News Roundup: Let it Go, Nate
by Charlie Wilmoth on Apr 6, 2009 10:26 PM EDT
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Print-P- John Perrotto on Nate McLouth:
Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan wrote that McLouth, ''looks like a pumped-up fourth outfielder who had one good month.''
Baseball Info Solutions, using advanced metrics that give players a plus for making a difficult play in the field and a minus for failing to make an easy play, rated McLouth as the worst defensive player in the major leagues in 2008, his Gold Glove notwithstanding...
"As far as the defense, the National League managers and coaches voted me on to the Gold Glove team. Those are the guys who know the game. They certainly know more about defense than some stats professor from MIT."
Dear Nate,
While you're plainly not a "pumped-up fourth outfielder," and while Sheehan's comment is really strange given that you posted at least an .885 OPS in four different months last year, you really need to just ignore the numbers--or, better yet, learn from them by, for example, not playing so shallow. When you get defensive (heh) like that, it makes you look small, and you're so much better than the Shea Hillenbrands and Mike Jacobses of the world. Keep your head up. And back up fifteen feet or so.
Sincerely, Charlie
-P- Former Pirate farmhand Ronald Belisario made the Dodgers' Opening Day roster which, if you remember anything about Belisario's inexplicable stint on the 40-man roster, probably surprises you.
-P- Rob Neyer:
The Pirates probably are the one team in the majors most likely to lose 100 games.
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Playing Shallow
I read the interview with Nate on BP and came away with the distinct impression that it was the coaching staff that was telling him to play shallow, not a personal decision he was making.
“Oh yeah, there’s absolutely no question about it. I play shallow. That’s something we talk about every day in here. The percentage of balls that are hit shallow, and fall in, is a lot higher than the percentage of balls that are hit deep and get over a center fielder playing at normal depth. I play probably as shallow, if not shallower, than anyone else in the league. And that’s not saying anything good about me or anything, it’s just the way that the coaching staff prefers that I do it.”
I’m worried about the Pirates defense overall. Andy LaRoche made a couple errors yesterday, and McClouth and Morgan each had at least one awkward-looking misplay in the outfield. Last year’s Rays team showed how important defense can be in turning around a traditionally bad team.
Also, while I’m glad the Pirates won, did Nyjer have to get all those hits, thus guaranteeing himself an extra few weeks in the majors and delaying the time until we get to see McCutcheon in PNC park?
The only things affecting McCutchen's ETA...
…are the calendar and his own performance at AAA. If Morgan tanks, we’ll just see more Monroe/Hinske out there until Cutch is ready.
A lot of the stat-y writers have jumped on the Nate=4th OF meme.
Law was pushing it in his chat last week, too.
Needless to say, I think it’s a bad call.
More like the continuous circle-jerk that is most of sports media. Few, if any, original ideas whatsoever.
"Gimme an 'F' ! " - Country Joe MacDonald
by cocktailsfor2 on Apr 7, 2009 6:28 PM EDT up reply actions
In a way, it makes me think of the general dismissal of Andy LaRoche. His numbers so far in the majors make him look like Andy Marte II, but he played all last year following thumb surgery. The statheads all simply point to the numbers and ignore the possible impact of the surgery. I guess that just makes it too complicated and the statheads aren’t willing to say, “We really don’t know what his performance means at this point.” It’s easier just to say he sucks.
With Nate, we have Sheehan looking strictly at his numbers from 2008 and ignoring the fact that he hit pretty much the same in 2007, and also ignoring the fact that his swing has changed significantly. A couple years ago he had a pretty long. looping swing. It’s much shorter and more compact now. But it’s too complicated to take it all into account, so you just dismiss him based on the fact that his production last year was skewed toward the early season. It’s like saying that the real Adam LaRoche is either the miserable hitter we see every April or the outstanding hitter we see in the summer. Maybe the real Adam LaRoche is the guy we see in his overall numbers. And maybe the real McLouth is what we see in his overall numbers from the past two years.
good point
Sadly, with many prospects that’s an easier call. Players may project well as they develop, but many more wash out than make it. It’s one reason a good system has depth to go with the promising elite players. It’s easier to assume a player won’t make it than to assume he will.
If the Pirates had landed Andy Laroche last March rather than August, people would have been excited like it was a coup. I’m not willing to guarantee anyone’s success, but I’m willing to give him a fair shot while healthy. It would have been easy (and stupid) to write off Doumit when he was continually injured.
by chicos_pants on Apr 7, 2009 12:30 PM EDT up reply actions
What should he say?
From an OF’s standpoint, it can be hard to finish “I need to work on…”. It’s much different than offense. Poor strike zone judgment is easily seen in numbers, but also easily felt by a batter during at AB. Defensively, a bad jump is more esoteric unless it’s obvious. When you ran all year as fast as you could, it’s hard to say, “yeah, I need to work on my range. Clearly.”
And I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s come up. And with guys like Law saying ridiculous things like Nate’s an abysmal fielder, “deal with it,” it’s easy to want to strike back.
Chris Duncan is an abysmal fielder. Jose Canseco was an abysmal fielder. Many late-career bad-bodies were abysmal fielders. Nate McLouth is not an abysmal fielder.
And I’m already fired up to go to the mat arguing how defense is rather quickly becoming overstated. Probably due mainly to the 2008 Rays. The removal of game context from the impact of defense on the game already skews a player’s year-long defensive metrics.
Yeah, I’m beginning to agree with your last paragraph. There’s a ton of variance year-to-year that no one seems to want to engage with. Take the Baseball Prospectus fielding numbers in their annual, for example—about half the time it seems like they’re just drawn out of a hat. I think defensive metrics have value, but you have to be careful in how you apply them.
Usually the metric I like is defensive efficiency, because it’s applied to entire team, so some of the variance is smoothed out.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Apr 7, 2009 2:10 PM EDT up reply actions
BP metrics
How does BP quantify their fielding numbers? It may be useful to chart batted balls in play, but it seems heavily dependent on context. Does Nate get dinged here for being positioned where his coaches tell him? How do you measure one guy when there are dependencies out of his control?
It almost seems necessary to visually review every play in every game, maybe by viewing a compressed game with overall defensive positioning combined with a pitcher’s approach to each individual batter.
I know John Dewan’s system, which grades McLouth poorly, actually is based on someone sitting and watching every play.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Apr 7, 2009 4:18 PM EDT up reply actions
So Then Dewan's System ...
depends entirely on the baseball knowledge of the person that is watching.
Not so much, no.
They’re just assessing locations and trajectories of BIP, not making determinations of good/bad plays.
To the extent you ever see anybody talk about it, there seems to be a lot of agreement that UZR (awful name, sounds like a video game) is the best measure. Just eyeballing at some of the UZR figures at fangraph, there seemed to be generally smaller numbers than Dewan or BP produce. In other words, it seems to show the players closer together in ability. (It also tended to be more favorable to Pirate players, which is interesting.) Assuming my totally unscientific impression was correct, that would argue that some of the fielding metrics are overstated.
by WTM on Apr 7, 2009 6:19 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Statistically speaking, fielding metrics are useless. There are way too many variables. How to you quantify weather, coach positioning, injury, ballpark layout, etc? How can you trust anyones metrics for a fielder who was the worst in ’08 yet managed to win a Gold Glove? Baseball is a stats game, but some things are just not quantifiable.
That's not "useless".
That’s “useful, with some degree of variance in the results (so leave some wiggle room in your conclusions)”.
MLB teams apparently don’t think they’re useless, since most are using them now.
by WTM on Apr 8, 2009 1:03 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah I agree on the whole sports media just recycling what each other say so it must be true, the average sports writer knows very little about baseball…much less so than the average fan writing on a site such as this.
Its pretty ridiculous to say McLouth is a pumped up fourth outfielder, I do think that he is a bad defensive CF at the moment but he is still young, has a good arm and is fast so will likely either improve or make an excellent corner outfielder.
He should not have won a gold glove last year…the only pirate who deserved one would be Jack Wilson.
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