Before the 2016 MLB season officially gets underway next week and we roll out one last version of our preseason power rankings, we’ve decided to stack up all 30 teams a bit differently.
This time the focus is on three key areas and how each team ranks compared to the rest of the league: offense, starting pitching and relief pitching.
We ranked all 30 teams in those three areas and averaged the rankings to position each club among the other 29.
Of course, there is more to winning games than pitching and offense.
Team chemistry, coaching, defense, baserunning, overall organizational depth and eventual prospect arrivals will all make a significant impact on how a team performs this coming season.
However, being strong in the three key areas is usually a good sign a team will at least be competitive, so think of this exercise as a way of sort of separating the contenders from the pretenders.
Note: In the case of a tie in an average, which did happen more than once, the team with the highest rank in its lowest category was given the higher spot in the rankings. The logic for this is that you never want one area to be a major weakness.