Defense Doesn't Win Championships...in MLB
by Danatural08 on Jan 7, 2009 4:09 AM EST
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PrintMy disclaimer: I love this site, it's a great forum that gives the opportunity to the small market of diehard Buccos fans to share info and give insight, and I greatly appreciate the time the writers put into keeping it updated. I check it every day in routine that inclues DKs blog and WHYGAVS, as I'm sure many other readers do.
My one problem with some of the recent posts is the insistance that our defense last year was a large part of the problem last year, mostly hinting due to Bay and Nady being regarded as below average defenders, and placing some of the pitchers bad results on them. My problem is not really with the writers, it's more with the statistical analysis of defense efficiency they use to state their case. I'm not a stats geek, and I'm too lazy to try to find them at this hour, so I don't have any of the numbers used, but I am a baseball player, and I understand the game inside and out. I also watched about 95% of the games last year, and out of my judgement those two guys had nothing to do with the pitchers struggles. According to those same statistical analysis, McClouth was not that great of a CF, because he didn't have great range. I can tell you an OutFielder's positioning,throwing to the right person, and route to the ball are all way more important than their speed is, and I can only recall a very few amount of times Nady, McClouth and Bay took bad routes to the ball, they rarely missed cutoff men, so that leaves positioning to the coaches and the scouting reports. If you want to argue their speed, I don't buy that either. What's the difference between the fastest player in the league and Bay/Nady in a 20 yard sprint, maybe .3 of a second, which is about 1 to 1.5 step lengths. The motto of every defensive player is to make Every routine play, and to make Some great plays. The infielders did not do a good job of making the routine plays, as they are somewhat to blame.The problem with the defense last year were too many long innings, pitchers missing their spots(which is vital to the defensive positioning) and too many baserunners, the pitchers are the ones to blame, they put too much pressure on the defense hoping to get bailed out.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the managing editor (Charlie) or SB Nation. FanPosts are written by Bucs Dugout readers.
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Sure it does
Sure, positioning and such is important, but you can only position a player so well. After that, a skilled defensive player can get to a few more than an unskilled defensive player. Besides, a lot of defensive metrics take positioning into account (or, rather, just ignore it and include it in overall range). I think Dewan’s plus/minus is an example of one where a player missing a cutoff man will get penalized. Defense is one of the key ingredients in the special sauce: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5541 . As more anecdotal evidence, check out the difference between the ’07 Rays and ’08 Rays.
Really, there isn’t an area the Pirates couldn’t afford to improve in. But when you have the highest batting average on balls in play in the league, defense might want to be one of your priorities.
Btw, it is “McLouth” not “McClouth” – why can’t people spell our lone All-Star’s name right? He’s no Samardzija or Saltalamacchia.
For example, I believe Zone Rating just takes into account the areas of the field where a player should be able to make plays, regardless of where he is positioned. Thus, a player who is well positioned should be able to make more plays and increase his Zone Rating. For more on Zone Rating, you can see a THT article here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/what-is-zone-rating/
I don't think that's a logical conclusion
Playing a shift might boost OOZ plays, but balls hit in the standard zone that aren’t fielded go as a negative however that is expressed in the particular system.
I think
the problem is more with infield defense than with outfield defense. Infield defense does make a big difference with the infamous “soft tossing” ground ball pitchers. The theory that pitchers have much less control over the quality of balls put in play is generally accepted.
The thing with outfield defense is that the general public tends to overlook defensive abilities of power hitters (see Pujols’ Gold Gloves). Also, the stat-minded community might underestimate defense because there isn’t a reliable metric yet. So I guess our outfielders get more blame than they should, but overall defense is very important.
Too dumb for Baseball Prospectus, too smart for ESPN
Infield vs. outfield
Using David Pinto’s defensive ratings, the only pitcher in the Pirates’ staff that benefited from the defense last year was Maholm and he has the highest groundball ratio of any of our starters. Duke, with the second highest groundball ratio was second. Snell and Gorzo, who give up a ton of flyballs in comparison to the other two, got destroyed by our D in comparison.
http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/030232.php
It’s not definitive, but I think it points to the bigger problem with the defense being in the outfield.
http://www.whygavs.com
http://mlb.fanhouse.com
You're right on one thing.
The infielders last year didn’t exactly set the world on fire, either. Bautista was below average, as always, and we could’ve done with a lot less of Luis Rivas in the field.
That said, you’re missing a big part of the problem with Nate’s defense in center. Range isn’t just a function of foot speed and acceleration. It’s also a function of reaction time, and he doesn’t get very quick reads on balls. By the time he starts running after a gap shot, a plus defender would’ve already taken three or four steps, and sometimes that’s the difference between making a play and not making one.
I've been meaning to do a fanpost that included this point
But I’ll casually throw it out here (and duck). The Pirates were 10-11 in games Rivas started at SS.
Don't draw conclusions from tiny samples.
At that level of granularity, it doesn’t mean anything.
Sure, they won some games when he played short. By my quick count, they were 10-11 in the games he started at 2B, too. He still played like crap in most of those games and put the team in a hole – he doesn’t deserve extra credit just because his teammates were able to bail him out.
He hit significantly better as a starter – and still only managed a .242/.300/.358 line in all games he started, with bad defense and terrible clutch numbers (.136/.220/.182 in “high leverage” situations). They weren’t winning because of him, they were doing it in spite of him.
Not my point
I didn’t mean to credit him. I noted it in the context of this thread, which is about the importance of defense. And since we all seem to agree he was abysmal in the field, and for that matter at the plate, I just thought it was interesting, ironic perhaps, that our record with him in the lineup wasn’t abysmal. I looked at it quite a while ago but I think even Bixler’s W-L was respectably mediocre when he started. And I think he sucks.
Lots of other factors, small sample, opponents, etc., I get it. I wasn’t sayin’ I was just sayin’.
Oh, yeah, OK.
If you mean that it’s just kind of funny the way things turned out, it definitely is. I thought you were trying to make a point about his quality of play – my apologies.
I'm going off
what I’ve seen from the games. Vlad is right, that I left off getting a good jump is more important than overall speed(see Nyjer), but I felt the outfielders did a very adequate job in their jumps. Give me 5 instances where they didn’t take good routes, or get good jumps and I’ll give you 50 instances where the pitchers fell behind a batter in a count and gave the batter a cockshot laced into the gap. Given Pat’s statistic above, where Maholm and Duke benefited from the defense, meaning since they’re ground ball pitchers they benefited from our infielders just proves my point. This was the same infielders that included our SS’s booting the ball around the field(including Jack), Andy “scared of the ball” Laroche at 3rd, and Clubby Sanchez at 2nd. The reason Snell and Gorzo didn’t benefit from the defense was because they were too often giving good pitches to hit. Don’t get me wrong, I do think defense is a key ingredient to winning, but a good defense starts with pitchers getting ahead of the batters, and hitting their spots.
This point has not been stressed enough
BABIP (and Defensive Efficiency) are going to be terrible on a team that leads the league in walks. To quote Keith Isley, “Probabilities for a well-hit liner or fly are highest with the pitcher behind.” I don’t know of any data to support this, but I also suspect that the chance of a hard-hit ground ball are also higher. The fastest way for the PBC to improve its defensive efficiency would be to throw more strikes and get ahead of more batters.
Viva Clemente!
"I don't know of any data to support this"
At bb-ref you can see the BAAs for the various pitch counts. Don’t think they list DER or line drive/fly ball rates too, but if you see a .412 BA with a 2-1 count you can pretty much guess.
Ah, but...
…we already have LD% for the team’s guys on file. As such, any cost from being behind in the count is already reflected in any advanced defense-independent numbers, which consider G/L/F rates when making their adjustments.
Several of our pitchers have high LD%s… but not high enough to account for the defensive issues by themselves.
We'll never agree on this
If I made a list like Charlie did, of “things I believe”, many would be the same, and probably the same as yours Vlad. But I know one that wouldn’t. I don’t know where I’d rank it but,
- All flyballs are not created equal.
##A All ground balls are not created equal.
##B All liners are not created equal.
We aren't saying that all ground balls are equal.
We’re saying that, over the course of a full modern ML season, the aggregate difficulty of two groups of ground balls for two different pitchers will tend to approach each other with increasing playing time.*
*For all but a few exceptions, such as knuckleballers/sidearmers. And maybe Tom Glavine.
There's another factor as well
Infielders have to adjust their positions when there are runners on base. The classic is playing at double play depth, which allows you to turn the double play but makes it harder to get to some balls that would be outs with no one on.
Viva Clemente!
great defense
makes pitchers look better. These pitchers then become attractive trading chips to other teams. And conversely pitchers can be harmed by bad fielding and their trade value drops. Defense may not ultimately win championships on its own, but it helps tremendously with trade value, and, usually, is much cheaper to purchase than offense.
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