Twins 2024 Position Analysis: Second Base

[Fatbat]

11 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

I'm a big Julien fan however... I'd really like to hear that it happened against a left hander. 

Nope. It was Giolitto.

[Fatbat]

14 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

I'm a big Julien fan however... I'd really like to hear that it happened against a left hander. 

I remember that game last September just before we clinched when Julien came up to bat in the 9th with RISP against a lefty. Oh wait, nope. Vasquez pinch hit for him. What a waste of an opportunity. 
The game ended on that weak attempted AB by a catcher in a slump. 

[Fatbat]

@Riverbrian Julien is at it again in the 3rd inning. Leadoff hit, C4 & buck get BB, Lewis….. grand slam🤯

[Riverbrian]

2 minutes ago, Fatbat said:

@Riverbrian Julien is at it again in the 3rd inning. Leadoff hit, C4 & buck get BB, Lewis….. grand slam🤯

I think Lewis is a superstar and I reserve superstar for maybe a handful of players in all of baseball. 

I drink to his health. 

[wabene]

Julien will be trotting around the bases in front of Lewis all year!

[Jocko87]

6 hours ago, miracleb said:

Beating a dead horse here...... but using high draft picks on 2nd basemen is idiotic.

To be fair, they were shortstops at the time.

[Jocko87]

13 minutes ago, wabene said:

Julien will be trotting around the bases in front of Lewis all year!

Cue the Lewis doesn't get RBIs takes.

[mnfireman]

16 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

This is an interesting take. When a rundown of third base happens will you remove the home runs that Royce Lewis hit to arrive at a similar conclusion? Consistency is a thing, right.

Don't know where you are going with this statement, but yes, Lewis was just 1-18 if you remove his HR's in the play-offs. Watching the games, I thought he was selling out trying to hit these HR's at the expense of just driving the ball and putting it in play. Not to use an injury as an excuse, but he was playing with a bad hamstring and maybe it affected his swing a little and he didn't want to make adjustments during a short series, I don't know. 

Regular season splits;

May 29 - Aug 22( 32 games):  .316/.355/.453 (.808 OPS) 4 HR, 17 RBI, 5/34 BB/K ratio

Aug 23 - Sep 19 (26 games): .300/.391/.660 (1.051 OPS) 11 HR, 35 RBI, 15/21 BB/K ratio

Playoffs (6 games): 5-22 4 HR, 5 RBI, 4/8 BB/K ratio .227/.346/.773 (1.119 OPS)

Looking at the numbers, nothing suffered if he made a conscious effort to try to hit more HR's from Aug. 22 on. In fact, except for a slight dip in AVG, his regular season numbers actually improved across the board. By a lot.

You can't remove his HR numbers, as a more accurate comparison to Julien trying to work the count deeper would be Lewis trying to hit more HR's, which he did. His AVG suffered in the playoffs and his K % regressed to be more in line with with his pre-Aug 23 numbers, but all other numbers remained in line with his later production. It is a SSS, but hopefully Lewis is skilled enough to make the necessary adjustments going forward so as to not fall into any prolonged slumps.

[bean5302]

Outs Above Average has a glaring issue. Positioning. A fielder who positions themselves well and thus doesn't have to make as many highlight reel plays doesn't get credited for it. OAA is more like a defensive ceiling, a way to rate a player's physical capabilities, especially when it comes to infielders. It's also the least stable of the metrics IMHO, often wildly swinging back and forth from year to year for the same player.

Of course, the older metrics have their issues as well.

Range Factor cares only how many plays were made by a fielder compared to other fielders in the league. For example, a team which deploys the shift a lot would likely see their shortstop making far more plays than they normally would. Thus, their RF/9 would potentially be inflated vs. the league average.

Older Zone Ratings section up the field into tons of little zones and assign some "zones" for each position to cover. These methodologies don't account for shifts, holding defenders accountable to cover their sections of the field, regardless of whether or not the fielder is actually present to make the play, and the metric doesn't care about batted ball data, like how hard balls are hit or the kind of hit it is.

Ultimate zone rating does use batted ball data. How hard the ball is hit. Where the ball is hit. The type of batted ball, and it  throws out the plays where there is a defensive shift on as those shifts change the zones a player is responsible for; however, UZR also makes assumptions on normal shifting based on base runners and situational data. In addition, UZR has park factors. Arm, double play rates, etc are also included. Players are bonused for making what should be a difficult play for the position they're playing and negative bonuses if they flub what should be an easy play for the position based on their peers' performances. The bonuses are somewhat limited, having an impact sort of like grading on a a curve. It then compares how many outs a player records vs. the league average players. UZR is an incredibly sophisticated metric, not some throwback to a bygone era. It is not your grandpa's old "Zone Rating"

Defensive Runs Saved also uses the same BIS batted ball data like Ultimate Zone Rating, but it's passively active for shifts by recompiling shift data for the entire team. DRS is also less forgiving on plus/minus calculations penalizing more for not making what would be considered a routine play and bonusing more for making a play which would be considered difficult based on the position and the batted ball data. DRS also incorporates a ball timer, and has a subjective metric instead of plays being ruled errors or non-errors which are potential advantages over UZR. Like UZR, DRS is also highly sophisticated. 

Since all the metrics have their flaws, relying on a single metric as gospel is sketchy, and when you have a single metric which stands out opposite of all the rest of the metrics, it seems pretty dubious to ignore the discrepancies.