THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

The thing you more commonly hear--and I myself have said it--is that you might be willing to give up defense for offense on the corners, but focus on defense up the middle.  That seems to be what the M’s have done.  Obviously it has made things harder for their pitchers, but if the offense is there it might be a smart move..

So I guess my question is whether defense should be weighted differently at different positions.  In other words, in a total assessment of a player, do you weight defense as 70% of the value of a ss/2b/cf/c, and 30% of the value of a 1b/3b/rf/lf?  Or is a run saved worth the same (or even more?) than a run scored?
-Justin

A run saved is a run earned (more or less).

Quick question RE: Defense.  If an average CF moves to LF or RF, wouldnt they roughly be about average there as well all said and told.  If an average LF is 10 runs better than an average CF offensively and an average CF is 10 runs better defensively, wouldn’t an completely average CF be a completely average LF/RF?  +10 Offense/-10 Defense, -10 Offense/+10 Defense seems like a pick your poison.  Is there something here I’m not understanding?  It seems to me everyone wants “power” from the LF/RF spot, but if the guy is a +15 bat and a -10 glove, and another guy is an average CF offensively (-10 runs in LF/RF), but +20 defensively, he’d be the better player to put in the LF/RF spot by 5 runs.  I’m assuming the “learning factor” would be greatly reduced going from CF to LF, than say 2B to OF.  Again, is there something here I’m not understanding?

Isn’t .313 extraordinarily high, and .272 extraordinarily low?  Is it possible that the difference is magnified by bad luck this year and good luck last year?

This is not a rhetorical question ... I’d have guessed .290 or something was average, but I don’t know for sure and don’t have my Abstracts with me in St. Louis ...

Franklin’s 3.57 ERA season in 2003 is often cited as one of the great fluke seasons in recent years.  He had an 0.235 BABIP and a 5.21 FIP that year (4.2 k/9, 2.6 bb/9, 1.44 hr/9).  Some of that BABIP can be credited to the defense, I’m sure, but not all of it. -j

An average CF moving to the corner OF ends up being around +9 at those positions.  Similarly, a +9 at those positions end up being average at CF.

It is, more or less, pick your poison.  (Not really, because a CF gets 30-35% more opps to show off, or be exposed)

Yes, if an avergage or better CF defensively moves to RF or LF than he is way above average defesively but gets quite a few less opps.  Similarly, if an average or below corner OF’er moves to CF, he becomes a below average CF, but with more opps which magnifies his below averageness.  IOW, one reason why you want to move a well-below average defender to a less demanding defensive position (or vice versa) is to lessen his opps in order to leverage his defensive talent or lack thereof.  Basically, if you can move a great defender at one position to a more demanding position and he still remains an above average defender but with more opps, then you want to make that move.

That’s more or less what I was thinking.  I know Dave Cameron has advocated bringing in CF quality defense into LF at Safeco Field, since it has a larger left field than most parks and the Mariners have run flyball heavy rotations out the last few years and Safeco has a high park factor for flyballs allowed. It seems intuitive that you’d gain more from a great defender playing LF there than in another park with a staff that has a higher groundball rate.  Whether this is true or not, I’m not sure, but as he’s shown, it was probably a large factor in the 2003 outfield, having essentially 3 centerfielders.  I’m just thinking, lacking another option, why you wouldn’t stick a center fielder in the corners, especially in a big park, if the difference in offense isn’t as much as you’d expect to gain in defense.

We have had this discussion before, but I am not sure that a big OF benefits from a good defender. I have never seen any data/research to back up this claim (it is conventional wisdom of course), and it is not intuitively obvious to me.  There may be a few more catchable balls (opportunities) in a large OF, but that’s about it.  There is only so far an outfielder can run.  In a gigantic OF, I don’t see how you necessarily need a good outfielder, although I do see the benefit of a speedy one (who are usually good defenders of course) to chase down those balls that are not caught, although we don’t measure that (chasing down hits and saving bases) in any defensive stat that I know of.

Chris, again, the answer to why you generally want good defenders in CF is that there are many more opps in CF.  That being said, certainly a good glove, light hitting corner OF’er can be just as valuable as a slugger who cannot field, like Manny, Dunn, Griffey, etc.  And certainly the notion that teams have that you must have a slugger in the corners, regardless of their defense, is silly.  As someone mentioned (Tango?), with most teams (non-sabermetric ones), they sort of consider defense as an afterthought, at least for players who can hit well, and they also have the notion that defense is only or at least most important up the middle, which is also stupid, not withstanding that because of more opps, you can leverage defense more up the middle.  Basically, most teams have no idea that every player’s value is a simple addition of his defense, offense, and the other small things (like baserunning), and even if they do, they have no idea of the range of defensive value or how to quantify that value.  Sometimes that (these “uninformed” teams) say that “so-and-so” is worth a run a game on defense (literally) and sometimes they act as if defense is neglible (as with Manny, Griffey, et al.).  Of course these teams don’t know how to quantify offensive value either.  I will guarantee that there are at least 15 teams that would have no idea how to put a run value on any player, offensively or defensively.

As a side note, if you want to hear lots of really stupid conventional (and unconventional) wisdoms, just listen to a White Sox game (Hawk and his partner).  Consider that Harrelson was actually a GM for a while!  The other day, he said something like, “No matter how much talent you have as a pitcher, when you get to the big leagues, if you are not competitive, you ain’t going to be around for long.  If you are competetive, you’re going to be in the bigs for a long time!” Whatever that means, can you imagine having this guy for your GM?  I’ve listened to just about every home team announcer A LOT, and they all rate from around an F to a C+.  Harrleson has to be the worst (dumbest), a solid F, alhough he is a pretty good storyteller and does have “personality.” The C+ guys are like Keith Hernandez, Sutton (although he is annoying as hell), Singleton, the Rangers guys, MIL guys, and a few others I can’t think of off the top of my head.  If Stoney was still announcing on TV, I’d give him a B or a B-.  No one gets above a B, because even the best ones spout the usual BS about hot and cold teams and players, gritty players, the value of “chemisty and leadership,” “walks will kill you,” etc.

If someone wants to list “big and small” outfields in terms of LF, RF, and CF, maybe someone can look at the data to see if we can come up with some kind of answer to this question by looking at good and bad fielders who have played in large and small OF’s.  We can also see if there are substantially more opps in a large OF section that can be leveraged by a good fielder.

Is it the size of Safeco’s left field or the effect of the Puget Sound on fly balls in left field?

I wouldn’t judge the announcers by their comments in broadcasts.  For all we know some of these guys may be closet Bill James readers, but they tailor their comments to the audience.  I’m sure some of them are really that dumb, but no idea which.

I’d put Jim Palmer among the very best when it comes to intelligent comments.  He doesn’t resort to cliche’s.  Once the other announcer brought up the standard “the best pitch in baseball is strike one”

Palmer disagreed, he said the best pitch is strike three.

I never thought about the wind at Safeco.  Also Seattle haS one of the coolest average summer-time temps of any baseball city, which should effect flyball distances, and create more opportunities.  I’m just not sure, how many more, and if it’s enough to worry about, which I believe is what MGL is getting at.

Actually, just took another look at the article about HR park factors on THT by Greg Rybarczyk:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/home-run-park-factor-a-new-approach/

Seattle is one of the colder cities in the summer (I just guestimatted 67 degrees, and lo and behold, it’s 67 degrees, shows I’ve been living here too long).  Looks like the LF/LCF HR park factors are among the lowest in baseball, but how many more opps does that really create?  I can’t imagine it would be too many.

Some things that annoy me:

So and so is X and Y (or has an ERA of Z) against this team for his career.  Who cares what he did 10 years ago!!

So and so is X for his last Y. This almost always is to paint a good picture for the player, whether it’s deserved or not.  Who cares if he’s 5 for his last 10!  Or the fact that he’s hitting .400 the last 3 games.

Incessant reference to batting average or HR and RBI or ERA or W/L.  Often in reference to someone being the “best” hitter/pitcher or a team having the “best” offense/pitching. 

Batting average with runnings in scoring position, as some kind of predictive skill.

Annoyingly small sample performance measures like he’s 5 for 10 against left handed pitching at night when he’s batting 6th in the lineup.  Whatever it takes to paint a rosy picture I guess.

I dunno, I guess it is tailor their comments to the audience, but it’s silly sometimes.  I do realize the teams pay these guys, and probably don’t want them talking trash, so even if they know better, they do what the teams want, paint the best picture they can for their team, deserved or not.

Yeah, I’d probably give Palmer a B or so.  I don’t think that too many (close to none) announcers say things that they don’t believe just to appease or entertain the audience.  Almost EVERYONE, especially players, believes in hot and cold streaks, momentum, chemistry, leadership, predictive value of small sample sizes, etc., etc.

Another one I love is, “He doesn’t want to go to 3-2 (on a 2-2 count) when the bases are loaded in a close game!” As if he has to groove a pitch on a 2-2 count for fear of going to 3-2.  Obviously he doesn’t WANT to go 3-2, but it is not the end of the world, and you certainly don’t want to groove a 2-2 pitch.  Whenever I hear that, I always think, “No.  He doesn’t want to go to 4-2.  He doesn’t care THAT much about going to 3-2.”

BTW, with bases loaded and a 3-2 count (and say, 2 outs) in a close game in the latter innings, should the average pitcher “groove” a fastball to avoid a walk, or throw something offspeed a good percentage of time to try and get the batter out?  It probably depends on the batter, the exact score and inning, how much control the pitcher has with his various pitches, etc., but I was always curious whether, on average, the pitcher should really try and avoid the walk (thus increasing the chances of a hit) or if he should try and avoid the hit and increase his chances of a walk.  The hit is obviously worth a lot more than the walk with the bases loaded.

As far as the OF think, I think that we are interested more in large or small OF’s than low or high HR factors that are caused by altitude, wind, and temperature.