.

There are also things that are not all that surprising. One of those things is Mike Trout being good at baseball. He’s led MLB in Win Shares four of the last six years, with fellow AL West player José Altuve surpassing him the other two times. Therefore, it’s not all that surprising that, for a seventh consecutive season, the (as-of-yet-unreal) Win Shares trophy is staying in the division. What may be surprising is its recipient.

Marcus Semien led the way in 2019 with 36 Win Shares, three more than any of his competitors (Trout, Christian Yelich, and DJ LeMahieu all had 33). It was a career year for the shortstop, who accumulated more Win Shares this season than in his previous two combined and increased his career total (dating back to 2013) by 50%.

Read the full article here: https://www.statoftheweek.com



Originally published: November 15, 2019. Last Updated: November 15, 2019.