THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

This article and Ibanez’s quotes are, of course, making he rounds in the saber-blogosphere. I appreciate your comments here. It is easy to make fun of Ibanez, but you are dead on. And what’s he supposed to say, “yeah, I can’t field, but the contract’s signed, suckers”? That’s Ruben Amaro’s problem, not his. It isn’t like Ibanez is trying to be terrible in the field. And frankly, for his sake, it’s important that he not think that if he’s going to be (haphazardly) patrolling right.

Kudos to MGL for not taking an easy shot at Ibanez, who , although now greatly overpaid, was probably (without doing a very careful analysis)underpaid relative to performance and the FA market for most of his time in Seattle. I’ll admit to always kind of liking him—a guy who kind of wandered around the minors, then teams, then positions, finally get a shot with the Royals and then cashing in.

It’s interesting that Ibanez did (to a lesser extent)in his 30s what most player’s do in their 20s: get underpaid for years, then become an FA (again, in Raul’s case) and get drastically overpaid.

I’d make a snide comment about Ibanez having a more subtle grasp on defensive analysis than a lot of respected sportswriters (and perhaps even his new GM), but that would be petty (and pretentious, given the state of my own knowledge not long ago).

One more thing on Raul—one of the funny .gifs of his defense that’s all over the internet is the one where he throws the ball into the ground and it rolls like 20 feet.

The irony of that (hilarious) clip, as Graham (I think) noted somewhere, is that Raul’s arm actually isn’t that bad (his range, on the other hand...). I know the fans aren’t enamored of his throwing (although who knows how much that particular incident has influenced the ratings). But THT’s arms ratings (and I don’t know what people making of them), at least have the following for Ibanez in left field from 2004-2007:

2004 +5.8
2005 +1.1
2006 +1.8
2007 +0.4

Again, I’m not defending Ibanez’s defense. It’s just an interesting addendum. I’m curious to see what other people have for his arm in LF the past few years…

I think Ibanez is right on in his assessment of how we do defensive metrics....but it doesn’t mean that there’s no value being produced, or that he’s a better fielder.

Given enough playing time, and he’s been a regular for many seasons now, most things other than park factor will even out with the large sample. And, I am not confident we are doing enough with park factors when measuring defense. But, when you get down to it, there’s a certain amount of balls hit his way, and a certain amount he caught. Just like Derek Jeter, there’s only so many excuses you can come up with for not catching as many. Tango used WOWY to go through Jeter’s objections (how did you do compared with everyone else who was in the same situation as you). The only thing that would leave out is defensive positioning, which Ibanez mentioned. Even given everything else equal in a WOWY analysis, one player may position himself differently thn the others. Still, he’s paid to catch the ball, it’s hi fault if he’s not in the right place. I do believe, however, he’s referring to ZR were there is an assumed position for the fielder, the center of where the most outs are made. I struggle with that concept as well, but again, that doesn’t mean we can get a good sense of, after several seasons, someone is an A, B, C, D or E.

Ibanez’ arm is still very good.  +2.9 runs in 08.  Ditto what Brian said above.  We don’t care about positioning.  We only care whether players catch the ball or not as compared to an average fielder at an average position.  The only caveat to that is if the manager or coach is forcing a player to play somewhere he would not play on his own, then…

Ibanez has been a pretty good player, even with a bad glove.  Overall, counting hitting, defense, throwing, and baserunning, I have him as 1.9 to 2.6 wins above replacement over the last 4 years.

If he keeps doing that, he’ll be worth the money.  But that’s the catch.  While he seems like a great guy, dedicated to keeping in shape, and a hard worker, how many players really play as well at 37-39 as they do from 33-36?

One of his points about defensive metrics is that they are not park adjusted.  True for some, like the zone ratings, but TZ is park adjusted, and I know UZR and PMR are as well.  Not positive about plus/minus.

But Raul has been playing in Seattle, where hard hit flyballs hang up and die.  It’s not like he’s Manny playing in front of that wall.  Not sure what PF I use for Safeco, but I suspect Raul looks worse when you add in a PF.

I think more than 1 in 20 players (at least the English-speaking ones) have heard of sabermetrics. The word is thrown around on Baseball Tonight and other mainstream outlets. The problem is most of them think sabermetrics = OPS.

JD, Could be 1 in 13. I’m not sure.  Rally, I have the park factors in the OF at Safeco at around 1.03-1.04.

Of course over 1.00 means it is an “easy” OF.