As a baseball fan, winning feels great and losing feels awful. When teams win in dull fashion, fans are generally content to take the wins even if they aren’t all that thrilling. The Astros, Twins, and Dodgers are blowing teams out on a regular basis, but those wins aren’t causing too much consternation. But on the other end of the spectrum are teams that lose a lot of games and fail to provide much excitement during those contests. These are the bad teams that fall behind early and don’t give too much reason in terms of wins and losses to keep following the game. By combining a team’s winning or losing ways with how important at-bats tend to be, we can determine the most exciting team in baseball, as well as the most miserable club.

To determine how often teams have tension-inducing moments, we can take a look at Leverage Index (LI). Our glossary says “Leverage Index is essentially a measure of how critical a particular situation is. To calculate it, you are measuring the swing of the possible change in win expectancy.” A game’s LI starts at 1.0, and the more meaningful plate appearances gets, the higher the index rises; if plate appearances become less meaningful, the index goes lower. Leverage Index shows up on our Play Logs and is on the bottom of our Win Expectancy graphs. Here’s one for Game 3 of last year’s World Series:

The bars along the bottom identify the biggest moments of the game, even if something big doesn’t show up on the scoreboard. For teams, we are dealing with more than a thousand plays at this point in the season. If we take the average LI of every play, we can see if teams have a tendency to have a decent number of important moments during their games or if things are decided relatively early, with the players playing out games with little chance of changing the outcome.

If we separate out hitting and pitching, we can see where most of a team’s drama takes place. The graph below shows all teams so far this season:



We could stop here, and just call the Mets the most exciting team in baseball with the Twins and Mariners the most boring. That doesn’t feel completely right, though. While creating exciting situations is nice, there’s something to be said for actually delivering when the moments get big. Jumping out to an early lead and putting teams away like the Twins have done might lead to a lot of unimportant plate appearances, but the feel-good vibes of putting a team away in the third inning probably last a few innings longer. There has to be a level of fun to the excitement.

To factor in good results with the excitement, let’s add Win Probability Added to the mix. So that we can properly compare Leverage Index with Win Probability Added, I’m going to scale both to 100 and make 15 points one standard deviation away average. For WPA it looks like this:

WPA By Team: Hitting and Pitching Team Hitting WPA Hitting WPA Score Pitching WPA Pitching WPA Score WPA Score Twins 5.91 122 5.09 123 122 Dodgers 9.19 135 1.81 110 122 Astros 4.08 114 5.92 127 120 Yankees 4.54 116 4.46 121 118 Rays -0.91 94 7.41 133 113 Brewers 2.32 107 1.68 109 108 Phillies 2.82 109 0.68 105 107 Cubs 2.35 107 0.15 103 105 Braves 3.49 112 -0.99 98 105 Rockies 1.06 102 0.94 106 104 Rangers 3.5 112 -2.00 94 103 Cardinals 2.21 107 -1.21 97 102 Padres -2.12 89 2.62 113 101 Red Sox 1.62 104 -1.12 98 101 Diamondbacks -0.83 94 0.83 106 100 Athletics 0.59 100 -0.59 100 100 Indians -2.64 87 2.14 111 99 Angels 2.17 106 -2.67 91 99 White Sox 2.45 108 -2.95 90 99 Pirates 2.59 108 -3.59 88 98 Mets 1.66 104 -3.16 89 97 Reds -3.32 84 0.82 106 95 Nationals 1.45 104 -4.95 82 93 Giants -3.79 82 -1.21 97 90 Mariners 1.86 105 -7.86 70 88 Tigers -3.87 82 -2.63 92 87 Marlins -5.82 74 -1.68 95 85 Blue Jays -7.06 69 -1.44 96 83 Royals -3.73 83 -6.77 75 79 Orioles -4.51 79 -6.99 74 77

This is a simple proxy for wins and losses, and provides the added context of how teams are winning and losing, either on offense or when they take the field. The Twins are pretty balanced, while the Dodgers have leaned heavily on the hitting side and the Rays have needed their pitching and defense. For Leverage Index, the same information looks like this:

Leverage Index By Team: Hitting and Pitching Team Hitting LI Hitting LI Score Pitching LI Pitching LI Score LI Score Mets 1.01 115 1.05 126 121 Diamondbacks 1.04 124 1.01 115 119 Tigers 1.07 132 0.97 104 118 Athletics 0.96 101 1.06 129 115 Nationals 1.01 115 0.99 110 113 Cubs 0.98 107 1.02 118 113 Reds 1.01 115 0.97 104 110 Rays 0.96 101 1.02 118 110 Brewers 0.95 99 1.03 121 110 Red Sox 1.01 115 0.96 102 108 Rockies 1.01 115 0.95 99 107 Pirates 0.98 107 0.98 107 107 Yankees 0.97 104 0.98 107 106 Braves 0.93 93 1.01 115 104 Marlins 1 112 0.93 93 103 Padres 0.93 93 0.99 110 101 Phillies 0.94 96 0.96 102 99 Blue Jays 0.96 101 0.91 88 95 Indians 0.95 99 0.92 91 95 Cardinals 0.94 96 0.92 91 93 Rangers 0.91 88 0.94 96 92 Giants 0.95 99 0.89 82 91 Dodgers 0.9 85 0.94 96 90 Angels 0.94 96 0.89 82 89 Royals 0.91 88 0.92 91 89 Astros 0.93 93 0.88 80 86 Orioles 0.91 88 0.88 80 84 White Sox 0.92 90 0.86 74 82 Mariners 0.86 74 0.88 80 77 Twins 0.8 57 0.92 91 74

Say what you will about the Mets, but they’ve certainly had opportunities to turn games around or stay ahead, even if their season hasn’t completely delivered. Take a look at the Tigers; they might not be winning a ton, but they are playing a lot of competitive games. In fact, if we were to subtract the WPA scores from the LI scores, we’d come up with a few teams delivering more excitement than their wins and losses might indicate. Of course, with that excitement has come disaster, resulting in what I am calling a Horror Score.

Big Moments and Bad Results Team Leverage Index Score WPA Score Horror Score Tigers 118 87 31 Mets 121 97 24 Nationals 113 93 20 Diamondbacks 119 100 19 Marlins 103 85 18 Athletics 115 100 15 Reds 110 95 15 Blue Jays 95 83 12 Royals 89 79 11 Pirates 107 98 9 Red Sox 108 101 7 Cubs 113 105 7 Orioles 84 77 7 Rockies 107 104 3 Brewers 110 108 2 Giants 91 90 1 Padres 101 101 0 Braves 104 105 -1 Rays 110 113 -4 Indians 95 99 -4 Phillies 99 107 -8 Cardinals 93 102 -9 Angels 89 99 -10 Mariners 77 88 -11 Rangers 92 103 -11 Yankees 106 118 -13 White Sox 82 99 -17 Dodgers 90 122 -32 Astros 86 120 -34 Twins 74 122 -49

As for most exciting, we need to blend the winning with the tense moments. To that end, I’ve taken scores in four components: Pitching LI, Hitting LI, Pitching WPA, and Hitting WPA. With those scores, I found the geometric mean instead of the average to ensure that any one number wouldn’t weigh too heavily on the final number. This is what I found.

MLB Team Exhilaration Index Team Hitting LI Score Pitching LI Score Hitting WPA Score Pitching WPA Score Exhilaration Index Yankees 104 107 116 121 112 Rays 101 118 94 133 111 Diamondbacks 124 115 94 106 109 Brewers 99 121 107 109 109 Cubs 107 118 107 103 109 Mets 115 126 104 89 108 Athletics 101 129 100 100 107 Rockies 115 99 102 106 105 Dodgers 85 96 135 110 105 Red Sox 115 102 104 98 105 Braves 93 115 112 98 104 Phillies 96 102 109 105 103 Pirates 107 107 108 88 102 Nationals 115 110 104 82 102 Astros 93 80 114 127 102 Reds 115 104 84 106 102 Tigers 132 104 82 92 101 Padres 93 110 89 113 101 Cardinals 96 91 107 97 97 Rangers 88 96 112 94 97 Indians 99 91 87 111 96 Twins 57 91 122 123 94 Angels 96 82 106 91 94 Marlins 112 93 74 95 93 Giants 99 82 82 97 90 White Sox 90 74 108 90 90 Blue Jays 101 88 69 96 88 Royals 88 91 83 75 84 Mariners 74 80 105 70 81 Orioles 88 80 79 74 80

It turns out, the Yankees have been the most exciting team to watch in baseball this year, followed closely by the Rays. While the Diamondbacks might not have the best record in the game, they are providing their fans with a lot of good games and enough positive results to rank highly. As for the fans of the Royals, Mariners, and Orioles, my apologies. If you are a fan of the Mariners and you are saying to yourself, “It feels like the team should be even worse than that,” here’s every team’s Exhilaration Index for May.

MLB Team Exhilaration Index for May Team Hitting LI Score Pitching LI Score Hitting WPA Score Pitching WPA Score Exhilaration Index Cubs 117 133 103 110 115 Athletics 109 124 107 112 113 Mets 132 131 96 98 113 Yankees 106 100 116 125 112 Rays 112 117 84 132 110 Brewers 114 115 91 119 109 Rockies 115 103 125 94 109 Red Sox 99 110 111 105 106 Braves 93 113 101 112 104 Marlins 122 110 87 100 104 Dodgers 84 98 127 111 104 Phillies 96 98 120 99 103 Rangers 105 102 102 101 102 Diamondbacks 117 114 85 97 102 Reds 97 92 103 103 99 Astros 73 88 117 121 98 Nationals 103 104 105 79 97 Padres 96 95 95 102 97 White Sox 94 88 103 100 96 Angels 91 89 111 92 95 Twins 71 77 120 122 95 Indians 111 85 87 97 95 Giants 100 92 97 84 93 Orioles 102 109 89 76 93 Tigers 111 93 84 84 93 Pirates 75 88 117 86 90 Cardinals 96 86 81 91 88 Royals 82 85 83 92 85 Blue Jays 96 86 69 87 84 Mariners 79 75 85 71 77

Nothing above is going to tell us what teams will do going forward, but if you feel a bit dejected watching the home nine, or if their winning doesn’t make you feel as excited as you think it should, there might be a good reason why. For better or worse, being a fan can be a bit draining but these numbers might help put some of your feelings in perspective and provide a rational explanation for the mood of a team’s fans.