UZR clarified
Okay, so, Derek beat me to the announcement that we’ve started carrying UZR data over at FanGraphs. It’s pretty awesome, and hopefully, if you’re not already reading FanGraphs every day, you will start.
Leading up to the launch, I wrote a few articles about understanding defensive statistics and practically applying them. Not to be too self promoting, but I think you should read those. Defensive statistics cannot be viewed the same way as offensive statistics, and I try to make that clear in those posts.
For instance, in the comments of the last two sections, we’re seeing a lot of stuff that refers to Betancourt as “the worst defensive infielder” because his UZR/150 was -14.7 last year. However, you simply can’t make a claim like that. Here’s why:
1. UZR had Betancourt at -15 runs below an average shortstop in 2008. Shortstops are far and away the best defensive players in the game. His peer group is great defenders, which is just not true for 2B, 3B, or especially 1B. A -15 mark at SS is not the same thing as a -15 mark at another position.
2. Sample size – you cannot make concrete statements about a player’s true talent defensive level based on one season’s worth of data. Realistically, you need about 2,000 to 3,000 innings to eliminate enough of the variance to make a good judgment call. On it’s own, Betancourt’s -14.7 doesn’t mean an awful lot, and it certainly can’t be stated that he’s definitely the worst defensive SS in the game. He’s almost certainly below average, and he did have a poor defensive season last year, but don’t get carried away with valuing players based on a single season’s rating.
The fact that we have publicly available UZR data is a huge breakthrough, but please, use the data properly.
Fun with UZR
Following up on the previous post.
Worst UZRs! I sorted qualified, reverse on UZR…
A couple of outfielders, including Nate McLouth (didn’t he win…) and then bam! Betancourt is the worst infielder. Two notches down, Ibanez is not far behind on the overall leaderboard. Then Jose Lopez is below average, and Beltre’s about the tenth-best fielder.
Fangraphs has UZR go go go
For the last couple of years, one of the most frustrating things about discussing defensive stats has been knowing that UZR’s out there, one of the best defensive stats you can use to evaluate players, and yet really hard to get your hands on. Who was the best left fielder last year? I may have no clue unless MGL decides to post the top five guys in a comment thread somewhere.
But now! Fangraphs and MGL present UZRs, freely available to all. It’s a little different because it uses a different data source, but — wow, Ibanez is just wretched. If you thought… wow.
Playing with Marcel
You can read more about Marcel projections here. They’re dead simple: it’s the last three years of data, weighted, with aging.
LF, RF, and designated hitters, with age, by wOBA
—
Manny Ramirez, 37, .389
Bradley, 31, .384
Dunn, 30, .372
Burrell, 33, .369
Abreau, 35, .357
Alou, 43, .351
Thomas, 41, .345
Ibanez, 37, .344
Daryle Ward, 34, .342
Juan Rivera, 31, .332
Greg Norton, 37, .339
Griffey, 40, .333
Hinske, 32, .330
Floyd, 37, .328
Luis Gonzalez, 42, .324
Anderson, 37, .319
Trot Nixon, 35, .311
Jacque Jones, 34, .310
Emil Brown, 31, .310
Michaels, 33, .303
Payton, 37, .295
Wilkerson, no, just no.
Some disclaimers to start this off: because it’s based on historical data, the number you see there might be (and sometimes is) the result of injury-ridden seasons that may or may not happen, platoons that you’d have to find the other half off, and on and on and on.
Lot of crappy-fielding outfielders on that list. Let’s group that out a little.
Players who shouldn’t wear gloves, with age, by wOBA
—
Manny Ramirez, 37, .389
Bradley, 31, .384
Dunn, 30, .372
Burrell, 33, .369
Abreau, 35, .357
Thomas, 41, .345
Ibanez, 37, .344
Daryle Ward, 34, .342
Greg Norton, 37, .339
Griffey, 40, .333
Hinske, 32, .330
Floyd, 37, .328
Luis Gonzalez, 42, .324
Anderson, 37, .319
Average-to-bad fielders
—
Alou, 43, .351
Juan Rivera, 31, .332 (I’m not confident about this placement)
Trot Nixon, 35, .311
Emil Brown, 31, .310
Plus outfielders, with age, by wOBA
—
Jacque Jones, 34, .310
Jason Michaels, 33, .303
Payton, 37, .295
I did that from memory and a quick scanning of historical PMR, because I had the PMR page up for something else, so feel free to throw your own disagreement in there. I tried to lean towards using the last few years, but that has limitations.
That’s a lot of players who can’t field their position, and there aren’t that many teams looking for DHs. Some of those butchers will end up in the field where their defense will drag down their offensive contributions. But they’re going to get paid for their bats. Go through that list and think about who might get paid what. The bargains aren’t going to be the guys with lead gloves. Unfortunately, looking at the available players, you also see that if the M’s want to improve their defense in left field by upgrading through free agency, there’s not a lot for them to shop for.
Clement, DH, and roster construction
I should have brought this up in the Hinske post, but I wanted to focus largely on the player and thinking about how to look at free agent possibilities.
How the team decides to use Clement will have a big difference in what they look at in off-season acquisitions, and they’re not really going to know that until they’re into spring training probably.
Say Clement’s knee is great and they decide to play him at C/DH, trying to keep him a viable C option with Kenji the primary backup. A 2/3rds split in favor of Johjima would get him into about fifty games behind the plate, then you put him at DH the rest of the time.
Tada! There’s your lefty DH, essentially — there’s not enough playing time left to justify buying even a Hinske-esque DH. You still have to find someone, preferably right-handed, to pick up DH starts against left-handers (and that assumes that you’re pushing Clement behind the plate against some of them), and it’d be nice if that person could cover some other roles as well.
Is fifty games enough, though, if you really want to have Clement be the catcher of the future? Or is it possibly too much? I know the knee surgery went about as well as possible, but we don’t really know how well he’s going to hold up to any catching workload (much less how he’ll endure long-term).
You see the problem. And using Clement as the DH on the same day as Johjima catches puts a lot of pressure on the team to carry a third catcher on the bench, making the team:
DH: Clement vRHP, ? vLHP
C: Johjima/Clement/?
1B: Branyan vRHP, ? vLHP
2B: Lopez
SS: Betancourt
3B: Beltre
LF: ?
CF: ?
RF: Ichiro!
Assuming they carry 12 pitchers to start the season, they have five spots to fill two starting positions, probably a backup outfielder, possibly another catcher (depending on Clement’s use), a utility player, a platoon partner for Branyan and then another solution for Clement-as-DH.
Now, you might already be thinking “what about finding some utility infielder who can really, truly field up the middle, and using them to swap Lopez or Betancourt into DH for our severe groundball ptichers?” or “What if we find a third catcher who is an only-break-glass-in-case-of-catcher-need guy, can cover first, and is a decent hitter against lefties and off the bench?” or something similarly wacky.
And I would say “a Shawn Wooten-type? Now that is interesting…” and probably go make myself some coffee and forget about it as I got distracted looking through minor league free agent lists. That’s why I love the offseason.
Random free agents: Nomar
NOMAHHHHH!! That’s the first and only time I’ll do that.
What you get:
– some number of healthy games
– a decent glove at a couple positions (maybe)
– right handed bat
– could come reasonably cheap (he’s not going to get $9m again at 35 after that last season)
What’s the catch:
– he was on the DL more times than I can easily count last year
– he may just retire
– probably will retire
– I’d retire if I were Nomar anyway
– I mean, he’s made his money, been awesome, why not go hang out with Mia instead of spend another year in the trainer’s room trying to figure out what that last snapping noise was?
– whether or not Nomar’s defense is even average, even at first, is debatable
– might not be a whole lot left in the bat
Think of Nomar as Mike Morse if Mike Morse was ridiculously injury prone, and could hit and fielded a little better. And didn’t have a steroid scandal in his past.
Think about how Nomar might fit on the M’s. Branyan could use a right-handed bat to caddy at first, and Nomar can do that. Nomar can spot start and play better-than-Morse defense at third and short.
If he can hit. And this is where I think we start to get to what’s interesting about Nomar as a free agent this off-season: the high end for a 2008 Nomar performance where you play him as a super-sub against righties and rotate him through DH and first base against lefties (or something equally weird) is that you get him into 80, maybe 90 games, keep him well-rested and somewhat more healthy, and squeeze 300, 350 at-bats of .290/.345/.450 hitting. And the worst case is he’s injured, bad when injured, and takes the Pokey Reese Memorial Award for Well-Compensated Absenteeism (The Greg Hibbard Award is given to deserving pitchers).
What’s that gamble worth? The M’s may have the flexibility to take that chance at the right place, but I don’t think it’ll happen: he’ll retire or someone else will give him too much money on a one or two-yea deal. But it’s interesting to think about how well even a Nomar packed in protective padding for two or three days a week could fit into this year’s roster.
Random free agents: Hinske
This off-season, I wanted to pick some random names out of the free agent hat and generally spout off about how I always end up thinking about roster construction. This will inevitably lead to me advocating the team sign a relief pitcher who can steal 15-20 bases.
What he offers:
– historically mashes righties
– he’s not so old at 31
– having been through a playing-time wringer last year, it’s unlikely he’s going to kvetch about any reasonable arrangement
– will probably come cheap
– former Blue Jay
You have to live with:
– he’s neutralized by lefties. His career line against them is .219/.293/.365.
– he’s not a defender any more
– his upside is probably not all that up
Random other info:
– late-season slump and being dropped off the Rays playoff roster for a time may drive his value down
Sounds like our new DH to me! Woo-hoo!
Really: last year, he still managed to hit .262/.344/.500 against right-handers. He’ll do pretty well in lefty-friendly Safeco Field.
The problem is that if you find him a platoon partner somewhere and protect him aggressively, he’ll still face some lefties, and on the season you’ll get ~400 at-bats out of him and hoping you get a .250/.330/.440 season out of him. Which is a little above league average but not much. The problem is that with Branyan you’re already looking at a potential platoon candidate, putting a little more pressure the remaining roster to fill more roles.
Hinske’s ability to play the outfield badly isn’t helpful, and with Branyan, his potentially competent first base defense wouldn’t be much of a bonus either.
Overall, Hinske’s kind of a boring possibility. This makes him useful as a baseline DH candidate. Take for instance Cliff Floyd. Over his career Floyd’s a much better hitter against lefties than Hinske. But he’s way more fragile. For the same money, which one would you rather have? Or Dunn, or Bradley, or so on… but I’m getting ahead of myself now.
There’s an inspiring pitch — “Hinske: a decent and reasonably priced default platoon DH option to compare other against”
M’s Drop Dickey
The M’s removed R.A. Dickey and Sean White from the 40 man roster today. Dickey has a week to decide if he wants to accept an outright assignment to Tacoma or become a free agent – bet on the latter.
The Rule 5 draft will take place at the end of the winter meetings next week – this clears room for them to bring in multiple players through that draft, so expect the M’s to be active with the 2nd pick in each round. There are some very intriguing relief prospects available, so the bullpen could get a nice little boost.
Baseball America On The M’s
BA released their Top 10 prospects for the Mariners organization today. If you like minor league information, you should be a BA subscriber – they do the best work of anyone out there. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, though, and in this case, I think the list is… it could be better.
They have Halman #1. This is just really hard to justify, honestly, and I say this as a guy who has consistently been one of Halman’s biggest boosters. There’s no doubt that he’s got some serious power, and his raw physical skills are terrific. He’s also improved by leaps and bounds in the past year, and holding his own in Double-A at age 20 is impressive.
But the characterization of his pitch recognition as “below average” is in the running for the greatest understatement of all time. The list of good major league hitters who have succeeded with the approach Halman employs at the plate is Alfonso Soriano. There’s no doubt the two have similarities, but Soriano is the success story out of guys with this skillset. Without a pretty significant step forward in his approach at the plate, Juan Encarnacion is a much more likely development path, and it’s not like we can ignore the Reggie Abercrombie-type busts either.
Halman has star potential, but the risk is enormous, and the odds he fulfills it are very long. Making Halman the #1 prospect seems to be focusing too much on upside.
Triunfel is #4. I’m the world’s biggest Triunfel fan, so obviously I think that’s about three spots too low. In an interesting flip, there’s not much emphasis placed on his upside, and a lot more talk about his flaws. I’d argue that while he and Halman have similar ceilings, Triunfel is a lot more likely to be a quality major league player.
At #6 and #7, they go young with Mario Martinez and Jhardmidy DeJesus. Both good talents, both a very long way from the majors. I don’t see a scenario where you can justify putting either ahead of Tui right now, and I’ve never been a big Tui fan. But he’s 90% of the upside and a step away from the majors. There’s a lot less projection to do with Tui, and the difference in potential isn’t big enough to put the two kids ahead of him, I don’t think.
Raben at #9, Valbuena not in the top ten. I don’t know how you make that case, honestly. Similar upside in total value (obviously, they’re very different players), but Valbuena’s pretty close to major league ready, and Raben is at least a year away.
Overall, the information is interesting, and I certainly suggest that you subscribe to Baseball America if you have any interest in prospects or minor league news in general. But, we’ll just agree to disagree on this list.
Priority numero uno
Reading the rumors today that the Dodgers and Tigers are possibly interested in trading for Jack Wilson, I couldn’t help but dream that they may also be interested in Yuniesky Betancourt. Let’s compare the two players…
Betancourt will be 27 next season and is coming off of a year in which he hit .279/.300/.392, good for a wOBA of .299. Despite holding a reputation as one of the best defensive shortstops, we know that’s not the case and defensive metrics back that up. His fielding bible plus/minus score was -19 and he ranked near the bottom of the list in David Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range.
Wilson, on the other hand, will be 31 next season and hit .272/.312/.348 last year, good for a wOBA of .293. They’re pretty identical hitters. Where Wilson sets himself apart is with his defense. He was at +16 last year, which ranked him fifth among all shortstops. Probabilistic Model of Range also showed him to be above-average, as he ranked 10th among his position there and Pirates fans backed that up in Tango’s Fans Scouting Report.
There’s also one major difference between the two that narrows the gap between the two players—price. Wilson is owed $7.25 million next year, with a $8.4 million option for 2010, although that’s unlikely to be picked up, as the buyout is only $600,000. Betancourt will cost $2 million this year, $3 million next year, $4 million in 2011 and has a club option for $6 million in 2012.
Wilson is a better player but, all things considered, there’s not that much difference and I could imagine many teams would actually prefer Betancourt considering the price tags attached. This is why Zduriencik should make dealing Betancourt his first priority at the winter meetings next week. The Cardinals are now out of the below-average shortstop market, but it sounds like the Tigers and Dodgers are still interested.
As Jeff pointed out at Lookout Landing the other day, replacing Betancourt’s production won’t be that hard. If they don’t want to or can’t upgrade, the M’s could simply take a flier on another stopgap—someone like Nick Punto, Adam Everett or Cesar Izturis. Heck, even Luis Valbuena could probably duplicate YuBet’s production.