Best and Worst Position Cohorts, 2000-2019

In the Mateo trade post last night ciderbeck raised the question about which have been the most problematic position gaps for the A's since 2000. I decided to take a crack at this and to also look at the best. I took sOPS+ because it compares players (offensively) to others of the same position in the league. I then looked at positional averages over 5 year spans, so 2000-2004, 2001-2005,..., 2015-2019. For shorthand, I will refer to a cohort as position number and last year of the cohort, so the catching cohort from 2001-2005 will be "2-05", RF cohort from 2015-2019 is "9-19".

There is a clear "winner" for most problematic stretch: 4-16, which averaged an abysmal 75 sOPS+. This is part of a terrible stretch for 2B with 4-14 through 4-19 all being 88 or below.

The best cohort is 6-04, averaging 120 sOPS+, followed right behind by 5-04, with 119, Miggy and Chavez. They also had the next 3 highest scores.

Although we all probably recognize 2B in the 2010's as being a wasteland, with an occasional Lowrie break, the stretch that is most shocking to me is 3-06 through 3-13, where 1B ranged from 77-86. From 2002 through 2011, A's 1B put up an sOPS+ above 100 exactly once - Daric Barton in 2010.

3B has largely been excellent, with the Chavez, Donaldson and Chapman stretches: 5-04 to 5-07 and 5-14 to 5-19 all exceeded 100 sOPS+. That was countered by the 5-09 to 5-12 period, where the averaged never reached 90.

Looking at the averages across the 20 year period, no one will be surprised that the two best positions were 3B (104) and SS (103). Worst were 2B (90) and RF (91). The lowest variance across the 20 years was at DH and the highest was at 1B.