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Balancing offense and defense

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In 2008 the Seattle Mariners lost 101 games. They had just two hitters who cleared a .330 OBP, and just one pitcher who made 20 starts with an ERA below 4.69. The team was a shambles and ownership knew it, firing GM Bill Bavasi mid-season. Yet in 2009, after GM Jack Zduriencik’s first off-season, the team added 24 wins to its ledger. This time they had just four players who cleared an OBP of .330. So how did the Mariners do so well?

Anyone paying attention knows the story. Instead of looking for highly regarded offensive players, Zduriencik and his staff sought the best defensive players. Baseball games are won, after all, by outscoring your opponents, and a team can accomplish this by either adding runs on their side or subtracting runs from their opponent’s side. The Mariners chose the latter, and went from allowing the fourth most runs in the AL in 2008 to allowing the fewest, by 40 runs, in 2009.

Yet, not a whole ton changed in the Mariners rotation. They had many of the same pitchers pitching a similar number of innings as 2008. The big mutation came on the defensive side of the ball, where they assembled a top flight group of players who could turn batted balls into outs. This included an outfield featuring Franklin Gutierrez, baseball’s best center fielder last season, and Ichiro, plus Endy Chavez in the first half and Ryan Langerhans in the second, both above average defenders. Their infield defense went from good to better as well, as they replaced the weakest link, Yuniesky Betancourt.

It seems that other teams have caught on, adding more defensive-minded players this off-season. The Red Sox let Jason Bay walk so they could sign the cheaper and defensively superior Mike Cameron, and then picked up Adrian Beltre to man third. The Yankees let Johnny Damon walk in favor of giving playing time to Brett Gardner and Randy Winn, inferior offensive players but far better at running down fly balls. Yet the Yankees hold an advantage over both the Mariners and the Red Sox: they still have a powerful offensive core.

The Mariners, as we know, still do not have a terribly powerful offense. They might have improved, though losing Russ Branyan’s production certainly hurts a bit. The Red Sox have a far better offensive team, but their core players do not match those of the Yankees. Martinez and Youkilis compose a solid 3-4 combo, but they’re no Teixeira-Rodriguez. Dustin Pedroia is a very good leadoff hitter, but he’s no Derek Jeter — and the gap extends even further if Ellsbury mans the leadoff spot. So while the Red Sox might prevent a few more runs, the Yankees figure to score quite a few more.

This I like, because it represents a balanced approach. The Yankees can afford to go defense in the outfield, particularly left field, because they already have a strong core of offensive players. The Red Sox chose to go defense in the outfield as well, but they will do it to the peril of their offense. Make no mistake, however: the Red Sox will do very well next season, despite what some pot-stirrer says. But I like the Yankees chances better. They’ve minded the defense, but only because they already possess a monstrous 3-4 combo and an exemplary leadoff hitter. The Red Sox, defensively savvy as they may be, just don’t have that core.

Implicit advice to Posada regarding Joba

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While Jorge Posada’s compatibility with A.J. Burnett came into question during the 2009 season, that’s not the only pitcher-catcher combo on which we commented. Jorge also had a hard time working with Joba Chamberlain, though many of us pinned that on the younger of the pair. That was understandable. Joba spent too much time shaking off Jorge’s calls, and not enough time throwing strikes.

In his blog entry today, Buster Olney points us to the blog of former catcher Brent Mayne, who has been writing about catching. It’s promotion for his book on the subject, but he does offer up useful tips for catchers. Today has to do with the basics of setting up around the plate. His advice for catchers:

This is how you can help. Work fast. Put the signs down quickly and intuitively. Get the pitcher in a good tempo and remember the less time he has to think, the better. DO NOT set up too far on the corners! Unless your pitcher’s name is Greg Maddux or Cliff Lee, setting up away from the plate is an excellent recipe for a walk-a-thon. Only split the corners of the plate with your crouch when you are way ahead in the count. Make the pitcher throw good low strikes yielding weak ground balls. Set up around the plate and make the offense put the ball in play right now.

Easier said than done, of course, and your pitcher can always mess up the rhythm by shaking off too many signs. Still, it’s advice I like. Whether it actually works I’m not sure. But I’d feel a lot better about Joba if Posada handled him like this.

The stats we use: UZR

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Have you ever read an article on this site, only to encounter a strange acronym that you don’t understand? For the most part they’re either inside jokes or advanced metrics. The increasing amount of data available makes it easier for us to take raw numbers and put them into context, allowing us the ability to compare players using stats that give us not only numbers, but context. These advanced stats tell us not one thing — OBP, for instance, tells us just one thing and ignores other factors — but many things that go into a player’s value.

Over the next week or so we’ll discuss the most commonly used stats on this site. Many of these require heavy math, and we know that can turn off many people. This series of articles will attempt to explain what goes into these stats without getting into any of the heavy math. We’ll include as many resources as possible, however, in case you want to dive into the calculations yourself. By the end of the series, we’ll replace our woefully outdated and partly inaccurate guide to stats.

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Looking at defensive stats

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The past two years have shown us that the latest market inefficiency in baseball is clearly defense. Actually, that’s incorrect. The last market inefficiency was defense, because now everyone is on to it and soon enough something else will be undervalued. Jack Zduriencik’s Seattle Mariners are the poster child for improving defense (even though Billy Beane beat him to it), as we watched his team improve by 24 wins in 2009 despite scoring 31 fewer runs than 2008. They went from a team that allowed 5.01 runs per game in 2008 to a team that allowed 4.27 runs per game in 2009, improving their run differential by a net of 88 runs.

Evaluating defense has come a long way from the days of fielding percentage and errors, as more advanced statistics can more precisely measure the difficulty of a play based on where and how hard the ball was hit. In a piece for MLB.com, Doug Miller chronicles all of the newfangled defensive stats being used today, speaking to both the developers of various defensive statistics as well as team officials. Allow me to excerpt at length:

One of the pioneers of these stats, “The Fielding Bible” author John Dewan, says it all seems complex, but it isn’t. Dewan’s main stats, the DRS metric and Plus/Minus, are the result of logical data culled from comprehensive, painstaking attention to detail throughout a Major League season.

Simply put, Dewan’s company, Baseball Info Solutions, has upwards of 2,000 “scouts” who pore over video of every game played in the course of a 162-game MLB season and track each batted ball, analyzing how hard the balls are hit, how close or far they are from each fielder deemed to be responsible for making the play, and the result of what said defender does.

Many factors go into the point totals, including adjustments for things like stadium dimensions, wall height and even the occasional bonus points for home-run-saving catches.

Successful plays are awarded with a positive point total, points are subtracted for perceived failures, and the scores are added up and equated to “runs saved” throughout a year. Dewan and most other defensive-stat purveyors tend to agree that 10 runs saved equals one win over the course of a season.

“For Boston last year at third base, for example, Mike Lowell, who was unable to move well because of injury, cost them 20 runs, and now they have Adrian Beltre, and he added about 20 runs,” Dewan explains. “Right there, the Red Sox have added four wins. Plus they’ve added three wins at short with Marco Scutaro and a couple more in the outfield with Mike Cameron. It’s a huge improvement.”

UZR, developed by Mitchel Lichtman, is similar to DRS in its variables such as park adjustment, and to Dewan’s Plus/Minus in the sense that its scores are based on how often each defensive player is better than average on balls hit into their specific “zones” on the field.

Gutierrez, for example, led baseball with a UZR score of 29.1, while Aaron Rowand of the San Francisco Giants was one of the lowest-ranked center fielders in the game with a UZR of 1.3.

“Gutierrez had as much to do with our success as anybody last year,” Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said. “He made our outfield better, he made our pitching staff better, he made our whole club better.”

For Dewan, Lichtman and David Pinto, who came up with the similar PMR metric, watching the Mariners improve by 24 games gave strong evidence that these stats are legit and the old methods of ranking defense, fielding percentage and range factor, are becoming antiquated.

Of course, defensive stats are far from perfect, just like offensive and pitching stats aren’t perfect either. Moshe Mandel at TYU pointed out the uncertainty of UZR given the naturally small sample sizes of defensive chances (think about how many balls a given fielder actually makes a play on in a game), and suggests a weighted system based on about three years of data. Jeff Zimmerman at Beyond The Box Score used a similar system and four years data to create UZR projections for 2010, which project the Yanks’ to be a below average defensive team next year (disclaimer: this was long before any major moves were made this offseason).

The more information used to make an evaluation, the better. By no means should statistics replace scouts, because there’s far too much information stats can’t measure. A spreadsheet won’t tell you if a hitter is losing bat speed (though they could suggest it), nor will they tell you that the guy throwing 97 is at risk for injury because his mechanics are deeply flawed. However, at the same time a scout’s eye won’t tell you that Nick Swisher’s down year in 2008 was a function of bad luck more so than declining skills.

The statistics born out of the game of baseball, just like the game itself, continue to evolve. What we have in UZR, +/-, RZR, PMR and the like are the most advanced defensive metrics ever available. They’re not perfect and they suffer from the same sample size issues as do the more traditional stats, but we’d be foolish to ignore them just because the don’t agree with what our eyes tell us. Like the dude from Memento said, “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.” Statistics are facts.

Frankly, we’ve only seen the tip of the defensive metric iceberg, just wait until HitFX and this monster get fully implemented.

Photo Credit: David J. Phillip, AP

Is Johnny Damon really that bad on defense?

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Johnny Damon went through a transition in 2007. He left Spring Training pondering retirement. While nothing came of that, he faced many problems early in the season. By the end of April he was hitting .229/.349/.329, a far cry from his impressive pinstriped debut a year earlier. He then battled calf issues in May, eventually missing a few games at the end of the month, but ultimately missing the disabled list. By June, Joe Torre had seen enough. He installed Melky Cabrera as the everyday center fielder, relegating Damon mostly to designated hitter duties — made easier because of Jason Giambi’s foot injury. Damon played just 10 games in center field from June through September.

After spending most of June and July as a one-way player, Damon started seeing more time in left field later in the season. This made sense. Johnny was, by reputation, a good defender in center field. Having to cover less ground in left field, Damon could be a defensive asset to the Yankees. According to UZR, he was. In 271 innings over the season’s final two months, Damon accumulated a 7.5 UZR. That stood in contrast to his numbers in center field, -7.6 in 377 innings in 2007. It also brought to light Damon’s UZR deficiency in center field — he’d been in the negatives since 2003.

When Joe Girardi took over in 2008, it was clear Damon would play left field every day. His bat played well enough for left field, and his range at that position would give the Yankees a boost on defense. Sure enough, Damon posted another great defensive season according to UZR, posting a 6.7 mark (11.6 per 150) in 659.1 innings in left field. Because the team struggled to score runs, and because they demoted Melky Cabrera in August, Damon slid over to center for 285 innings, and again posted a negative UZR figure, -7.8. Damon clearly wasn’t a good center field option for 2009, but it stood to reason that he’d once again be an asset in left.

The plan didn’t work out how the Yankees expected. From the start Damon looked shaky in left field. That he dropped a few balls early in the season, including in a June game against the Red Sox, did him no favors with the fans. Soon after the drop against the Sox Damon revealed he was having eye trouble, a “fluttering” issue that doctors connected to his caffeine intake. Still, fans tend to remember players who drop fly balls. No one forgot Damon’s infractions.

Not only was there visual evidence of Johnny’s deficiencies in left field, but the go-to defensive stat, Ultimate Zone Rating, ranked Damon among the worst left fielders in the game. After posting a 11.6 UZR/150 in 2008, Damon fell into the negatives in 2009. He ended with a -12.1 per 150 mark in 2009, which seems to confirm the eyeball test. Damon just wasn’t that good in the field in 2009, and at age 36 it’s difficult to project an improvement for 2010.

Still, it’s possible that Damon wasn’t as bad in the field as fans and UZR say. A fan’s opinion is often skewed by a few standout memories, and nothing stood out about Damon’s defense more than his dropped balls and “happy feet” as he got under fly balls. That will leave a negative impression for sure. And while it might be the best known measure of defense — at least of those publicly available — UZR has its shortcomings as well. For instance, it rated Juan Rivera, Carlos Lee, and Raul Ibanez in the positives this season. Those aren’t three players generally considerd good defenders.

I haven’t seen many scouts comment on Johnny Damon’s defense, and even so I’m not inclined to believe an anonymous scout quoted for an article. We’ve seen that too many times, and it often seems like the opinion offered is not of a consensus, but rather just the quote that best fit the writer’s article. The closest thing I’ve seen is Tangotiger’s Fan Scouting Report. The idea is to get a good feel for a player’s defense through a huge sampling of fans. Yet that system seems flawed, though that could just be from underexposure. Damon ranked fairly low on the left field scale, ahead of only the players with terrible defensive reputations: Ibanez, Alfonso Soriano, Manny Ramires, and Delmon Young, etc.

There is one more defensive statistic to consider, and it’s a bit more kind to Damon than UZR. Revised Zone Rating, developed by John Dewan. Like all defensive stats it has its ups and downs, but Dewan did some hard work concocting this metric. There are two aspects to consider. First is the straight RZR, or how well a fielder did on balls hit into his zone. Damon’s mark in 2009 was .906. For context, Carl Crawford, tops in UZR, was at .914. The top left fielder in the league was David DeJesus, at .927. Of course, criticism will flow because Ryan Braun, considered a poor defender by scouts and by UZR, ranked second at .919. Damon ranked fourth in the majors.

The other aspect of RZR is OOZ, plays made out of the player’s zone. This is an important aspect. Players might be able to make all the plays within his zone, but it takes a very good fielder to make plays on balls outside his zone. Crawford is king in this stat, making 105 plays outside his territory. DeJesus follows, and Braun ranks fourth. Again, this will open the number to criticism. In any case, Damon ranks 11th in this stat, making 46 plays out of his zone. The only players below him with 1,000 or more innings in left field are Garret Anderson, Raul Ibanez, and Chris Coghlan.

It appears that any way we look at it, Johnny Damon was not a good fielder in 2009. This came as a surprise during the season, since Damon was so good in left field just a year before. We know, however, that certain skills decline with age, and by most measures Damon’s fielding range dropped off a cliff. This is no guarantee that he’ll continue to patrol the outfield poorly in 2010, but given his age it’s not wise to predict a turnaround.

The best we can hope for, I think, is that some component of UZR unfairly judged Damon, and that fan sentiment towards his defense was skewed by a few egregious plays early in the season. RZR didn’t think that poorly of Damon in 2009, and I thought that while his range wasn’t quite what I remembered it, it wasn’t as bad as the general perception. Damon is no longer a superior defensive outfielder, but I think that given an opportunity to start 75, 80 percent of games, he can patrol his position serviceably in 2010.

Photo credit: Associated Press

2010 UZR Projections and the Yankees

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Johnny Damon taking a header in the World SeriesProjection season is upon us, folks. Bill James’ 2010 projections have already been posted on individual player pages at FanGraphs, and CHONE’s batter projections hit the interwebs yesterday. Instead of talking about projected offense today, I’m going to change gears and focus on projected defense. Jeff Zimmerman at Beyond the Box Score created weighted UZR projections for the 2010 season based on the last four years of data, and I can’t remember ever seeing advanced defensive metric projections before (though I’m sure they’re out there).

I’m not going to bother to explain Jeff’s methodology, but all of the math is explained here. The individual projections can be found in this big Google Spreadsheet. Let’s kick off this post by taking a look at the projections for the players that we can assume will be back in pinstripes next year, and how they compare to last year’s UZR.

Position 2009 UZR Projected 2010 UZR
Mark Teixeira 1B -3.7 +0.6
Robinson Cano 2B -5.2 -1.7
Derek Jeter SS +6.6 -1.9
Alex Rodriguez 3B -8.6 -3.8
Brett Gardner CF +7.2 +3.7
Melky Cabrera LF -2.5 +0.9
Melky Cabrera CF +1.4 -1.9
Melky Cabrera RF -0.5 -0.1
Nick Swisher LF -0.5 +0.7
Nick Swisher RF -0.7 +0.4

There’s more red than black, but the  good news is that in general, the projections see most of the Yankee regulars improving in 2010 (Jeter, Gardner, and Melky in center being the notable exceptions). Pitcher and catcher defense is so hard to quantity that UZR doesn’t even bother to try, hence Jorge Posada’s exclusion. As a team, the Yanks had a -18.5 UZR this season, 8th best in the AL and 19th best overall, so an improvement would be pretty sweet.

The only position in the field the Yankees have to fill this offseason is leftfield, and Johnny Damon has to be considered the odds on favorite to fill that vacancy. The incumbent leftfielder had a -9.2 UZR last season, a drop of nearly 16 runs from the year before and 17 runs the year before that. It was noticable watching the games too, as every routine fly to left in 2009 seemed like an adventure. Zimmerman projects Damon to bounce back to -2.1 UZR in 2010, which would be a welcome improvement.

If Damon doesn’t return, my personal choice to replace him would be Mike Cameron, who hasn’t played leftfield in the big leagues since 2000 and has just 9.2 career innings at the position. Regardless, it would be a waste to use him in left, because his centerfield defense is still very good. Cameron put up a +10.3 UZR in center in 2009, and projects to post a +3.9 UZR next year. Assuming Melky slides over to left to make room for Cameron, you’re looking at a combined +4.8 UZR between left and center in 2010. If you instead have Damon in left and Melky in center, it would be -2.2. Hell, even if it was Damon and Gardner, it would be +1.6 UZR between the two positions. Cameron and Melky would clearly be the best defensive alignment in this scenario.

Moving on to actual leftfielders, the two big names are obviously Matt Holliday and Jason Bay. Holliday projects to post a +4.9 UZR in left next year after +5.7 this year. Bay projects to have a -9.8 UZR next year, which is actually an improvement over this year’s -13.0 mark. The guy is just awful in the field. Whoever signs him for huge money and three or four or however many years is going to regret it by year three.

A Holliday and Melky arrangement would be good for +3.0 UZR in 2010, Bay and Melky an unsightly -11.7. Replace Melky with Brett the Jet, and you’re looking at combined UZR’s of +8.6 and -6.1, respectively. Matt Holliday would clearly be the best defensive option in leftfield among free agents for the Yanks, although factoring contracts, adding Cameron and sliding Gardbrera to left would be more cost efficient.

Of course, if the Yanks really want to go big for leftfield defense, the answer is trading for Carl Crawford. The Other CC has long been the best defensive leftfielder in the game (he leads all LF in UZR over the last two years, and has ranked either first or second every season since 2003 with just one exception), and he projects to put up a +10.6 UZR next year, the best at the position. Whether or not the Yankees decide to part with a few quality young players to get him is another story all together, I’m just making an observation about Crawford’s defense.

By no means are those the only leftfield options for the Yanks, they’re just the most discussed options. They could bring Xavier Nady back (projects to have a -1.9 UZR next year) and hope the elbow holds up, but that’s quite a risk. Neither Mark DeRosa or Chone Figgins played enough leftfield over the last four years to qualify for the projections (minimum 63 games), though DeRosa projects to have a +2.7 UZR in right while Figgins projects to -2.7 in center. Rick Ankiel projects to have a -2.4 UZR in center but doesn’t qualify for left, while Marlon Byrd projects to have +0.8, -0.8, and +1.0 UZR’s going left to right. A trade for David DeJesus would bring a studly +8.9 UZR to leftfield in 2010.

Obviously defense is only half the equation when it comes to evaluating a players worth, or maybe even less depending on how you feel (a run saved is as good as a run scored in my book), otherwise Randy Winn and his projected +2.5, -1.1, and +8.8 UZR’s in the outfield (going left to right) would make a lot of sense for the Yanks. However his .262-.318-.353 batting line with a .302 wOBA (fifth worst among all outfielders) in 2009 scream “STAY AWAY!” Ditto Endy Chavez and his projected +3.1 UZR in left and .300 career wOBA.

Remember, these are just projections for one year. UZR is best used with multiple year samples, however we’re all guilty of referring to one year totals to prove a point. Zimmerman’s projections are just that: projections. Just an educated guess at what might happen in the future, so don’t take them as gospel. Sure would be nice to see the defense improve again next year, though.

Photo Credit: Tim Shaffer, Reuters

Jeter, Teixeira take home Gold Gloves

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Although the Gold Glove award is one of the least objective awards handed out in baseball, it’s still some postseason hardware, and considering the Yanks’ defensive woes in recent years, it’s nice to see some Bombers win. Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira have both taken home Gold Glove awards today for their respective decisions. Jeter, not known for his defense, some improved range at short this year and now owns four Gold Gloves. This is Teixeira’s third. The rest of the winners and, eventually, the voting results can be found here at MLB.com.