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jay

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Everything posted by jay

  1. jay
    FIP says the Royals staff was 45 runs better. DRS says the Royals defense was 113 runs better. Combined, 158 runs. Their real-world runs allowed difference was 153. Where's the screwy?
  2. jay
    FIP says their staff was 45 runs better. Royals FIP 3.69 (15th best in MLB) Twins FIP 3.97 (26th best in MLB)
  3. jay
    Again, those figures can't be accurately compared against each other. There are many more variables that went into their actual differential and it's skewing the picture. Use FIP or something else agnostic to compare pitching staff value to defensive value.
  4. jay
    And that's without accounting for any measurement error at the extremes in defense. Reduce that 147 by, say, 10% and you're at 38%/62%. Trying to drop it to something like 80 runs attributable to defense moves the split all the way to 27%/73%. Both feel within the range of reasonable, but not much higher or lower than that.
  5. jay
    Average AL FIP gap the last 4 years is 177. Average MLB FIP gap the last 4 years is 212. Using FIP, I think the MLB number is better. Average UZR/DRS MLB gap the last 4 years is 147. Do the math there and defense is 40% with pitching at 60%.
  6. jay
    Right, that's where the logic doesn't align. The best and worst team FIPs in 2014 (which for those less familiar is how many runs a pitcher should allow before accounting for luck and defense by calculating the outcomes he can control) shows a gap of 227 runs between the best AL team and the worst. A gap of 140 runs between the best and worst defense is not saying that defense is the cause of 140 of those 227 runs. They are completely separate. If we are comparing the two against each other, it'd be on the net whole of them both... 227 + 140. In that scenario, it's saying defense is 38% of the runs allowed equation while pitching is 62%. edit: this darn double-space thing is still eating me up. I can't help it.
  7. jay
    I probably would too, but then we end up in these debates. I think it would be more useful on a net whole to more people if they were weighted for an error range.
  8. jay
    Yeah, it's confusing the two and they aren't directly comparable. I've been trying to think through the correct logic, but can't quite put my finger on it. In any fashion, directly comparing a 200 real-world run gap (it's actually more like 250) to a 120 run gap in defenses doesn't actually work that easily.
  9. jay
    By the way, I'd like to see FG and other sites do that with their defensive metrics. Weight them towards the mean by whatever an appropriate measurement error would be.
  10. jay
    Let's say the plus end is something like +70 and the minus end is -70 (on average) -- for a difference of 140 runs. If we want to call the real difference 60 runs, we're saying the measurement error is extreme. I don't think it's perfect by any means, but I don't think it's quite that bad. Even if we reduce each of those extremes by 20%, we're still at a difference closer to 110.
  11. jay
    The extreme measurements on each end are inherently likely to be towards the extreme bounds of the measurement error range in their respective directions. I have no knowledge of how big those are calculated to be, but it makes sense that the real gap from one end to the other should be considered as some degree less than today's metrics show. I just don't know how much less... I'm totally comfortable with believing that range is closer to 90, 100, even a bit more... but that's me.
  12. jay
    Brock, I think you were looking at the AL difference in runs scored.... that's a very different matter than runs allowed when we're talking about defense.
  13. jay
    Where is that number coming from? The gap between the Twins (777) and Athletics (572) in runs allowed was 205 last year. But, why would we use the gap in AL teams for one year when we're looking at the gap in defenses across all of MLB? The average gap in runs allowed across MLB from 2011-2014 is 302. The average gap in runs allowed for just AL teams from 2011-2014 is 242. You know better than to use a sample size of one anyway...
  14. jay
    I think you make a valid point on outliers. They are the hardest to consider, hardest to fathom and hardest to believe (from an accurancy standpoint) all at once. If we remove the 5 best and 5 worst defenses from 2011-2014. UZR and DRS saw an average of 65 runs separating those remaining 20 teams. That's less than the half run per game being discussed. That's saying the difference between the 6th best defense and the 6th worst defense is equivalent to one single each game OR a double every other game OR the good defense preventing an extra base (hold a guy to a single instead of a double) and the bad defense allowing an extra base (stretch a single to a double) each game. Any of those singularly happening roughly calculates out to 65 runs across the entire season. Seems entirely reasonable to me.
  15. jay
    Which brings up an interesting point. Even just the defensive miscues that are reflected as the total of unearned runs shows a difference between the best and worst team defenses. That difference has averaged 46 runs over 2011-2014. And that's just on the blatant misplays categorized by a scorer as an error... It'd be pretty groan inducing for someone to try to tell me defense does less than that ancient measure.
  16. jay
    I can appreciate what you're trying to do there by simplifying and applying real scenarios, but I think you're leaving out a lot of places where defense impacts the outcome. A single is one possible outcome with the outfielder that let a ball fall in front of him that someone else would have caught or the infielder who let a ball get by that someone else would have stopped. However, you're also going to commonly have situations where that missed ball results in multiple bases, which have a significantly higher run expectation and add up much faster. You're also going to have situations where what would have been a single or double gets stretched into more due to lack of arm or range. Equally as important, the factor that is hard to consider in your simplified version is all the events that happen after an out is truly missed. We see this a portion of this in unearned runs, but I think we'd mostly all agree there's more to defense than errors.
  17. jay
    According to the linear weights you're referring to, I believe a half run a game is just an extra single in every game. That multplies your PA math by 3. Here's the link to tangotiger's work on linear weights, the scores for each event and the weighted average for each (based on the probability of each event): http://www.tangotiger.net/lwbymob.htm
  18. jay
    Started a poll here - http://twinsdaily.com/topic/17287-impact-of-defense/ Curious to hear your thoughts.
  19. jay
    Fangraphs recently released an article projecting the Twins defense to rank 29th in the league. The defense was widely regarded to be sub-par last year and it seems that most people agree the defense will be below-average again this year. The question becomes -- how much of an impact does that have? The projections from Fangraphs show a difference of 65 runs from the best defense to the worst. However, to paraphrase another poster, these types of projections are never going to show as much variation as end of year figures given that some teams will outperform and others will underperform. Projections aren't geared to capture the extremes. Two of the more common defensive measures, UZR and DRS, have calculated the difference between the best and the worst team defenses within the 2011-2014 time period to range from 113 runs to 195 runs. The average difference has been calculated as 147 runs. So, what say ye? Does that feel like too much, too little or just right? How much impact does defense have?
  20. jay
    With 12 position players, yes. 3 bench spots typically for a backup catcher, utility IF and 4th OF. That assumes a full-time DH in the AL, who can usually backup at 1B. With 13 position players (which we aren't used to), there's already a backup for each position in those spelled out above -- either directly or by shuffling. With 13 position players, I see more value in that extra guy being someone who can do something really well, situationally. Nunez is okay at a lot of things, but he isn't that guy.
  21. jay
    Interesting stuff, Doc. Nunez is fine as an end of the bench guy, but this quote is where I'd pass on having him on the Twins roster. The FIRST utility guy doesn't play all that much in the first place. I can't imagine a scenario where there's much value in having a second utility guy. If we're finally going to have an extra bench spot due to a 12-man pitching staff, why do you want to use that spot on a backup to the utility guy?
  22. jay
    Why force that at the MLB level in April? Wouldn't he and the Twins be better served by letting him do that at the AAA level, hopefully have success and then look to build on that in MLB?
  23. jay
    Those skills are valued. The issue is that Hicks still has some level of potential to be more than that and playing him in the weak side of a platoon gives up on that. If every last win was likely to matter this year, sure, platoon him. As is today, send him to AAA to face both sides and show he can be successful. If he can't do that at the AAA level, then I could buy in to platooning him.
  24. jay
    I would say there's a bigger group saying to trade Plouffe than there is saying to move Sano to the OF now. I wouldn't do either...
  25. jay
    Oh, and specifically on the topic of the thread.... Robinson is fine as the 4th OFer until Hicks or Buxton are ready to force Schafer to that role. With the possibility of injury or other underwhelming performance, he could even stick around in that role longer.
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