Where does Ordonez's 2007 season rank?

All Tigers fans know by now that Magglio Ordonez just became the first Tiger to win the batting title since Norm Cash in 1961 but how do his overall 2007 offensive numbers rank in the history of the team? One way to look at overall offensive performance is runs created (RC). RC is an estimate of a team's runs which were produced by an individual player. It is calculated from the number of walks, singles, doubles, triples, home runs and other things that a player does to score runs.

It would be a little unfair to compare players from different eras based on RC for a couple of reasons. First, they play more games now than they did in the early days of baseball so players have more opportunities to accumulate aggregate statistics. This problem is addressed by runs created per game or per 27 outs (RC27). Theoretically, the RC27 value for a player is the number of runs per game that a team would score if every player in the line-up was a clone of that player.

The other problem with RC (as well as RC27) is that some eras have better environments for scoring runs than others. For example, the deadball era versus the high powered current era. Runs Created Above Average (RCAA) helps to address that issue. RCAA, a stat invented by Lee Sinins, the creator of the Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia. RCAA compares each player's RC to the league average, given that player’s number of plate appearances.

Table 1 below displays the top 20 RCAAs in the history of the team. Ordonez created 150 runs in 678 plate appearances in 2007. That comes out to 10 runs created per game so a line-up of 9 Magglios would score 10 runs per game. Finally, he finished 73 RC above league average which ranks 15th on the all-time Tigers list.

Table 1: Top 20 offensive seasons in Tigers history (based on RCAA)

Rank	Player	Year	PA	RC	RC27	RCAA
1	Ty Cobb	1911	654	197	14.47	119
2	Norm Cash	1961	672	176	12.95	113
3	Ty Cobb	1912	609	167	11.77	100
4	Ty Cobb	1917	669	156	10.70	99
5	Ty Cobb	1910	591	150	11.85	97
6	Harry Heilmann	1923	626	162	12.28	96
7	Ty Cobb	1909	651	149	10.17	88
8	Hank Greenberg	1938	681	175	11.70	86
9	Ty Cobb	1915	700	148	9.57	84
10	Hank Greenberg	1937	701	181	11.79	80
11	Harry Heilmann	1921	672	161	10.84	80
12	Hank Greenberg	1940	670	170	11.50	79
13	Hank Greenberg	1935	710	165	10.14	79
14	Harry Heilmann	1927	596	153	12.20	78
15	Magglio Ordonez	2007	678	150	10.00	73
16	Harry Heilmann	1925	664	151	10.41	70
17	Ty Cobb	1907	646	132	8.47	69
18	Ty Cobb	1916	636	131	8.99	69
19	Sam Crawford	1911	648	147	10.33	66
20	Ty Cobb	1921	581	136	10.40	65

Ty Cobb's 1911 season where he created 197 runs, posted an RC27 of 14.47 and finished 119 RC above average was number one all time for the team. Since the top 20 list is dominated by 3 players from the early days of the Tigers - Cobb (9 times), Hank Greenberg (5 times) and Harry Heilmann (4 times), I decided to do another list of seasons since 1950 (Table 2). That list is headed by Norm Cash's 1961 season where he created 113 runs above average. Ordonez's 2007 season ranks second since 1950.

Table 2: Top 10 offensive seasons since 1950 (based on RCAA)

Rank	Player	Year	PA	RC	RC27	RCAA
1	Norm Cash	1961	672	176	12.95	113
2	Magglio Ordonez	2007	678	150	10.00	73
3	Alan Trammell	1987	668	137	8.96	64
4	Rocky Colavito	1961	708	139	8.53	63
5	Al Kaline	1955	681	134	8.72	62
6	Cecil Fielder	1990	673	126	7.82	54
7	Al Kaline	1967	550	103	8.11	54
8	Charlie Maxwell	1956	592	117	8.92	53
9	Al Kaline	1956	693	128	7.87	49
10	Vic Wertz	1950	657	127	8.49	49

Finally, I created one more table (Table 3) which shows where Ordonez ranked on the various runs created stats and a couple of other measures. Offensive Winning Percentage (OWP) projects what a team's winning percentage would be if every offensive player on the team was the same player and the team had an average pitching staff. OWP is adjusted for league average runs scored so it can be used to compare across eras. Magglio's .774 OWP was 16th best all-time and 3rd best since 1950.

OPS+ is OPS (on base plus slugging) adjusted for league and ballpark. Ordonez's OPS+ of 170 indicates that his OPS was 70% better than the average player. He ranked 19th all-time and 3rd since 1950 on that statistic.

In conclusion, it's safe to say that Ordonez's 2007 season was one of the top 20 offensive seasons in the history of the Tigers and the 2nd or 3rd best since 1950.

Table 3: How Ordonez Ranks on Different Measures

Stat	Number	Rank all-time	Rank since 1950
RCAA	73	15	2
RC	150	14	2
RC27	10.00	21	2
OWP	.774	16	3
OPS+	170	19	3