THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

"When you play deep as an infielder, you cut down on your range”

Could he have meant that if you play too deep, any ball you get to is meaningless since you won’t be able to throw the runner out at 1B?  So, “range” is not “get to the ball” but “get to the ball AND be able to throw the runner out”.

Otherwise, naturally, infielders play as deep as they possibly can to expand their zone AND be able to throw the runner out.

Joe Morgan actually said “When you play deep as an infielder, you cut down on your range.”

I think this is uncharitable. There’s a trade-off involved. If you play deeper, you have more time to run to the ball and will cover more ground in an absolute sense, but if you play shallower, you don’t have to move as far to cover the same angles, and you get to the ball earlier, leaving more time for the throw. It’s not at all obvious to me that Morgan is wrong about “range” in the sense of successfully making more plays, which I imagine was his intended sense.

Apropos of SportVision’s proposed Field/fX, this may be something which can be investigated quantitatively fairly soon ...

What Joe said.  The deeper infielders play, the wider the area they have to cover.  Does it pay off, given they have more time to react to the ball?  I don’t know.

Imagine the “range” infielders would have if four of them positioned themselves 3 feet in front of the batter.  It would be almost impossible for the batter to get any kind of hit past them.  Though it’s likely that every inning, only one of the 4 starting infielders will survive.

A lot of the anti-Phillips stuff is because he comes off as an insufferable jerk.  On Memorial Day weekend, they had a graphic showing how many players were in the World Wars, and Phillips used it as an opportunity to bitch about steroids of all things (it was something to the effect of “60 years ago we had players serving their country, now they take steroids, what is wrong with us?"). 

He whined about how Josh Hamilton was given an opportunity to make the Reds as a Rule V pick despite not having put in the time in the minors--it was unfair to the other players.  A couple weeks ago the Cardinals were on and he was beside himself that anyone was pitching to Pujols, saying something like “if I was a pitcher, Ryan Ludwick would give me nothing to fear”.  You would have thought Ludwick was Tony Pena Jr. or something, not an average-ish corner outfielder.  Then he hit a HR, which shut him up for a minute. 

Most notable was his screed against Carlos Beltran--petty, mean-spirited, and full of every cliche known to man ("He’s not a winning player”.) And stupid ("they haven’t won with him, they should try winning without him”...then citing a number of CFs he liked better including McLouth (!), Sizemore, and a bunch of other guys who have never “won anything” either.

I think that’s exactly what he meant.  I’m not a big fan of Morgan by any means, but I do think sometimes his comments are just not made correctly.  I think he often has the right idea, but says it the wrong way.

It seems improbable that a “five tool” player can be underappreciated, but I think Beltran fits the bill here.

The dude does not necessarily have the MVP season, but that’s because most MVP seasons are players who happen to perform above their talent level at a much higher level than Beltran performs above his level (or it’s Pujols).  Basically, Beltran is a 5 or 6 WAR player who performs at a 4-7 WAR level, while your annual MVP candidates are 3-6 WAR players among which one happens to perform at a 6-8 WAR level.

Beltran, in his 4.5 years with the Mets, has earned $88MM according to Fangraphs:
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=589&position=OF

Seeing that they use a system very similar to what I would use, they’re probably right.

Beltran has 2.5 years to earn $29MM so that his gross total over 7 years is $119MM.  He’ll make it, in 6 years, and basically the 7th year will be a freebie for the Mets.

Even if a guy hits a home run off a fastball (or curveball), you still gotta show him fastball later in the game. You just show it out of the zone, even and especially early in the count. The ealrier a batter sees a pitch in the count, the more that pitch is going to stick with him throughout the at bat.

My favorite strategy is to throw him the pitch he is looking for on 0-0, but outside the zone (say, a fastball up). Now you have a hitter that is drooling for you to try and get a fastball in the zone on the 1-0 and can sneak even a mediocre off-speed pitch into the zone to even the count. You can probably get another one into the zone to get him 1-2. Now you are driving the count.

For what it’s worth, Rex Hudler is 10 times the idiot homer as Hawk and Sutcliffe and totally devoid of any useful baseball knowledge. I’d be curious to know if smart Angels fans (Rally?) agree. Guy is an absolute pain to listen to for even a minute or two.

On a somewhat related topic ... when Reed Johnson trapped that ball with two outs in the 9th inning (it was ruled a catch), how come they didn’t make a big deal out of it?  Joe Morgan mentioned it twice, but Jon Miller didn’t seem interested in pursuing it. 

Is it because it didn’t have a big effect on the outcome?  Is it because there was no St. Louis announcer to raise a stink?  Or is that normal these days, to gloss over things like that?

Rex is an idiot.  But at least he’s enthusiastic, and enjoying the game.  The Angels tried cutting down the number of broadcasts with Rex, but the other guys are pretty boring.

I don’t understand why anyone thinks a local announcer should be neutral.  Sure, ESPN or Fox announcers should be, but Rex is paid by the team, travels around with the team, and is broadcasting for Angel fans.  He should be a homer.

Don’t care for the White Sox, but I have no problem with Harrelson referring to “good guys” and “bad guys” for the benefit of White Sox fans.

"When you play deep as an infielder, you cut down on your range”.

To use the term “range” as a proxy for “ability to make defensive outs” is first of all, a butchery of the specific term range, and more importantly, it makes his statement completely useless.  Obviously a fielder will try to position himself so that he optimizes outs.  By playing deeper, he sacrifices “time to the ball” to the benefit of “range”.  Morgan’s statement is either exactly backwards, as MGL says, or totally meaningless.

"When you play deep as an infielder, you cut down on your range”.

If you assume a glacially slow fielder and a bullet fast ball, then yes I can agree with this.

For an average fielder and a normalized spread of balls in his zone, not so much.

Seeing that they use a system very similar to what I would use, they’re probably right.

I’m saving that quote, Tango. 

auntbea -

Obviously a fielder will try to position himself so that he optimizes outs.

Let me restate the obvious: A fielder will try to position himself so that he optimizes win expectancy. Hence double play depth, holding a runner on first, infield in, more controversially guarding the line and playing “no doubles” defense in the outfield.

To use the term “range” as a proxy for “ability to make defensive outs” is ... a butchery of the specific term range

Obviously I fail to agree that Morgan’s use would be a butchery of the ‘term’ range. I feel that this is a widely understood way to use the word, at least now. I don’t know if that connotation was already established in the early 1980s when Bill James defined “range factor,” but he was clearly comfortable using just the word “range” in a statistic which measured positioning and throwing ability in addition to the ability to cover ground to reach a ball.

"Let me restate the obvious: A fielder will try to position himself so that he optimizes win expectancy. Hence double play depth, holding a runner on first, infield in, more controversially guarding the line and playing “no doubles” defense in the outfield.”

Yes I know all this, but i was just trying to simplify the situation.  By your logic, and presumably Joe Morgan’s logic, when would a fielder ever position himself further back, thereby reducing his ability to get outs (what you laughably say is commonly referred to as “range"), but increasing win expectancy?  Note that in all your examples except guarding the lines, the fielder is playing in to increase win expectancy at the expense of “range"”.  In my apparently limited understanding of baseball, the infielders are generally furthest back with no one on base, at the time when win expectancy and what you call “range” are simultaneously maximized.

For Joe Morgan’s quote to make sense, the fielder would have to be playing way back, willing to allow the runner to reach first more often, in order to increase the chance of doing something else to help his team win.  All snark aside, there must be some defense like this, even if it is relatively uncommon.

You would play a little back when it is imperative to keep the ball on the infield even if you allow slightly more singles, such as with the winning run on second and 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th or later.  That must be the case, by definition.

In any case, I agree with auntbee 100%.  While we know what Morgan pretty much meant, there is no ambiguity about the definition of the word “range” in this context.

Other than playing 3 feet in front of the batter, the deeper you play, the less range you will have - period.  Yes, even a 6 year old knows that the deeper you play, the more time it will take for the ball to get to you and the longer the throw might be.  Morgan does not have to tell us that.

Morgan talks incessantly and has an obsessive need to analyze everything.  A certain not insignificant number of things that come out of his mouth make little sense or are just plain wrong, regardless of what he “means” to say ("I’m sorry, I called you an idiot, but I ‘meant’ to say that you were wonderful").

Tonight on the HR derby broadcast, let’s forget about the fact that 3 reasonably intelligent men who “work” with baseball statistics for a living can’t figure out why almost all players in the HR derby tend to hit fewer homers in the second half than in the first half…

Morgan actually said, “Well everyone gets tired in the second half.  Very few players hit more HR in the second half...”

What did Joe mean to say with that one?

For the record, of all players who had at least 1 AB in the first and second half of the season (roughly April-June, and July-October, not including post-season), 320 hit more in the 1st half, 438 in the second, and 77 the same.

For players who had a min of 100 AB in both halves:

More HR in first: 75
More in second half: 240
Same: 14

That was truly one of the stupidest things Morgan or anyone else has ever said…

Are you using the actual mid-point of the season (81 games) as first half and second half?

Because Joe might be using the All-Star break as the separation point, so that the first half is roughly 90 games and the second half is around 70 (This year, it looks like most teams are around 88 games pre-break, 74 post-break).  It’s common for people to think the All-Star break is the halfway point, but it isn’t.  Maybe Joe thinks it is, though.

Why are there always excuses for Morgan’s ignorance?  I am semi-kidding of course.  Morgan clearly is suggesting that players don’t hit as many homers in the “second half” because they get tired.  In fact, that is exactly what he said.  For last year, I used June 30/July 1 as the cutoff, which was almost exactly the half way point of the season. I suspect that even if you use the all-star break as the cutoff point, there will be many more than “very few” players who hit more in the “second half.”

If Morgan was using the All-Star break as the cutoff point and it were true that very few players hit more HR after the All-Star break, and that was because there were only 70 or 75 games after the ASB, wouldn’t Morgan have said, “There are very few players who hit more HR in the ‘second half’ and that is because there are many fewer games in the second half!  Hahahaha!  Psych.  Got you!”

Seriously, they were talking about effects from the HR derby and fatigue.  They were not talking about the number of games.

I mean if I said, “All players get tired in the second half.  Very few players hit more HR in the second half,” and then it turned out that the “second half” had 10 or 20 fewer games than the first half, and I claimed, “See I told you I was right,” you should think I was a bigger idiot than you thought in the first place, since that is clearly not what I meant…

Here is Morgan’s exact quote about playing deep, which occurred as part of a discussion about how deep shortstop Brandon Ryan was playing in the bottom of the 8th of that game, after he took one step from a starting position two steps back on the outfield grass and knocked down a very hard hit ball by Derrick Lee, and then threw him out:
“There’s two things with playing deep though, if you play that deep, anything up the middle you’re never going to get; and your range is limited because the angle you have to take to get to the ball, so sometimes when you play that deep its not really that advantageous, you know, to making a play.”

So Morgan equates “range” with making a play, which is what I suggested he meant back in #2. MGL makes the same equivalence, in the course of his comment #16: “the deeper you play, the less range you have.” [Emphasis helpfully added for auntbea, so he[?] can come back and tell MGL too that he has used the word range in a “laughable” way.

Mickey, I am having trouble understanding your position. Originally you framed Morgan’s comment as stupid. Pretty much every commenter who followed on this point has taken you as meaning that he had said something obviously false, i.e. that by range Morgan meant ability to cover ground, rather than ability to make successful plays. In #16, you may be saying that what Morgan said was stupid, because you think his point was too obvious, not that it was wrong. And yet you say you agree with auntbea 100%. It looks to me like you mostly or entirely disagree.

Now that I have reproduced Morgan’s exact words, did you understand him correctly originally? If so, what precisely makes his statement stupid?

I watched the game so I heard exactly what he said.  I meant “more range” (when playing deep) and not “less.” That was a typo.

Again, we don’t need Morgan to tell us that sometimes when you play deep you make fewer plays.  He wanted to say something about infielders sometimes playing too deep and he got his thoughts and words screwed up as he sometime does.  End of story.

“..if you play that deep, anything up the middle you’re never going to get..”

That was one of the mystifying statements.  You GET more balls when you play deep. GET means GET.  If he meant GET the runner, he would have said that.  BALLS and GET can only mean one thing.

I’m all in favor of exposing idiot statements, but I think that’s way too much parsing of “what the definition of is is”.

I see the quote that was posted, and I think nothing of it.  I think a speaker should be given a higher allowance than a writer, since a writer gets to proofread his words. 

MGL made a blatant typo that was clear to me that he made a typo.  Readers here however were puzzled by his inconsistent statement.  MGL corrected that it was an obvious typo.  So, I would definitely have to give Morgan a pass here on however negative you want to parse his statement.  You can make a reasonable case that what he said was fine.

We have so many other things to pick on him with…

Trivially, Morgan did not use the word BALLS in conjunction with GET, so I think capitals do not serve MGL’s interpretation well.

While I respect Tango’s desire to move on,
I think there’s more to say here.

Two more serious points, or maybe 3
1) Morgan’s comment deserves to be interpreted in the context of a real baseball game, in which there is a center fielder coming on the ball to pick it up. If the shortstop cannot reach the ball reasonably close to the infield, I don’t think it is fair to be mystified that Morgan effectively rules out cases in which the shortstop takes extreme routes and fights the center fielder for the right to pick up the ball 200+ feet from the plate.

2) Building on that, for realistic angles, Morgan is correct and MGL is wrong. You can sketch out triangles yourself and confirm it. Put two points on the same line, at distances 140 feet and 150 feet from the origin, say at a 15 degree angle to keep the trigonometry easy. These represent the plate, and a normal vs a deep shortstop. Draw another line along the 0 degree angle (over 2nd and out to center). Put whatever points you want along that line through 2nd (150 feet, 200 feet and so on. Construct triangles using as vertices the plate, the shortstops and the given point along the center field line. You can solve for the length of the unknown sides, which are the minimum paths possible for the two shortstops to reach that point on the trajectory of a ball hit up the middle.  At what distance from home does the deeper shortstop actually have a shorter path to the ball? This is where playing deep gives you an advantage for “getting to the ball” Hint: it is not anywhere near the deepest plausible point for a shortstop to try to intercept a ball.

3) Morgan did win 5 gold gloves; it is possible that he knows something about good defensive positioning

answer: just over 290 feet.

There are ground balls, line drives and short flies up the middle.  If we presume that the fielder will “get” to a ball (irrespective of making an out), and if we presume that the ball must be in motion (cannot have stopped rolling), then where does the SS need to play to maximize the GB, LD, and short flies that are hit?

Is this the question being asked (irrespective of what Morgan may have meant or not) that might have something interesting for us to learn?

Are we really having a debate about whether a shortstop can get to more balls if he plays deeper or not?  Really?

From a random baseball coaching website, but you can find this info anywhere:

“Shortstop:  The three basic positions are deep, mid-way, and playing in.  When the shortstop is playing deep, they are back at the grass.  The advantage of this positioning is the player has more range to field balls, but the disadvantage is on slow hit balls the fielder has farther to run to get to the ball...”

Tango’s question makes little sense to me… if you can field any ball (grounder, liner, fly, whatever) up until the point it stops rolling (meaningless of course in real baseball terms) the ideal position would be somewhere in mid-left field.  That is, assuming the batter swinging away like he would in a normal baseball game.

I’m trying to come up with a question that we can all discuss an answer to.  As it stands, I have no idea what the question is.

If you’d like to come up with your a better question, please do so.

I am with auntbea here again.  I have no idea what Joe Arthur is talking about.  Is there really a discussion about at what distance an infielder gets to more ground balls (not to mention the extra pop flies he gets to)?  If there is, I am missing something.  So with the infield playing in with a runner on third, there is some question as to whether they get to field MORE or FEWER ground balls?  And if the infielders were playing in the OF, exactly how many ground balls get by them?  If you play deep enough, NO ground balls can ever get by you. If you play enormously shallow, other than the unusual situation where you have the batter surrounded, you will get to almost no ground balls! WTF? 

Tango, obviously there is an optimal positioning that balances the number of ground balls you get to, the number of pop flies over your head, and the time it takes to field a ground ball and make the throw.  But I am referring to one comment and one comment only by Morgan.  And I am not saying that it is something we should particularly pick on.  He has probably made hundreds if not thousands of sillier ones - like the one about the first and second half home runs during the derby.

But the fact of the matter is that Morgan said that when infielders play back they have less range.  There is only one definition of range.  We sort of know what Joe meant, but he said it poorly.  Having more or less range is not an ambiguous statement.  It means only one thing.  “HAVING RANGE” means getting to balls - period. The reason we KNOW that it means that is that a normal person would simply say, “When an infielder plays too far back, while he will have more range and get to more balls, he will be too far back to throw many of the runners out at first - that is why you can’t play TOO far back.  You can play further back for slower players and/or for player who hit the ball harder.”

Hey, I don’t understand why people pick on Joe Morgan so much.  He is a Hall of Famer and he went through a lot of stuff that other MLB players didn’t have to deal with (i.e. Southern hospitality).  He played the game hard and right, and the man just isn’t interested in understanding the game from an armchair GM’s point of view.  That is his right. 
As far as announcers go, he has a good speaking voice and says what he thinks, which is an underappreciated commodity today.  He frequently states the obvious, but many people who watch Sunday night baseball are not that knowledgeable, so they stand to learn something even if it is basic stuff. 
I like saber metrics and I admire Bill James & what he has brought to the game and its fans.  I think saber metrics is insightful, interesting, and a very valuable tool; on the other hand, it is crazy to make saber metrics into a religion and castigate anyone who is not a disciple. 
The truth is the old school approach is not completely meritless.  Nolan Ryan is an old school baseball guy just like Morgan, and he doesn’t get any shit for watching Rangers games from the third row instead of from behind a computer.  His ballclub seems focused and plays with urgency, something new to Arlington.  Since Nolan’s takeover of baseball operations, the Rangers’ winning ways support the theory that the old hurler’s glare into the dugout may have more of an effect on the players than some would like to notice.  Tomfoolery and sloppy play are nowhere to be found, and the players (like Kevin Millwood who lost 30 pounds in the offseason) are in shape for once.  All the statistics in the world can’t intimidate a guy into reforming his behavior and attitude.  You need an old school, no-nonsense guy in jeans and boots (who pummeled Robin Ventura at age 46 to the delight of baseball enthusiasts) to do that.  Cheers to Old School baseball!

I don’t think anyone means any offense by picking on Morgan.  It is one thing to pick on someone to their face, like some kids do.  That is wrong.  Picking on someone on a blog is in order to entertain your readers.  I don’t think Morgan is EVER going to read this blog so I feel safe that I am not offending him.

You picked the wrong person and the wrong kind of picking to rail on sabermetrics.  You don’t have to know anything about sabermetrics or be a sabermetrician to pick on things that Morgan says.  He says a lot of really stupid things from the standpoint of common sense and a little bit of basic knowledge of baseball, mathematics, and statistics.

And what is this - a time warp?