THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Monday, February 28, 2011

Fielding spectrum

I’m not sure what Bill James means when he says ”can handle”:

“If you have sufficient resources to win the pennant, then you don’t need to push players to defensive positions they can’t really handle in order to cover your roster,” James said. “If you don’t have sufficient resources, then you do need to, but it doesn’t do any good. Once in awhile there is a case where it’s the right thing to do - to push a player to a defensive position he can’t really handle. But 90 percent of the time, you’re better off putting him at a position he can handle.

“And if he doesn’t make it, he doesn’t make it,” James concluded. “But he’s not going to help you out of position.”

The Cardinals are out to show otherwise at a few positions. They want to prove that pushing the defensive spectrum isn’t “only useful to a bad team,” but can help turn a good team into a contending team.

First of all, he’s right about the out of position.  A few years ago, I showed that players who play out of position within the same position class (2B/SS/3B; LF/CF/RF) lose about 4 runs, and if it’s infielders playing out of position in the outfield, it was 8 runs.  So, you are taking a short-term hit right away.  Even so, does this mean you should never try?

Doug Minky playing 2B instead of 1B, Youk playing 3B instead of 1B, and so on.  These are really good 1B, guys who should be playing 2B or 3B.  In the case of Minky and Youk, they did play 3B in the minors (alot for Youk, a little bit for Minky).  So, I don’t know if James calls that out of position.  Then there’s the time lag between the last time you played a position as to when it becomes considered out of position.

And maybe James is really only focused on MLB.  In the minors, guys like Minky should never have been allowed to play 1B.  They really should have maxed out at 3B or 2B.

Anyway, if the basic point is that “can handle” means that a player can and should play a fielding position as far right as possible while being no worse than -10 runs relative to average, then that’s fine.

If the point is also that you don’t want to take someone who is average at a current position and move him further right so that he ends up at -10 there, then I can agree with that, mostly because you have to include the familiarity factor that will simply drag a player down, and partly because in 2 years, he’s going to have to move back anyway.

If the point is that ARod and Jeter, or Beltran and Mike Cameron, or Ellsbury and Mike Cameron, have to be in same infield or outfield anyway, then it really doesn’t matter who plays where, then I agree with this as well.  There’s just very little leverage gain, and things like who can handle being out-of-position better, or who can grow into the positions would be more important.  (Similar to the batting order aspect where, if it’s close, then the human aspect takes precedence over the statistical leverage aspect.)

Otherwise, I’m not exactly sure where the disagreement may be.  Must be something on the periphery.

Also, the fielding spectrum should be more like:
C
SS
2B-CF-3B
gap
RF-LF
1B

It’s the same order as James, but with a clearer set of lines drawn. 

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Pretty good articles over at STL Today this weekend.  One from Bill James by the same author, and another on Brendan Ryan.  Pretty good newspaper it seems.