Brock Beauchamp

Because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Guys don't forget how to take a route any more than I've forgotten how to ride a bicycle even though I haven't ridden one in several months.

Guys don't take the best routes in baseball one year, decline to average the next, and then resume being a great route-taker again in a third season. And I looked it up. I could find no record of Gutierrez being injured in 2010 and considering that he stole nine more bases in 2010 while being caught fewer times, it's highly unlikely that he was suffering from a speed deficiency. For all intents and purposes, he was the same guy. He played in the same stadium behind (mostly) the same pitching staff.

They didn't deserve those numbers because they don't make any sense. It's not as if Gutierrez went from running a 4.3 40 yard dash in 2009 to running a 5.4 40 yard dash in 2010. He was the same guy in 2010 that he was in 2009. If these metrics were awarding points on specific plays that had significant impact, that might be different. For example, let's pretend that Gutierrez "got lucky" in 2009 and was able to save three home runs and two bases loaded doubles worth a combined ten runs. The following year, he was only able to do that twice. Those ten runs were actually stopped by Gutierrez. Those plays happened. But the metrics don't track those plays. They track boolean results and award points to the play. There's no reason for that kind of fluctuation if the input data is accurate and even if there was a reason for that fluctuation, it puts into question the use of these metrics on a single-season basis, even for team play. As I mentioned earlier, when there are only seven significant positions to track on a baseball diamond defensively, 1-2 of those guys being waaaaaay outside the norm breaks the entire metric.

But don't you see how this could horribly skew team defense? What if a team has two +20 DRS outlier players that don't deserve those numbers? That's roughly 20% of the team's fielding that could skew +40 runs per season, or one run every four games. Yet we see people using these numbers as if they're gospel. When you're dealing with inaccuracies at the positional level over one season and there are only nine positions on a baseball diamond (of which only seven see consistent fielding opportunities), the potential for insane error margin isn't only high, it should be expected.

That, if anything, only validates my argument. "Gutierrez was historically good with the glove last year. Don't expect that to happen again." Why not? What could possibly happen over the course of two seasons to make a defender go from +30 runs to +0 runs?

I've read that before. It's flawed because it's comparing offense to defense. Guys fluctuate quite a bit on offense. We know that. Pitchers exploit a flaw in his swing, he gets into a rut, changes his swing, whatever. There are a million reasons why a hitter fluctuates from year to year, including luck, which we can track. All you have to do is look at the rampant speculation about Danny Santana's BABIP regression to see how we can determine offensive "luck". There should be virtually no fluctuation on defense unless the guy is injured or he ages. Defensive metrics should be more consistent than offensive metrics, not less. And if one guy can tack +30 runs to the team defense in a season and be considered possibly inaccurate, the entire metric breaks down. That's one run every 5.5 games.

Can someone explain the seasonal discrepancies of UZR (and all defensive metrics)? I've never had anything close to a satisfactory answer to this question (and I've read a lot about it). I think we can all agree (well, we should, anyway) that defense, being based mainly on athleticism and/or instinct, *should be* less prone to fluctuation than either offense or pitching. The guy can run and catch a ball faster than another guy or he can't. It's a pretty simple premise. Yet we have strange anomalies like this: Franklin Gutierrez. 2009: 1353.1 innings, 31.0 UZR, 32 DRS 2010: 1277.1 innings, 5.9 UZR, 0 DRS 2011: 763.0 innings, 16.0 UZR, 10 DRS Why are these kinds of metrics so prone to insane fluctuations on defense? Franklin was greatest centerfielder in baseball one season, completely average the next, and on his way back to greatest centerfielder the third (shortened) season. Gutierrez isn't unique in this regard. I see swings like this all over baseball on a yearly basis. For example, Torii Hunter went from +10 to -10 from season to season multiple times in his career. We're talking about one player saving 10-20 runs in a season, sliding all the way down to being a defensive liability the next, and then reverting back to his previous glory in a third season. Ian Kinsler is another one. Here are his DRS since 2008: -9, 22, 7, 18, 1, 11, 20. So he was an awful defender in 2008, became a rockstar in 2009, turned mediocre in 2010, was a rockstar again in 2011, and was completely "meh" in 2012 until climbing back up to rockstar status over two more years. How does this make sense to anyone? It's defies logic that a guy's defense could save one run every five games, decline to zero runs saved in 162 games the following season, and then go back to saving a run every 4-5 games the third season.

Except that "zones" are also decided by human beings and are prone to inaccuracy. Was the shift on? Did the defender run 20 or 26 feet to the ball? Was it a line drive or fly ball? How long did it hang in the air? How easily did he catch the ball or by what distance did he miss it? Couple all of that with the few chances on outlier plays to begin with and you have the recipe for a lot of bad data.

Absolutely. The use of the shift can be exactly quantified once we can establish the exact positioning of the player and how far he had to travel to reach (or not reach) the ball. The more quickly we can eliminate the Franklin Guitierrez defense metrics of the world, the better. More than either pitching or hitting, defense should be consistent from season to season (barring injury), yet we get weird outliers like Franklin posting a 32 DRS one season and a 0 DRS the next. Did somebody steal his cleats? Were his legs tied together? How do we explain away a guy losing 30 defensive runs in a season?

Bingo. As I've mentioned a few times, I have less issues with the parsing of the data than I do the collection of the data, which is why I'm so excited to see Field f/x implemented across baseball. Once we can track ball speed, height, and air time while also tracking the exact number of feet travelled by a defender to reach that ball's point of impact, I think we're going to see huge breakthroughs in defensive metrics. Because right now, we're just kinda guessing and there's the potential for a ton of human error in gauging whether Willingham ran 20 or 24 feet on that line drive (which is a huge discrepancy in the data, 20% margin there) and how badly he missed the ball (was it one foot or three feet, a monster discrepancy of up to 200%). How many opportunities does Willingham have like that during a game? One? That's ~150 outlier chances a season, which we would dismiss out of hand were it a hitting metric (RISP, for example). Once we start accumulating that data, we're going to have a much more concrete baseline (with most of human error removed from the data) of what equals an average, bad, or good defender.

I phrased that sentence really poorly. I'll just leave it at that. But that's only half the swing (and different metrics have different outputs). There's the "below average" side of that coin as well. For example, DRS: Best: Reds: 67 Worst: Indians: -75 A swing of 142 runs. Again, I struggle to buy into that number.

I expected a decline in AVG and SLG... What surprised me the most was that OBP-BA hasn't increased in a meaningful way.

Well, runs allowed are due to either defense or pitching (within a margin of ballpark error). Whether it's pitch framing, base-stealing, home runs, hits, or walks, either the pitcher or defense (or both) had control over the outcome of the play. I can't think of a situation where one of those two things didn't control the outcome of the at-bat (mostly the pitcher). If you forced me to put a number on it, I'd probably go with 34/66 for defense/pitching. There are simply so many plays that defense doesn't impact (SO, HR, HBP, BB) while a large portion of defensive plays are routine plays made by every defender in MLB. We're talking about a handful of plays a game that differentiate a great defense from a terrible one whereas a great pitching staff will take the defense out of the game entirely 3-4 more times than a bad pitching staff (going from a rough estimation of 5-6 K/9 compared to 8-9 K/9). For example, the Cleveland Indians recorded just shy of 1/3rd of their 2014 outs from the strikeout. That only leaves ~67% of all recorded outs up to the defense and a large portion of those outs are routine outs made by pretty much any defender in the league (particularly flyballs). My beef with defensive metrics is how they're recorded and how few outlier chances there are to glean meaningful data. Every outfielder will reach the same balls or won't reach the same balls... The margin of defense is a few feet (for example, Josh Willingham might be able to run 25 feet on a flyball to left-center while a better left fielder might make it 30 feet). With infielders, the margin is even smaller (often as little as a foot). The difference between a great defender and a bad defender are narrow strips of territory that circle the fringes of a position player's range. I can't buy into the fact that balls are so often hit to those narrow "outlier strips" of the field (as opposed to the rest of the field) that defense can have more influence on the game than pitching. It's not impossible that defense has more impact than pitching over the course of the season but it's contrary to what I see happening on the field on a daily basis.

Yeah, this. Times 1,000.

Ashbury, I agree. *attempts to like his own post*

Huh. I never would have guessed this going into the search but... In 1985, the AL OBP was .327. In 1987, the AL OBP was .333. In 2014, the AL OBP was .316. Wow, offense has really declined. Even in an age when the walk is king, the OBP is still way down from the mid-80s. isoD has not increased meaningfully in the past 30 years. Those differences are primarily average-driven.

Great article, Nick. We all want Meyer in the rotation but after outings like yesterday, it's apparent that work still needs to be done. If a guy is missing the glove by over half a foot several times in two innings, he's going to have a short, brutal experience in a MLB rotation. That's not "effectively wild". That's just "wild". Guys will swing at some of his pitches but they're also going to sit on a bunch of pitches, leaving Meyer with a ton of 4-5 inning starts even when he's effective.

And my point is that if they're using the words "runs" in the metric and attempt to quantify runs saved, the numbers should be close to what actually happens on the field in runs allowed. Again, if they want to call them Widgets, they can use any number they like... But they don't. They're trying to put a run value to the metrics and the numbers churned out are screwy. I could handle a few margin points here and there but not that kind of discrepancy.

Absolutely, there is a margin of error... but if I get a nagging feeling that margin is up to 50%, alarm bells start ringing in my head. As for the numbers, Fangraphs states that the Royals were 113 defensive runs (DRS, 40 to -73) better than the Twins in 2014, yet on the field they allowed an actual 153 less runs (777 to 624) on the season. Do we really believe the Royals pitching staff was worth only 40 runs over the Twins' staff in 2014?

Which I've mentioned a few times... In this past season, we had the luxury of watching a bottom AL team in both defense and pitching. So that's half the discrepancy shored up right there. The Twins gave up the most runs while having a bottom pitching staff and a bottom defense. Yay, Twins. Inversely, the Royals had a good pitching staff and great defense. The A's had a great pitching staff and a good defense. The numbers shouldn't be completely out of whack, yet they are.

I suppose my problems revolve around the seemingly arbitrary concept of a "run" in these metrics. They often don't align with actual runs scored on a baseball diamond. I started noticing this with WAR several years ago and it's been gnawing at me since that time. If you put it in relative terms... we'll call them "Widgets Above Replacement" and said the Royals were 120 Widgets better than the Twins and Oakland was 50 Widgets better than the Twins, I'd have a much easier time acknowledging that number as accurate. But when the Royals are 120 defensive runs better than the Twins while they only allowed ~150 (not looking this up, too bored) actual real-world runs less than the Twins, my eyes boggle because it simply isn't matching what happened on the field.

I'm questioning the metric's outliers, not "slamming them". And reel it in a bit. Unless you created this metric and have guardianship over it, there's no reason to get so upset that people don't buy into it 100%.

They're not directly comparable but when the Twins are both one of the worst pitching and worst defending teams in the same season, the numbers should start to align more closely. You still can't account for the upper team being a top team in both fielding and pitching but the numbers shouldn't be completely out of line.

Who is slamming them? We're questioning their accuracy because in a world where teams usually score within 200-250 runs of one another within a season, suggesting that defense (who has less input on plays than either pitching or offense) can make up half that number seems unreasonable. The guys who develop metrics are generally smart folks... but even smart folks get it wrong a bunch of the time, particularly when we're dealing with human error in the scoring of these metrics. Someday, we'll get to the point where a complex algorithm can track a 123 mph line drive to coordinates 254, 138 on the baseball field with a lift of 32 feet and air time of 2.3 seconds, tracking the fielder exactly 34 feet from point of impact when ball met wood. That's when real progress will be made with fielding metrics, not some guy/gal sitting in a box, saying "that was a 90%er... I think". Couple that potential scoring inconsistency with the infrequency of outlier defensive chances and you have a recipe for questionable data. IMO, the problem is with the data collection, not its parsing.

No, it doesn't admit that at all. It's questioning the validity of a metric that places a higher priority on defense than it does pitching when placed into real-world run scenarios, which doesn't pass any kind of smell test. That takes issue with the validity of a number, not whether defense has a significant impact on the game (as both Levi and I have stated multiple times now). In a world where the run allowed gap in the AL was ~200 runs last season, saying defense can account for 120 runs defies logic.