THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I have not looked at David’s UZR this year, but he is a CF’er and still fairly young I think. I am pretty sure he is an excellent LF’er and should be playing CF.  I don’t know anything about Mitch Maier’s defense, but I am pretty sure he is not a very good hitter. The few times I watched him, he looked like he had a very awkward swing.  I am not sure what they think or or plan for him as I know nothing about the organization.

That being said, I think it is pathetic when an organization panders for one of its players to get an award or be in the All-Star game.  Is that to deflect attention away from the fact that they are an awful team and an awful organization?

Mitch Maier isn’t terrible.  He’s probably a +5 run fielder.  He does look awful at the plate, but is 6-4 and has a decent eye.  He’s probably capable of being a league average player, which is great for the Royals.

The Royals have been persistent in keeping DeJesus out of CF. The first significant trade Dayton ever made was to bring in Gathright to play CF, then this past winter he signed Crisp to play CF.

It might be because DeJesus had difficulty staying healthy in the past, but it’s probably cause they don’t think DeJesus is good enough to play there. This is the same team that thinks it’s OK to run Willie Bloomquist out in CF, so who knows what their thought process is?

If you already have Gathright, then sure, if he is a better fielder than DeJesus, which he probably is, then by all means put him in CF and not David. 

But if you don’t have a better fielder, put David in CF and go get a LF’er.  If a player is an above-average CF’er, it is a pretty big waste to put him in LF or RF.  As you implied, we are talking about a team that has demonstrated a questionable ability to make good decisions about player personnel.

That’s good to know about Maier.  A +5 fielder? Is he that fast at 6-4? Is he a better fielder than Dejesus?

On Fangraphs, Dejesus has a +14 per 150 UZR in 300 games at the corners, and +5 in CF in 500 games. That is a pure CF’er!  He is being wasted in LF unless they have some stud in CF, which they don’t.

I agree with you MGL.  Looking back at it, it’s tough to say Maier is much better than average going forward defensively.  His Total Zone numbers have been up and down, and Rally projected him to be about average before the year started.  DeJesus is obviously a beast. 

I wonder if the Royals think he is one of those players who is much better in a corner than in center, more so than the value of the positional adjustments.

It is a 10 run positional swing in value from a corner spot to center field in general.  Unless there is something odd about Kaufman Stadium I do not know where Left Field is freakishly large and inherently more difficult to play this is not as terrible as it looks so long as you have a league average CF.  Crisp is a good fielder, as is Gathright

14-10 = 4 4 vs. 5 in UZR really does not mean a whole heck of a lot.

I’m not sure Maier should even be in MLB, never mind starting in CF.  He is league average in the OF (SSS) and a poor hitter (302 wOBA).  The only thing he has going for him is above average speed which should translate into a good CF, but I guess not.

If Dejesus wins the GG, “I’m gonna find out what the hell happened here.”

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechthegodfather2pentangelitestimony.html

It’s good to see I’m not alone in seeing DDJ as a good outfielder, even if I agree with Poz that him winning a GG in the current set up is ridiculous. I suspect DDJ somehow (and it’s difficult) made it on Posnanski’s “bad list.” Maybe DDJ should have tossed Win Shares or Duane Kuiper into a conversation or something.

But as I posted on Posnanski’s blog, in terms of absurdity, the Royals trying to get DDJ a Gold Glove has absolutely nothing on giving Dayton Moore an extension through 2014. He’s done a heckuva job.

I don’t have much of a problem with giving outfield gold gloves to any three outfielders, rather than one each to left, center, and right.  It demonstrates the importance of fielding to a CF (and to a lesser extent, a RF) compared to that of the LF, where offense is the primary concern.  Giving a GG to a LF, unless he’s exceptional with the glove, seems beside the point, sort of like touting a placekicker for the Pro Bowl because of that time he tackled that one guy.  It’s nice if he can, but it’s hardly what he’s been hired for.

And hey, lookie here… Poz said the same thing, only without the neat analogy.  I should have followed the link before opening my pie-hole.  Such are the fortunes of blog.

I see absolutely no good reason to give GG for OF rather than LF, CF, and RF.  If you do that, you have to do that for SS, 2B, and 3B.  There are no two ways about it, IMO.  The only reason I can think of, which is defensible, but shaky, is that LF and RF are often not occupied by full-time LF’ers and RF’ers. Other than that, it is silly.

Steve C, the reason that your good (does not have to be at least average in CF) outfielder needs to play CF is that they get many more opportunities, so you want to leverage that OF’er.  If it were just a matter of adding or subtracting 10 runs, or whatever the difference is between corner and CF, then it wouldn’t matter where anyone played, right?  If you shuffled everyone around, they would still all have the same value.  That is NOT the case because of opportunities.  If you have a very good CF in LF, he might only gain 8 runs. If you have a bad CF in LF, he might gain 12 runs.  If you have a bad fielder in LF and you move him to CF, he might lose 12 runs.  You want to leverage your fielders by giving them good ones more opps and the bad ones fewer opps.

Steve, also, I have spoken on this before, but there is zero evidence that a good outfielder does proportionally better than a bad outfielder in a large outfield section, and vice versa.  In fact, I have evidence (although not strong) to the contrary. So we need to dispense with the notion that if you have a large OF section, you can leverage a good OF’er by placing him there.  Never seen any evidence that that is true.

As I said, I have done extensive research which suggests the reverse is true.  For example, if we have a large OF, a good outfielder might have a UZR of +5.  In a small OF he might have a UZR of +7.  A bad outfielder would be the reverse. He might have a UZR of -5 in a large outfield and -7 in a small one.  This suggests that you want to put your bad outfielders in a large outfield section and your good ones in a small one.

Why might this be the case?  I don’t know, but I can speculate just like everyone else speculates that you “need” a good/fast outfielder in a large OF.  I can easily argue the opposite. I can say that in a large OF, there are large areas in which no one can catch a ball, so who cares about how good your outfielder is in a large OF?  I can also argue that if your OF section is small enough, a good/fast outfielder can catch everything in it, while a poor/slow one cannot. 

What I am trying to say is that logic and common sense are not going to answer this question, because I can use logic and common sense to argue both sides of the equation.  Only the data will shed light on the question.  And the light it has shed, according to my research at least, is that faster outfielders for some reason get leveraged in smaller outfield sections, and vice versa, exactly opposite of conventional wisdom. Imagine that - conventional wisdom could be wrong.  What a concept!

I agree that if you are to award 3 OF gloves, then you have to award 3 IF gloves (2B, SS, 3B as one pool).

But the whole thing is ridiculous.  Does anyone even KNOW how the system works?  I’m going to guess.  Rawlings, or Rawlings through MLB, sends out a ballot (probably even blank with no player names) to the coaches, and everyone fills out their winners.

Let’s say you get back 50 ballots from the AL coaches, and you have a total of 150 outfielders.  Ichiro might get 30 votes, Torii 20, Gutierrez 15, Granderson 10, and on and on, until you have a total of 150 spread out over 30 different outfielder names.

That’s stupid, isn’t it?  What if they were allowed to select 6 OF instead of 3.  Torii might go from 20 to 30, but Gutierrez might go from 15 to 40.  See where I’m going here?  This is why you have inertia in the voting.  A bunch of coaches have already figured that Torii has lost a step and won’t vote for him, but there are no negative votes, and neither are there secondary votes to bump up other players.

It’s a stupid system (if my presumptions are correct).  What Dewan does is much better.