Guys like Bill Hall and J.J. Hardy have taken a lot of heat for the Brewers’ failure to make the playoffs this season. But a quick look at the Brewers WAR pie shows that the team’s biggest problem was a lack of pitching.

Just how bad was the team’s pitching in 2009? Milwaukee pitchers had the lowest WAR of any team in the majors this year (yes, including the Nationals). In fact, the Brewers pitchers were worth a full win less than the Nats.

Fangraphs says the Brewers pitchers were worth a total of $9MM in 2009. Meanwhile, Jeff Suppan alone was paid $12.5MM (and he’ll make $12.5MM again in 2010!).

Here’s a fun fact: Yovani Gallardo’s WAR is 2.8, but the Brewers’ pitchers combined WAR is only 2.2. How is that possible? Milwaukee can thank guys like Braden Looper, David Bush, Suppan and Carlos Villaneuva, who combined for 91 starts and a -1.4 WAR.

Thanks to terrible pitching performances from just about everyone not named Gallardo or Hoffman, Milwaukee was forced to rely heavily on its position players. Just look at this insane breakdown of pitchers’ WAR vs. position players’ WAR:

That pretty much says it all right there, doesn’t it? Despite outstanding seasons from Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and Mike Cameron, the Brewers never really had a chance. You simply can’t win when your pitching contributes less than 10 percent of overall team WAR.

For the past few days the White Sox have gone through a torturous road trip that all but killed their post-season hopes. As a result, GM Kenny Williams traded a few of his veterans and now the team fades slowly into irrelevance.

Naturally, the next step is to try and make sense of what went wrong up until this point and what better way to do it than with a nice piece of pie. Nick, our master pastry chef, baked this White Sox WAR pie, which tells me a few things:

>> The team relied too much on offensive contributions from players like Gordon Beckham, Jason Nix, and Scott Podsednik. These are guys that never figured in the team’s pre-season plans and were, let’s be honest, overachieving quite a bit.

>> As Nick told me when he baked the pie,

the White Sox have only gotten 9.7 WAR out of their hitters – 2nd worst in the AL, after only the Royals.

BUT, they have gotten 18.5 WAR out of their pitchers, 2nd best in the AL behind only the Red Sox!

In other words, they are the anti-Phillies. The Giants of the AL.  All pitching and no offense.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about baseball, it’s the idea that if your team is constantly playing low-scoring affairs up until the late innings, your pitching will not hold up. So Nick’s last point  was  certainly evident during their last few games against the Red Sox and Yankees lineups, where they held on to a tie or a slim lead up until the very last at bat. Here’s the pitching vs. offense pie:

>> A bittersweet surprise has been A.J. Pierzynski. I noticed a few weeks ago that he was quietly posting some good offensive numbers, and as his big chunk of pie suggests, he’s the best offensive player on the team. Too bad it’ll be for naught as I doubt he’ll be able to replicate his numbers next year.

>> An unexpected surprise was Alexei Ramirez. Even though he’s posted weaker numbers this year through roughly the same number of at bats than he had last year, his individual WAR is higher than last year’s value.

Knowing now that the White Sox relied too heavily on pitching, it’s no surprising the bottom fell out. The issue is, however, the very little offense they got came from players that have traditionally been mediocre (Podsednik) or are barely in the bigs (Nix, Beckham); and now that Jim Thome is no longer with the team, and Jermaine Dye is a free agent at the end of the year, there’s no question Kenny Williams will have a tough time putting together as potent a line-up as this White Sox once had.

This is what a really good team’s WAR pie looks like:

What immediately jumps out, in looking at the Yankees WAR pie, is how balanced this team is in terms of how many different players have made significant contributions. An amazing 15 players have contributed at least one full win of value so far this season, making most of the slices in this pie nearly equal in size.

The pie also speaks to how lucky the Yankees have been in avoiding injury–only 25 players have combined to provide a ridiculous 48 wins above replacement already this season. Indeed, the Yankees are still on pace to have at least 8 players hit at least 20 home runs this season, which has never happened before in baseball history, and a big reason why is that the starting lineup has been incredibly healthy all year long, with the exception of A-Rod’s hip injury.

The WAR pie also gives lie to the notion that Mark Teixeira has been far and away the obvious MVP candidate this season. Indeed Mark Teixeira hasn’t even been the most valuable player on his own team, and it isn’t even all that close. Derek Jeter’s new flexibility workout regimen and his resultant resurgence on defense plus a hot year at the plate have helped him post MVP-type numbers, and CC Sabathia has been a rock in the rotation.

Another thing this graph underscores is how much more valuable Brett Gardner is in centerfield, over Melky Cabrera. Although their offensive contributions are similar, as Melky has fattened up, he has lost a step or two on defense, whereas Gardiner is one of the premier defenders in center field by most measures.

Finally, a look at the Yankees balance between offense and defense reveals that like the Phillies, the Yankees are heavily reliant on their offense (although not anywhere quite as bad as the Phils’).  However, this chart is heavily affected by the disastrous performance of the Yankees bullpen in the early months of this season, and would probably not look nearly as unbalanced if you based it only on the performances since June…

This WAR pie struck me as by turns satisfying and shocking. First, satisfying because it reveals the contributions of Jon Lester — who, earlier this season, was subjected to an embarrassing debate amongst fans over whether he was even a decent No. 3. But even so, it may be a shocking pill to swallow for Sox fans that Lester has contributed more to the team’s performance than Josh Beckett.

That big slices of pie have been gobbled up by Beckett, Kevin Youkilis, and Dustin Pedroia will not surprise observers of the team. But seeing JD Drew so high will come as a surprise to many, I fear; his playing seems to have been very underrated by Red Sox fans.

What shocks me, however, is seeing Brad Penny right behind Tim Wakefield. This is the guy Boston just released? For nothing in return? Oof. And Mike Lowell’s recent hot streak had left me assuming he’d take up more of the pie; same for Jason Bay. But their defense has eroded so much that they give up almost as many runs with their gloves as the produce with their bats. (Much to the chagrin of the aforementioned Mr. Penny.)

What should not come as a surprise, from the nice distribution of position players and pitchers above, is the even split between Boston’s hurlers and hitters in their overall pie:

Clearly, Boston can kill you on both sides of the ball. So why are they stuck 6 games behind New York and clinging to a tenuous Wild Card lead? I blame that crappy, crappy defense. Oh well.

As you can see, Nick isn’t the only one at UmpBump who can create a WAR pie. Behold, my Royals WAR pie! Why the Royals? I  wanted to see a WAR pie for a team that is basically a group of replacement level players (and Zack Greinke). Check out how Greinke is carrying this team. He represents 29 percent of the team’s WAR. That’s crazy!

Brian Bannister and David DeJesus come in a very distant second, with 2.4 and 2.5 WAR, respectively. Good for them.

Maybe the most interesting thing about the Royals pie is Joakim Soria’s relatively small slice. He’s been worth only 1.2 WAR, which is pretty low when you consider he’s been his typical dominant self in 2009. He’s been worth so little because he hasn’t pitched much.

Soria spent a couple weeks on the DL in May, but for the most part you can blame Royals manager Trey Hillman for Soria’s lack of innings. Until very recently, Hillman insisted on using Soria in only save situations. And these being the Royals, there aren’t many save situations.

As a result, this season there are 135 pitchers who have made more appearances than Soria, and 138 relievers who have thrown more innings. Considering how desperate the Royals are for talent, that’s unforgivable.

We’ll conclude with a look at the Royals’ position player WAR vs. the team’s pitching WAR. As you can see, Kansas City is pretty much the anti-Phillies — all pitching and little offense.

At Coley’s request, here is the WAR pie for the St. Louis Cardinals:

As you can see, the Cardinals are ridiculously dependent on just four players. Albert Pujols and the three aces, Chris Carpenter, Joel Pineiro, and Adam Wainwright, have accounted for more than 58 percent of the Cardinals wins above replacement.

We can also see how well the Cards did at the trading deadline, as pickups Mark DeRosa, Julio Lugo, and Matt Holliday have already combined to add more than 3 wins of value in just about one month’s time. That is some pretty good trading right there.

And finally, if we look at the pie broken down by position players and pitchers, we can see that overall the Cardinals have a very balanced team, with pitchers and position players each contributing 50 percent of the wins, but we can also see that Albert Pujols alone is contributing nearly 20 percent of overall wins and astonishingly, nearly FORTY percent of the team’s offensive wins…

This is turning out to be WAR-pie weekend. I got a request from a commenter for a Cubs WAR pie, so here it is. Sure enough, Kevin Gregg, with his -0.4 WAR, does not make the pie…

What immediately jumps out at you about this pie is how small it is. The Cubs total team WAR, including negative values, is only 21.6.  Compare that to 33.7 for a good team like the Dodgers, or 41.3 for a great team like the Yankees, and you can see why the Cubs are scuffling this season. They are simply not getting much value out of their roster this year, whether due to injuries to a guy like Aramis Ramirez, or generalized suckage for guys like Milton Bradley and Alfonso Soriano (whose -0.7 WAR means he doesn’t even make the pie!).

Suprisingly, the Cubs best player so far this season has been Kosuke Fukudome, due to his breakout year at the plate in combination with the fine defense he has played in center field, and shockingly, the team’s third best player has been largely unheralded shortstop Ryan Theriot. The staff ace has been rookie Randy Wells, and the much-maligned Carlos Zambrano, who some people have even called for the Cubs to release, has actually been the team’s sixth most valuable player.

It’s nice to see WAR giving credit to minor-league call-ups like Jake Fox and Sam Fuld, who have been almost as valuable to the team as guys like Bradly and Giovanni Soto, despite vastly more restricted playing time.  Based on the way they’ve played so far, Fox and Fuld should both be playing more.

And now, for comparison with the Phillies post I did yesterday, here is a pie of the relative contributions of Cubs pitchers vs. position players, which as you can see is much more balanced:

So after the fun I had making a WAR pie for the Dodgers, I decided to do another pie showing the wins above replacement provided by the various players on the Philadelphia Phillies:

We can immediately see how dependent the Phillies are on their offense, and how much of that offensive comes from just a handful of players. Just five players – Chase Utley, Jayson Werth, Ryan Howard, Raul Ibanez, and Shane Victorino, have provided fully 53 percent of the value the Phillies have gotten out of their roster this season.

It is also clear how amazing Cliff Lee has been since he came over to the Phils. In just 33 innings of work, he has provided the same value that J.A. Happ has provided in 107 innings, and is approaching the value that Cole Hamels has provided in 134.1 innings.

We can also see what a complete waste of space the Phillies bullpen has been this entire season, outside of Ryan Madson and Chan Ho Park (who has actually been quite good since he went to the pen). Of all the other relievers who have pitched for the Phillies this year, not a single one has added even 0.1 of a win to the team’s efforts. In fact, if you add up the rest of the bullpen after Park and Madson, they’ve contributed a total of negative 2 wins *below* replacement level.

But getting back to how unbalanced this team is, looking at the numbers, no team in baseball has a bigger split, percentage-wise, between the contributions of its position players and the lack of contribution from its pitchers.  Observe the following mini-pie:

Indeed, nearly a full 7 out of 10 wins above replacement provided by Phillies players have come from the position players. And this pie would look even more lopsided toward the blueberry side if not for the recent arrival of the amazing Cliff Lee, who is doing his utmost to expand that slice of cherry.