from Amazon
Friday, July 27, 2007
Is Andruw a ball hog?
Do some centerfielders get all the discretionary plays? Here’s an initial look at Andruw Jones:
1. Look at all Braves LF and RF since 2000.
2. Take all those players from Step 1, and look at them when they played for a team other than the Braves
3. Compare their PO per 27 outs
This is the “with or without you” process that I showed with Ken Griffey Jr and the catchers article from a few years ago.
If one guy played 20 games with the Braves and 40 with the Mets, I prorate everything to 20 games. Simple enough?
There were 464 games from our LF. On the Braves, these players had 823 putouts. When they played on a team other than the Braves they had 909 putouts. That’s a difference of 30 putouts per 162 GP. Quite a difference.
How about the Braves RF (997 games)? They made 15 less putouts per 162 GP as Braves RF than when they played on teams other than Braves.
Is this an Andruw effect, or is it maybe a Braves pitchers (lotsa K? lotsa GB?) or park effect (FB become HR?). I don’t know yet. Maybe next week.
And another provision is that I looked at all Braves games, not just when Andruw was the CF. However, in this case, since he played almost all the time, it wouldn’t really matter. However, in the limited number of games that he did miss, it would still be interesting to see how the LF/RF did when he was on the bench.
I’ll also note how Braves CF (35 games) did when they also played on other teams: 117 more putouts when they played on a team other than Braves! This of course has nothing to do with Andruw Jones. But, it does show you the difference between Andruw and his backups who played on other teams. His multi-team backups made 2.44 putouts per 27 outs with the Braves, and 3.16 putouts on a non-Braves team. Quite a difference, but it is only 35 games.
It would still be interesting to see how the LF/RF did when he was on the bench.
For the same years,also using retrosheet data:
There were actually more total putouts in the outfield with Andruw out than in (surprising, given that he is also accused of taking discretionary plays from infielders as well as corner outfielders). In 1064.8 equivalent games(27 outs/g), Andruw had 2.65 putouts per game vs 2.59 by the backups in 62.6 games. With Andruw, the corner outfielders combined for 3.88 putouts/G, while with a different center fielder they had 4.01. Overall, 6.53 total oufield po/g with Andruw and 6.60 without. This is 21 more net plays by Braves’ corner outfielders per 162 games without Andruw in center (you have 15 more by the with-or-without-you method). While this approach might suggest that Andruw is taking around 0.1 discretionary plays a game from the corner outfielders and possibly harming the overall defense, Atlanta’s team DER with Andruw in center was .702 vs .685 with someone else in center [not counting dropped fouls in the DER calculation]. Obviously this points in a different direction about Andruw’s overall impact on the defense.
But I think Andruw has been in the lineup too much to get far with an intra-team analysis, and probably too much of his time off has been discretionary. The “backup” sample is small and almost 80% of the opportunities belong to Darren Bragg 2002-3 and Ryan Langerhans 2005-2006. And if his time off was “planned” (e.g. he probably isn’t given a day off if Chipper Jones is also out of the lineup), then the team DER behind his backups may be biased as well.