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MLB Power Rankings: Picking the Best Hitter-Pitcher Combo in the AL

This week, we take a look at the best hitter-pitcher combo in the American League.

I'm one who believes total value wins championships. Not pitching, not defense and not a power bat. If you have the overall balance and more total value, you're the best.

So, then, it would be important to have both a solid bat (who can play defense, but that's not factored in here) and an ace on the mound. A door slammer if you will.

There are a few things I valued highly when sorting these rankings. Some of them will be viewed as unconventional to some readers, and that's fine. I welcome any and all comments below.

For batters, I used an advanced metric called Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+). The link can explain this to you far better than I can. In a nut shell, though, wRC+ is a park and league adjusted stat that combines everything a player does to contribute to runs scored.

Why is this better than conventional stats? It's not Player A's fault no one is ever in scoring position when he gets a hit, so RBI is kind of sneaky in that it doesn't tell the whole story. Same with Player B who always gets stranded at third. His run total isn't revealing everything.

For pitchers, I went with Fangraph's version of WAR. Pretty much every way I looked at pitchers, they shook out in the same order. I put very little stock into stats like wins for pitchers, but having to defend that became a lot less likely now that Felix Hernandez won a Cy Young with such a low win total.

For both pitchers and hitters, I made some adjustments for expected regression due to age, luck etc.

Now that we have that stuff out of the way, let's get to the results.

Begin Slideshow

Poll

Best of the American League
Tampa Bay
19%
Boston
19%
Chicago
7%
Minnesota
10%
Los Angeles
17%
Texas
27%
Total votes: 270

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