Wow, they ain't kidding about the defense. Statcast has him at #1 in MLB this year at +15 outs, +11 runs after having him at -11/-8 last year. A huge turnaround -- DRS agrees on the magnitude of the turnaraound but has him improved from mind-numbingly bad (-22) to OK (+1). Either way, that's either oe of the biggest flukes in history or the result of a lot of hard work.

And the bat ... not that I keep up on Royals stats but I'd guess he was around a 700 OPS, maybe worse, last time I checked and he's now up to 814. For June/July/Aug, that's 321/365/556. I guess as Bobby Witt's kid it would make sense that he might have some traumatic associations with walks. And a good runner too. I have to admit, I stopped taking the notion of "Bobby Witt, good all-around player" seriously.

Another post-hype guy who's quietly making me think "OK, maybe he won't be a TOTAL bust" is Spencer Torkelson. He's hit 6 home runs in August to give him 21 for the season, and has his OPS up to .740 (.823 since the All-Star break).

That's still not great, but it's a big improvement over last year. Unfortunately, his defense seems to be getting worse, but at least he's WAR-positive overall. DH opens up next year with Miguel Cabrera's retirement.

He pretty much swept the Twins on his own about a month ago.

Not to the same level but Jarren Duran .645 OPS last year, .835 OPS this year. An interesting study for someone who isn't me would be to see how the COVID season affected guys from the 2017-2019 drafts. Riley Greene is another one who has broken out this year after disappointing last year. Obviously it's not that unusual for guys to come up, struggle then find their footing but there were a bunch of people who lost a key year of development and it would be interesting to see the impact of that.

Either way, that's either oe of the biggest flukes in history or the result of a lot of hard work.

Last year he would make highlight reel plays, but then boot a routine double play the next inning. He's cut down on a LOT of those miscues. From what I have read, it was a lot of work he put in, and the Royals hired a coach specifically to improve his defense. Combined with Maikel Garcia at third (who should be a GG finalist), Michael Massey at second (well above average in several metrics), and Nick Pratto at first (who like Witt last year has tools, but no results yet), the Royals have a chance to have the best infield defense in baseball next year.

#5 ... that looks about right on the surface. He was charged with 19 errors last year, just 7 so far this year. Weirdly, last year he made more plays per 9 than the average SS, this year fewer. TZ is still not a fan.

Is it just me or does this seem all wrong. Witt at SS for 2022 and 2023, the numbers are innings, chances, assists, DPs. The 2022 numbers are better on a per-inning basis.

2022 826 innings, 388 ch, 259 A, 51 DP
2023 947 innints, 386 ch, 253 A, 50 DP

I assume that's why TZ still rates him poorly. A drop from 16 to 7 errors is obviously a lot but can't be more than 9 runs max. Some is context as lg RF9 has dropped from 3.91 to 3.69, maybe due to the shift restrictions. I suppose that could be part of the explanation too in that, on a play-by-play basis, easy plays on the other side of 2B have been replaced by slightly harder plays. And maybe the Royals are giving up fewer and/or tougher GBs this year.

The difference in DPs may be negligible, it seems that the only diff from last year is that he had 4 LD DPs and none this year. Might be useful to consider those as flukes to some extent. Otherwise he started 23 DPs in both seasons and was the relay 24 vs 23 last year. Also played 12 more games at SS so perhaps he's down one DP from last year?

Interesting BIS makes him 11 runs better in fielding range and 5 on "inf throws" (I think thats what they call it). Throwing errors usually come with men on base, and they are usually much worse than normal errors, probly about 0.9 runs per ThE. He has 3 less throwing errors this year.

But wait, he also has 6 more assists on relays than last year (0). These are baserunners kills and they are very valuable perhaps over a run. (probably not counted as OAAs by statcast) But then again if its a relay you probably have to credit at least one other fielder on that. SO

3 x .9 = 2.7
6 x .5 = 3
total 5.7 runs

Perhaps that gives us some insight to the black box that is these private defensive systems.

So yeah I can see him being about 1.5 WAR better on defense, the DP thing probably not much of a factor.

Good discussion Walt/Retor thanks for all the insights you guys bring to this.

Some is context as lg RF9 has dropped from 3.91 to 3.69, maybe due to the shift restrictions.

very interesting, will have to think about this more.

And yet despite the terrific defense, the Royals have the fourth-highest pitching BABIP in the league? The pitchers are bad and the ballpark is big - is that it?

What the heck, we probably haven't had a Royals thread in 5 years.

Royals OBP/SLG and BABIP allowed

GB 261/285 261
FB 208/663 094
LD 640/919 633

MLB 2023

GB 245/270 245
FB 213/669 096
LD 635/905 629

So that's, ummmm, not very enlightening. An extra 15 points of GB BA is pretty "big" but it's only about 20 singles (and 4 LDs if you want to add that). G/F ratios look to be about the same (not presented). Minn (by a lot) and Oak (by a lot more) are worse on GBs.

So yeah, how do you get good IF ratings by statcast while making plays at a lower rate. Maybe that's lousy positioning -- Royal IFs tend to have longer to go to make their outs so the plays they make look really good while the plays they don't make are not usually made from that far away??

Walt, to see how TZ rates him you’d need to know how many groundball singles end up in CF, and how many in LF. It’s possible his plays made stays the same but hots allowed change, the TZ could be very different.

Now since the TZ is about the same, still well below average, the distribution of hits probably hasn’t changed much. Statcast is the gold standard here for defensive value. So if that tells us Witt is making extra plays I believe it. Royals have what appear to be good fielding infielders, including Nicky Lopez, who was there but got traded. However, their defensive efficiency is poor. And looking at grounders only, they give up a .262 BA, compared to the league .247.

TZ is going to correlate with defensive efficiency. If Statcast is still showing them as a good fielding group, the most likely explanations are:

1. The pitching is doing an exceptionally poor job of giving up hard hit balls
2. The Royals have no clue how to position players, and with their lack of this they are negating what should be a team strength.

Statcast is the gold standard here for defensive value.

Im confused. Isnt statcast just a measure of fielding range? You still have to count: bad throws, double plays, base runner kills, among other things. Is that correct or is stat cast counting those as well?

Some is context as lg RF9 has dropped from 3.91 to 3.69, maybe due to the shift restrictions.

.22 divided by 33.76 AB/game = .0065 increase in ba. Presumably in the area of SS. maybe similar for 2b

HRs are up .12 so that would be 3.5 pts of batting on balls not in play.

League ba is up 5 pts. do we think this is mostly accounted for by the shift rules?

I’m not sure if they account for double plays, but as far as the rest, judge for yourself:

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/fielding-run-value

And even if there are tiny bits of fielding that statcast is not measuring yet, the quality of the data is so good that it is far ahead of the other defensive ratings.

Where I learn of the existence of a human being named Brenton Doyle.

In fairness, the stats I cite have always come from the "outs above average" leaderboard. I'm not sure if those include throws or not, the numbers seem a bit different than those in the linked table. OAA definitely doesn't do catchers.

Mr Witt just fielded a ball above average into the Wrigley basket for a 4-3 Royals lead.

yeah thanks for the link in no. 13 Rally. Very nice. Looking it over yes does seem to account for throws but there are still issues there. For outfield assists it seems to be right on track, I looked at Lane Thomas and Yelich and these seems to make sense for range and assists. It also seems to track runners advancing but doesnt really score that into the OAA rating. So Yelich may give up say 12 more bases advanced/season than avg OFer but thats not showing up in OAAs (perhaps it shouldnt). Also turning doubles into singles. Admittedly these are small but they can add up at the extremes.


BUt Im not sure its doing a good job on infielder arms. In the case of Witt, stat cast says his throwing is no different than last year. Whereas BIS makes him 5 runs better than last year. ANd we can see where those 5 runs probably are coming from by looking at errant throws and baserunner kills. So not sure whats going on. Statcast does track runners so maybe it thinks those assists were easy outs or something? Not sure. have to keep studying this to make an intelligent guess. BIS makes Witt 13 runs better in range whereas Statcast 11, so pretty close there.

Walt yes it does seem to account for throws, but needs to be looked at a bit more.

The other guy who has really turned around his prospects this year is Jarred Kelenic. His first two seasons he combined for 558 PA of 66 OPS+ and -2.0 WAR. This year in 362 PA he has a 113 OPS+ and 1.9 WAR.

take it to the Mets Fans Self-Immolation Thread !

;)

Kelenic ... maybe (and let's hope so!) He got off to a great start this year with an OPS near 1000 through April. Since then it's been 230/303/370 and he's been on the IL for the last month.

Witt and Julio have been the best two players in baseball (non-unicorn division) for the last month. Their face off over the last 4 game series was fun, though both teams kind of sucked around them (which was more surprising for Seattle than for KC).

It sounds like Witt was always good defensively, but had to overcome consistency issues in the majors. It would be great if KC can build around him.

I will leave the statistical analysis to you are better at it than I and just share my observational input. Having watched a ton of KC games the past two seasons, it looks to me like Witt has slowed the game down for himself this year. Last season he looked like he was trying to do everything in the field at hyper speed. This year it seems like he’s slowed down some parts of his defensive game, which can be expected with additional experience and coaching. Seems to me to be a good sign of development in a young player.

Yeah Statcast does not appear to be giving a value for baserunner kills by infielders, although do provide values for outfielders.

For selected Shortstops, 2022-2023


Name .....BIS Runs throwing ..... Statcast Runs on Throws
.............2022, 2023 ................ 2022, 2023

Swanson ...9, 7 ...... 0,0
Franco ... -1, 7 ....... 0,0
E Tovar .. .... 4........... 0
Baez ...... -3, 4 ....... 0,0
Lindor ......5, 4 ..... . 0,0
.
Conclusion: statcast is measuring baserunner kills by outfielders, the numbers they give seem to correlate with assists. there remains issues with baserunner move ups which are tracked by statcast but they dont assign a run value to them.

Statcast does not appear to be measuring baserunner kills by infielders (as shown by "assists home" and "assists relay" ) they just give everyone zero in the tables. Unsure if they are measuring DPs turned, there's also issues with throwing errors/men on no idea if this is part of OAAs.

The player (Witt) is not yet considered to be in the ultra-superstar tier, Geometry Dash but his performance during the 2023 season has led to improved projections for his future performance.

I honestly thought Geometry Dash was some new hip baseball stat site that I've never heard of. D'oh.

If this site dies, where are the 2002-era bots going to post spam links?

maybe they'll start posting articles too, try to boost readership numbers...