THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Betancourt is a bad SS, there is no doubt about that.  My BZM fielding metric has him as the worst fielding SS over 2005-2008.  UZR has him a little wrse than average over that time period but plyaing much worse this year.

But I am not sure that these 3 plays are the best choices to illustrate his lack of range.  Gameday has the first ground ball up the middle, the one fielded by the CF, as being at vector -1 degrees, although it looks more like -5 degrees from Mike’s captured image.  Either way of all ground balls that get past the pitcher in that sector the SS only fields the ball for an out 24% of the time.  From the image and the position of the batter and runner it looks like the ball was hit at at least an average GB speed and perhaps greater which means that even an excellent SS would have had little chance to field that grounder for an out. 

The second grounder, the one fielded by the 2B, appears to be in almost the same vector, but much slower.  Mike says that Betancourt may have able to make the play so this one appears to be the kind of mistake that happens when the SS and 2B haven’t played together much.  Or perhaps the 2B has already figured out that he can’t count on Betancourt’s range and that he should field every ball that he can get to.

The third grounder, the one through the hole to the LF is the one that perhaps Betancourt should have been able to field.  Gameday has that one as being fielded by the LF at -24.4 degrees and it probably passed the SS at closer to -22 degrees which appears close to what the image shows.  That ball hit by a right haded batter is usually fielded for an out by the SS around 60% of the time.  Again we don’t know how hard it was hit.  Shows why we need a Hit f/x database and hit ball times to fielders.  A good SS probably would have had a chance at keeping that ball in the infield and possibly getting the force.

At least he has his bat to offset his inadequacies on defense ... or not. What are the chances that in the group Regular Major-League Shortstops that one of them is the worst offensive player and the worst defensive player?

I think if you only look at Royals shortstops starting from the year after Berroa won rookie of the year (he won that year, right?), that the Royals actually put out that kind of player every year.

Peter, I think your description and conclusions are pretty accurate.  I don’t think any of the three ground balls in the shortstop area were simple plays.  But it was frustrating as both a Royals fan and a Bannister fan to see all three go for hits in an inning where Bannister was already struggling with his control and needing all the help he could get from his defense. 

My impression is that an average defensive shortstop could have turned two of the three balls into outs.  That would have saved a couple runs and probably kept Bannister in the game.

I didn’t intend this as analytical piece.  It was more of a commentary on three separate issues that had been percolating in my brain and were brought together by watching the game last night.

1) Bannister has transformed into a groundball pitcher.  This seems like a good thing; however it means he is more dependent on his infield defense.  It’s unfortunate his GM just acquired a poor defender at SS.

2) I was curious about Dayton Moore’s comments about defense, as represented by the widely-noted quote, “The defensive statistics - I still really don’t understand how some of those statistics are evaluated, I really don’t. When you watch baseball games every single day, its very apparent who can play defensively and who can’t.”

Last night I finally got to listen to the whole Moore interview.  I think he’s gotten short shrift in the perception of his one comment taken out its context in the whole interview.  The interviewer basically asked him (paraphrased), “Sabermetricians are saying that you made a bad trade because you got a shorstop that is bad defensively and has a bad on base percentage.  Is that true?” And Moore’s response (again paraphrased), “Statistics are just one thing we consider.  Defensive stats don’t capture everything.  There are other factors like defensive positioning.  I trust what my scouts had to say about Betancourt having good defensive skills.  OBP is just one facet offense, Betancourt has had above average power for a SS in the past.” I’m not sure I agree with all that on balance, but it doesn’t make him out to be as stupid as the previous widely-quoted excerpt does.

3) I have been curious about measuring Yuniesky Betancourt’s defense.  I know that what I saw last night was a very small sample size--only three ground balls.  So I don’t feel that I really know much more about his defense than I did before.  But in that small sample size, my “scouting” impressions of Betancourt were very poor.  Either he just has very limited range, or he’s not trying very hard.  Callaspo was certainly moving around the infield much, much faster than Betancourt.  On the first ball hit by Ellis, I didn’t necessarily expect Betancourt to get to it, but I was disappointed that he didn’t even get within 15 feet of it.

Does anybody else find it cruel and ironic that our sabermetric hero (among players) is playing for perhaps the least saber-friendly organization in baseball? It’s just not fair.

Seeing that when Betancourt first played for the M’s the fans RAVED about him, and the scouts were jumping over themselves saying how he was the best fielding SS ever, his descent into oblivion can only be characterized as someone who is not giving 100%.  Indeed, when he gives 100% (however little that happens), fans and writers still say superlative things about those plays.

The stories about Betancourt’s lack of work ethic are staggering in number.  I’m not one to judge someone’s motivations, but if ever there was a guy who just didn’t care about how well he played baseball at the big league level, it’s Yuniesky Betancourt. 

He might be the biggest waste of talent I’ve ever seen.

Over time, you develop a certain mental metric for where a ball is going to go and whether the fielders on “your” team are going to field it.  As, like Dave, a Mariners fan, for the past few years I’ve just considered that balls up the middle and balls in the hole were hits, just as I figured that balls hit more than about 5 degrees from Raul Ibanez in left were doubles. 

Last night, I saw a ball hit up the middle and I mentally marked it down as a hit, only Jack Wilson turned it into a relatively routine out. 

I’d probably watched 90% of Yuniesky Betancourt’s major league games until the trade.  I’m very happy to start changing my mental image of what a ground ball hit is going to be.  Now, if we can just work on our second baseman . . .

The only way the Royals can turn the Betancourt trade into something other than a disaster is if they can somehow get him to work really hard and recapture the potential that he showed in 2005-2006, when he was good defensively and provided significant value.  I dont think thats possible, but the Royals must believe they can do it, thats the only way the trade makes any sense at all. 

As a Mariners fan I am excited simply to be rid of the salary obligations, not to mention that we received prospects as well (which help to replace the prospects spent to acquire Wilson, a big upgrade at SS over Betancourt).