Impact of Defense

[jimmer]

 

I am definitely not well versed in Inside Edge numbers, but if you lower the qualifying bar a hair to 800 innings, Arcia is only a few plays off the leaders too. Basically everybody in baseball is within a few plays of each other.

Would be interested to read more about Inside Edge. If is too scouting-heavy, it might easily exceed UZR in subjectivity.

Chief and I have discussed the interpretation of this info a bit on this thread.  I don't agree Inside Edge says hes average or slightly above average. Due to sample sizes, I don't think we can give equal credence to all 6 categories, which is what he was doing.

[Willihammer]

And... And... What happens... If Torii Hunter ends up with a UZR Rating of... Let's Say... 2 in 2015. 

 

Now what do you have?

 

Does anyone trust UZR enough to say that Hunter can't be a 2 in 2015?

I think I speak for everyone when I say "NO." Because UZR is measuring outcomes!

 

Its possible, but unlikely, that 100% of the fly balls hit to Hunter this season are what Inside Edge would classify as balls in the 90-100% range.

[jimmer]

 

And... And... What happens... If Torii Hunter ends up with a UZR Rating of... Let's Say... 2 in 2015. 

 

Now what do you have?

 

Does anyone trust UZR enough to say that Hunter can't be a 2 in 2015?

UZR isn't telling us what he'll be in 2015.

 

Over the last three years he's averaged around -4, so 2 wouldn't be out of the question, but he's trending down and is turning 40 so I'm not sure we should expect that.  Could happen though.

[USAFChief]

I was joking... It's a dry sense of humor and I get stared at a lot because of it. (-;

I doubt that, Bri.

 

It's the hair.

[Brock Beauchamp]

While we're on the subject, who is in favor of eliminating UZR/150 entirely?

 

*raises hand eagerly*

 

Talk about doubling down on a bad idea and encouraging people to misuse metrics. UZR/150 makes me shake my head every time I see it. Fangraphs should just get rid of it.

[Riverbrian]

 

I remember a very slow AJ Pierzinski scoring standing up from 2B on a ball hit to short CF that Revere fielded and six hoped to the plate when he was not very far from the Infield grass upon release of the ball.

 

In all seriousness.

 

Ben will never have Puig's Arm or Harper's Arm... His arm is a liability in certain situations.

 

But... that 6 hopper thing may have happened. But that's fixable over time. 

 

I'll play Ben in my OF and not worry about it much. His speed will cover for his arm in most cases.

 

Now if a runner ist on third with less then two outs then I'll worry about Ben some. Those are situations that I'm hoping the hitter flys out to Puig instead.   

[Riverbrian]

 

While we're on the subject, who is in favor of eliminating UZR/150 entirely?

 

*raises hand eagerly*

 

Talk about doubling down on a bad idea and encouraging people to misuse metrics. UZR/150 makes me shake my head every time I see it. Fangraphs should remove it from their site.

 

I raised my hand so fast that I threw it out of socket and had to type this post one-handed.

[jimmer]

 

 

 

Hey, that's not too bad... But (there's always a but) Hunter is running on creaky old man legs right now. My personal feeling is that he has started to fall off a cliff.

 

 

and the yearly DRS/UZR agrees with you. those say exactly the same thing your personal feeling is.

 

 And I mentioned this early in the thread you quoted, that while a -4.3 average DRS over 3 years ins't that bad, he's been trending down and he's turning 40, so we shouldn't expect him to really imporve going forward.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

and the yearly DRS/UZR agrees with you.

But they can't be trusted. UZR also graded Hunter as a -8 in 2006 and a -10 in 2008 when, by all accounts, he was still a good fielder. It would be disingenuous of me to use the metric simply because it matched what I saw on the field in very limited innings.

[Riverbrian]

 

and the yearly DRS/UZR agrees with you.

 

I look forward to watching him in multiple games this year and judging with my Bi-Focal aided eyeballs. 

 

If I see balls dropping that Arcia would have caught and the Batting... Average to below average.

 

I'll be praying is mentoring is off the charts.

[jimmer]

Brock, I was just saying it agreed with you, nothing more.  One example of anything doesn't validate anything.  Or invalidate anything, by the way.

[jimmer]

BTW, I'm having real reaction time issues with my computer/this site.  It's causing all sorts of issues with posting so I am having to edit quite a bit.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Brock, I was just saying it agreed with you, nothing more.  One example of anything doesn't validate anything.  Or invalidate anything, by the way.

Sure, no arguments here. IMO, there's a good chance that UZR/DRS is right about Hunter's 2014 defensive performance.

[TheLeviathan]

 

While we're on the subject, who is in favor of eliminating UZR/150 entirely?

 

*raises hand eagerly*

 

Talk about doubling down on a bad idea and encouraging people to misuse metrics. UZR/150 makes me shake my head every time I see it. Fangraphs should just get rid of it.

 

Absolutely, its very existence is in opposition to what Fangraphs tells us UZR does well.  

 

It's like a bartender advising you not to drive drunk and then handing you a whiskey bottle with your keys.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Absolutely, its very existence is in opposition to what Fangraphs tells us UZR does well.  

 

It's like a bartender advising you not to drive drunk and then handing you a whiskey bottle with your keys.

I remember when I first read about UZR/150 all those years ago. Basically, this.

 

http://giffiles.alphacoders.com/197/197.gif

 

[TheLeviathan]

Exactly, I feel like sometimes the guys over at Fangraphs get so excited about some stats or about an argument they are trying to make that they forget best practices with their own metrics.  I've felt that way more and more about WAR ever since the Trout vs. Miggy debates.  It's had an adverse impact on my own feelings about some metrics too, that's the worst part.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I've taken the opinion that if a player derives a significant portion of their WAR from dWAR, I avoid using the metric entirely.

 

Brian Dozier, 5 WAR player, yes!

 

Alex Gorden, 6 WAR player, eeeesh. Hey, he might be a 6 WAR player, I just have no faith in the metric at that point.

[jimmer]

 

I remember when I first read about UZR/150 all those years ago. Basically, this.

 

http://giffiles.alphacoders.com/197/197.gif

Have always loved that gif.

 

That's kind of how I am when people tell me that one of the best ways to judge a pitcher's performance is by wins and losses.  Or when someone quotes fielding % and errors as a valid way to judge defense. Or when someone quotes RBI as a way of saying how well a guy produces runs.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

That's kind of how I am when people tell me that one of the best ways to judge a pitcher's performance is by wins and losses.  Or when someone quotes fielding % and errors as a valid way to judge defense. Or when someone quotes RBI as a way of saying how well a guy produces runs.

Absolutely. I have a hard time not giggling whenever someone brings up wins or RBI. It's so quaint.

[jimmer]

To me, it doesn't take a metric of any kind to tell me that if a quality defensive CF/Catcher/SS has very similar traditional offensive numbers to a poor fielding corner IF, that the CF/Catcher/SS is more valuable. Even better if the CF/catcher/SS can also do damage on the bases.

 

Just makes sense to me based on position scarcity. And I've thought this for about 40 years and my view hasn't changed.

[TheLeviathan]

I agree, I was in the Trout camp for that very reason.  It doesn't change, however, that WAR was being misused a bit in those debates.  It sort of went unsaid until this year when Alex Gordon became the outlier that highlighted the problem and sparked some debate.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I vacillated on the Trout/Miggy thing a bit because I don't mind the use of RBI in MVP discussion, as Runs Batted In actually happened and they helped the team win actual, honest-to-god baseball games.

 

But if you asked me which player I wanted on my team, it was 100% Trout because he was a versatile up-the-middle player with a strong bat, good/great defense, and speed.

[USAFChief]

 

I vacillated on the Trout/Miggy thing a bit because I don't mind the use of RBI in MVP discussion, as Runs Batted In actually happened and they helped the team win actual, honest-to-god baseball games.

 

But if you asked me which player I wanted on my team, it was 100% Trout because he was a versatile up-the-middle player with a strong bat, good/great defense, and speed.

And much younger.

 

Which also shouldn't enter into the MVP debate.

[USAFChief]

 

Absolutely. I have a hard time not giggling whenever someone brings up wins or RBI. It's so quaint.

I would say wins and RBI are fine as measures of what happened.  I see no reason to discard either.

 

They should not be used in isolation, and one should keep in mind they are at least partially dependent on the efforts of other players.

[Brock Beauchamp]

RBI, sure... Wins, eh, I have to admit that I have no real use for them, as they tell so little about what happened to get there. In outlier cases, wins can tell a little about a pitcher but most of the time, they tell so little that I ignore them entirely.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

But they can't be trusted. UZR also graded Hunter as a -8 in 2006 and a -10 in 2008 when, by all accounts, he was still a good fielder. It would be disingenuous of me to use the metric simply because it matched what I saw on the field in very limited innings.

Interesting that 2006 was Hunter's first year without Jacque Jones and with Michael Cuddyer next to him.  And 2008 was his first year in LA.  And 2013-2014 were obviously his only two years in Detroit.  Small sample, not precise, just another input in an overall evaluation -- but I like having that data.  And I look forward to more data on Hunter this year.

[jimmer]

 

I vacillated on the Trout/Miggy thing a bit because I don't mind the use of RBI in MVP discussion, as Runs Batted In actually happened and they helped the team win actual, honest-to-god baseball games.

 

But if you asked me which player I wanted on my team, it was 100% Trout because he was a versatile up-the-middle player with a strong bat, good/great defense, and speed.

I remember when Howard won MVP over Pujols in large part because of RBI.  Howard hit in the mid 200s with RISP while Pujols hit a hair under .400 with RISP.  Howard just had way more runners on base for him.  So yeah, the RBI did happen (and it's not like Howarrd dwarfed him in RBI), but still. Meantime, for those that like SLG %, OPS and OPS+ Pujols led the league in all three categories and led Howard in BA and OBP too.

 

Pujols could also field.  

[jimmer]

A guy can get a win for pitching 5 innings and giving up 5 earned runs because his offense scored 6 and his bullpen shut down the opponent for the other four innings. He doesn't deserve a win, but he is pitcher of record.

 

Next game the guy could throw 8 innings, give up one earned run, and lose 1-0. He doesn't deserve the loss, but he is pitcher of record.

 

Wins and losses should always have been solely a team stat.  It could be argued it had more validity, though not too much more, when pitchers started and finished a lot of their games.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

While we're on the subject, who is in favor of eliminating UZR/150 entirely?

 

*raises hand eagerly*

 

Talk about doubling down on a bad idea and encouraging people to misuse metrics. UZR/150 makes me shake my head every time I see it. Fangraphs should just get rid of it.

Is it that bad?  It's a great way to scale a larger sample to a season size for comparison purposes.  Again, some folks will use it to scale a too small sample but just call them out or ignore them if they do that.  I'd rather have more of that information easily available and just tune out the misusers, personally.

[USAFChief]

 

A guy can get a win for pitching 5 innings and giving up 5 earned runs because his offense scored 6 and his bullpen shut down the opponent for the other four innings. He doesn't deserve a win, but he is pitcher of record.

 

Next game the guy could throw 8 innings, give up one earned run, and lose 1-0. He doesn't deserve the loss, but he is pitcher of record.

 

Wins and losses should always have been solely a team stat.

Or, a guy can go out and throw 10 shutout innings in the 7th game of the World Series, and get the W.

 

Extreme examples aside, the single biggest factor in winning and losing a big league game is the performance of the starting pitcher.  

 

Crediting him, or debiting him, for that performance, despite all the noise, seems entirely reasonable to me.