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1. PJ Martinez Posted: March 14, 2007 at 07:16 PM (#2311977)And to all, what's the general view on Pedroia's defense?
2006: Nixon .873, Drew .891
Drew's career ~.900 Stats ZR is well above average. His .665 THT ZR from 2006 is also solidly above average - it's just that Nixon had a crazy good year last year by the THT numbers.
I have no idea what to do with any of that, but there it is.
2007 THT Season Preview, here are the projections for Red Sox starting fielders, compared to how the Sox did at that position last year. One note on the -54: That figure is not adjusted for park, and thus should probably be more like -35. Ramirez's projection is also not adjusted for park, and if it was, it would likely be around -10.
Youkilis +9 (0)
Pedroia -5 (-12)
Lugo -2 (+17)
Lowell -6 (+8)
Ramirez -24 (-54)
Crisp +4 (-20)
Drew +6 (+10)
So in total, the Red So project to be around -18 runs this season, versus -51 last year. I'd say the defense is improved, if only because Crisp isn't injured, and has more experience playing center field in Fenway.
***
What we do is show is how many plays a player made on balls in zone, divided by the number of balls in zone, and break out the plays he made on balls out of zone. Stats zone rating is simply play made on balls in zone plus plays made out of zone, divided by balls in zone plus plays made on balls out of zone. Our method is superior, if only because it shows more data (it's also better because STATS zone rating rewards sure-handed fielders while punishing rangy guys). To calculate runs above average, I use plays made divided by balls in zone, which avoids the STATS issue.
The other difference is that BIS uses smaller zones than STATS, which allows for a more precise definition of balls in and out of zone.
Likewise, there's no rational basis for such a positive one for Crisp.
***
Pedroia, I tend to agree with, because we have just 213 innings worth of information for him. He's probably better than the projections show. Lowell and Crisp, on the other hand, have long histories, and I stand by our projections for those two. Lowell has a great season last year (+12 plays), but here are his plays (not runs) above average in the previous seasons:
2005 -28
2004 -21
I know he has a great reputation, but prior to last season, the numbers have said something very different (according to The Fielding Bible, Lowell was great on bunts, and not so good with everything else). Hey, it wouldn't be the first time that a Gold Glove fielder turned out to be not so good (Jeter is the best example, but Griffey and Alomar work very well too). I guess it's possible that the Boston coaching staff improved Lowell's positioning, but by that much? I doubt it.
Crisp, on the other hand, sucked last season (-15 plays), but was +31 plays in 2005 and +20 in 2004.
And if you believe in observation over numbers, you still have to realize you haven't seen either of these guys much before last season. The numbers confirm that Lowell was good last year and Crisp was not. How would you know how they performed in previous years?
Drew's Stats ZR is .890, his THT ZR is .665. There aren't enough balls out of zone in the world to make up for that - THT must be using a much larger zone in right field, as I read it.
***
What? No, the zones are the same for everyone. I really have no clue what you're talking about here, but our version does not punish rangy players.
***
Actually, Crisp played mostly in CF in 2004, and a little in 2005. In those two years, he was +6 plays as a center fielder, which is like +9 per 150 games. I don't believe that his fielding ratings in left (which are excellent) are any less important than what he's done in center field, but he has shown himself to be a pretty good center fielder in the past as well.
***
David Pinto of Baseball Musings did those graphs, and what Crisp's graph for 2006 shows is that he was slightly (SLIGHTLY) below average on balls hit directly at him, and BETTER THAN AVERAGE on balls hit both to his right and to his left, making him an above average center fielder overall. So the numbers you're citing like him even more than mine do.
Ugh. If they use smaller zones (different), then it isn't necessarily superior that their handling of data is better.
If they (BIS) have different zones (smaller according to you), then their "in zone/out of zone" isn't really comparable - thus you cannot (accurately) make a comparative statement as you have.
In additiopn the skepticism on their scoring system on FBs and LDs is very well founded, furthering the warines with which one should view BIS data.
***
Are you kidding me? Why not actually, you know, LOOK at the numbers you're referencing?
Here's the chart: http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/DisplayCharts.py?PlayerID=1572&fpos=8&year=2006
Here's his PMR rating: http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/018503.php
Here's how it translates to runs: http://anaheimangelsblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/pmr-centerfielders-here-is-david.html
The system that you are referencing says Crisp was 10 runs ABOVE average in 2006! Your memory is shoddy, Kevin.
***
What are you talking about? Yes you can. The BIS zones being smaller means that balls are more accurately labeled as in-zone or out-of-zone. To take it to the theoretical extreme, if you had just one zone, all balls would be labeled as in-zone, which obviously wouldn't be very good.
For a person who has long advocated that it would great to have BIZ and OOZ split up in the data, you seem awful combative when someone else ends up getting their hands on it first.
For a person who has long advocated that it would great to have BIZ and OOZ split up in the data, you seem awful combative when someone else ends up getting their hands on it first.
Heh. If the zones are not defined the same, then it isn't the same "BIZ", "OOZ". Do you not understand that?
I appreciate your knuckleheaded example, but it is knuckleheaded. Perhaps you'd be better served by defining the zones (as I have done with ZR) and illustrate where teh "superiority" exists.
TIA, DB.
I did this by going through every pbp for the last two seasons (2006, 2005). Ye, that's not fun, but we really need that rather than some "averaged" PF by looking at innings. I mean, we have access to the video, let's do it right.
I did this by going through every pbp for the last two seasons (2006, 2005). Ye, that's not fun, but we really need that rather than some "averaged" PF by looking at innings. I mean, we have access to the video, let's do it right.
What baseline are you comparing him to? Is it Manny vs. the LFers who he plays against in Fenway?
that would be 250-30= 220 - 172/220 = 0.800 or -12 (or so).
Now there is still some work to do wrt removing LDs and FBs, but I am working on it. Joe Arthur deserves an IMMENSE amount of credit for solving this. Okay, he really just amplified what appeared to be the problem, and Anaheim Rally Monkey's matched innings (which is still heavily flawed wrt sample) supported, meant the effect was far more dramatic than I had suspected. I mean 30 runs is a lot, but it is real -
there is *roughly* 0.5-0.6 BIP off the wall per game!!
that needs to be gone over through the video on mlb.tv, but the data is there - we have to mine it - preferably, some SOB from RSN, rather than me.
To sum up - Manny is every bit as awesome as his offense indicates. Maybe not 4 WAR, but 3 WAR, rather than, as MGL stated last fall, "about average due to his defense".
In my Gold Glove article last season, I stated that "as I look at more data, I think Manny might be average", it is getting closer to that.
And the credit really goes to Joe Arthur and teh efforts he made by tracking Manny's home and road performance - thanks, Joe, for putting forth the effort and sharing it widely so we could all change/adapt our focus in research.
Moving forward, we need to look at BAL RF, etc.
BTW, yes, AROM's matched innings and other sysems that made park adjustments based on opponents' efforts is great, but simply counting "Balls of the wall" is FAR more accurate.
Thanks to those contributing to the collaboration, which includes those just saying "there's no way a LF is -50 runs in a season". . Every dissenting voice helps - that's why full disclosure in research like this is so critical. thanks again.
huh? I am comparing him to every other LF in the AL. However, I am removing balls that he couldn't make a play on. So his chances drop dramatically.
I'll look at team data later and we'll see. Any projection of Pedroia is folly.
I'm not following these numbers at all. Is it that Manny had made 202 plays out of a possible 250, then you subtracted out 30, making it 172/220, an .800 ZR, which would mean a -12 R/150? Is that right?
If so, why did you subtract 30 instead of 40-50? And -12/150 is not average, is it?
***
The ones that show him to be +18 runs above average?
***
You should read more carefully. First, I count both plays in-zone and plays out-of-zone in the numerator, so you're wrong. What the smaller (and more numerous) zones mean is that we have a more accurate number for the number of CHANCES in-zone that the player had.
I'm not following these numbers at all. Is it that Manny had made 202 plays out of a possible 250, then you subtracted out 30, making it 172/220, an .800 ZR, which would mean a -12 R/150? Is that right?
If so, why did you subtract 30 instead of 40-50? And -12/150 is not average, is it?
Sorry, Darren, I kind of short-handed it. I am sorry for my sloppiness.
Yes, I suspect the PF for the Green Monster is going to be on the order of 40-50. Last year Manny only played 1031 innings, and I specifically counted 29 FB off the wall (there were more that others were in LF for - Youk and Pena, etc).
No, -12/150 isn't average, but I suspect there is still some flaw in teh LD vs FB measures, and on the order of 13 runs worth, that make it up. As I went through every ball in play to LF against hte Red Sox for 2005 nd 2006, I noticed a significant disparity in FB vs LD based on the BIP. for 2006, there were 50+ LDs off the wall, and 35 FBs off the wall. those numbers were almost exactly reversed in 2005, indicating a shift in scoring paradigm. And some LDs in 2006 were scored, by STATS, as FBs that counted against Manny - probably about 15-17, rendering him "average".
Like I said last October,
Well, Dan Rosenheck got me off my duff, and I went to the video. thanks, Dan.
Depends on the zone descriptions. It's not necessarily more accurate.
the best possible way for Manny - I went to the video, vcounted balls he could not catch and subtracted those from his chances.
That indicated he had 30-50 fewer chances than ZR (AND UZR!!!) figured he had. RallyMonkey's "adjusted innings" did a pretty good job of assessing it.
Actually counting is obviously the best route. this is a VERY VERY simple scoring chnge for both STATS and BIS - I can't imagine why they wouldn't have their scorers simply mark a ball hit off the wall. It's poor system design.
His PMR figures in LF in 2005 were excellent using any threshold.
PMR was also a fan of his performance in CF in 2006.
If I were going just by PMR, which I wouldn't really recommend doing, I would guess that Crisp projects to be in the +5-+10 range defensively in CF for 2007.
I'm not sure that I'd make this leap. Just because there were 35 LDs/50 FBs in 05, doesn't mean there would be the same ratio in 06. Different pitchers, different hitters, pure randomness, etc could affect that ratio. I assume that your further review of the data might shed more light on this.
Some other things I would want to look at:
--other American OF play 3-10 games in Fenway as well, so they are going to be very slightly affected by Fenway (very slightly)
--is it possible that other OF are affected by the LD/FB issue?
--would other parks, if examined this closely, have similar--if less pronounced--quirks?
Anyway, we don't have any PMR data for Crisp from 2005.
oh, I plan to do the physical count of '04 and '03.
this isn't my first time <wink>.
there are specific parks that are short - BAL, and a couple pthers. However, what I did *not* find was a large number of BIP affecting BOS CF. less than 20, and fewer in '05. So in cases that are smaller, I would lean toward a minimal PF *to keep the calcualtions simple*!!!!. I would prefer to do PFs just like Offense, but we aren't there yet.
We're MUCH MUCH closer thanks to Joe Arthur's work (and everyone else), and obviously MLB.tv.
I say Joe, because he set off the lightbulb in my head. LAWBH and AROM also contributed heavily to my thought process.
And thanks, kevin - I assure you, this will be continued for '07.
There seems to be a major disconnect between that, and your findings here, unless your system doesn't grade Manny out at being in the -20 range on the road.
That's more important than we can stress. Correcting past data is going to be very important, and a good reason to enlist Sean Forman and/or Lahman in control of this type of data.
His 2004 PMR in center was essentially average. His 2005 PMR in center was unpublished. His 2006 PMR in center was very good.
Here's 2006, which is all CF.
There seems to be a major disconnect between that, and your findings here, unless your system doesn't grade Manny out at being in the -20 range on the road.
Joe Arthur's road numbers disagreed with that evaluation of Manny. My evaluation is relatively simple - Manny had 250 chances according to STATS. Of those, I can categorically eliminate 30 chances. So Manny had 220 chances. Manny, based on a .695 ZR, made 172 plays (based on STATS 250 chances). Since I know he made 0 of 30 of the zone chances off the Green Monster, I can simply subtract 30 from 250 and still simply divide by 172 to get his "true" (relative to the rest of the AL) ZR, and thus his Runs Saved (RS). Yes, tweaking the entire league is preferred, but we are subsequently looking at 3 runs for an opposing player. No big deal.
In the end, Manny is not some big disaster area out there and worth 5+ wins over average - I think - and close to being worth his salary.
MUCH MUCH closer than previous evaluations have indicated based on UZR.
That's more important than we can stress. Correcting past data is going to be very important, and a good reason to enlist Sean Forman and/or Lahman in control of this type of data.
I concur.
There are, by my count, three different variants of PMR.
PMR-1 is the original iteration.
PMR-2 is a "smoothed visitor" method, which first started appearing in 2005. This only uses BIP against visiting fielders to set the "park model". Read about it here.
PMR-3 takes the smoothed visitor method and replaces velocity of batted balls with distance (or at least mixes it, I'm not sure, it's described here. This was introduced in 2006.
I'm not sure David ever went back and gave us PMR-3 for many of the positions; if he did, I missed it.
Kevin, I wasn't around for the discussion you reference, but I know for a fact that Crisp's PMR figures in CF for 2005 were not released with everyone else's. I don't know if David mentioned Crisp's figures in some other post.
Any ball that hits x feet up on the monster and above?
Can you confidently say that a fielder couldn't have gotten to a ball at catchable height, if it was say 2 feet from his outstretched glove? Might be instinct issues?
Compared to a multi-year average, Crisp made 5 less plays than average, which would have come out to around -10 plays over a full season.
However, as a group the CF for which we have data for 2004 come out as below average. If we re-center the average to reflect that, Crisp comes out as slightly above-average (by approximately a run).
I don't believe the multi-year average makes any real sense as a baseline (using a multi-year average, there were only two semi-regular or regular 3B in 2005 who were below average, for instance), and the re-centering I did was an attempt to correct for that. It may have been faulty.
At any rate, I think his performance was likely around average, maybe just a bit below, for that season, as reflected by PMR.
Any ball that hits x feet up on the monster and above?
Can you confidently say that a fielder couldn't have gotten to a ball at catchable height, if it was say 2 feet from his outstretched glove? Might be instinct issues?
These balls hit more than 8 feet up the wall. That's a pretty good estimation.
If I understand right, you are separating plays as InZone and OutOfZone. I guess you will have more credit for plays made OOZ and less negative credit for plays not made OOZ and vice versa for IZ.
If this is your methodology, does the size of zone matter if you normalise your data? Every fielder would have made X plays above/below average per 100 chances in IZ, and Y plays above/below average per 100 chances OOZ..
agreed, was just clarifying.
For reasons mentioned in my previous post, I don't think using a multi-year average makes a lot of sense, and 2005 3B is really the poster boy for that. There are 39 3B listed there, and 37 of them performed better than the multi-year average, and the 39 add up to being 772 plays better than the multi-year average. I don't think there's any way in hell that all the other 3B who played in 2005 added up to being 772 plays below average, so I can only assume that 3B as a whole were well above-average. This, of course, makes no sense.
But I worry that my re-centering is insufficient. In 2006, Pinto ditched the multi-year average, so I didn't do any re-centering. But the sample we have for each position (generally around 40 players) still doesn't add up to zero (though I don't recall any position being as out-of-whack as the 2005 3B situation). We shouldn't really expect it, too, but that makes me question the accuracy of the re-centering I did in 2004 and 2005. I don't really know what the solution is, given the data we have.
I think Dial is arguing that the PF for the Monster is more significant because of the # of chances. 0.5+ chances per game is pretty sizable IMO
Kyle, agreed. However, I think the consensus is that the GM (Green Monster) is by far the largest problem. And it's ~45 plays. I would suggest it is *twice* the problem other parks face. Possibly the Crawford boxes presnt a similar problem, so we need to start counting.
I think we can establish a PF for them with, say, 4 years of "BIP that are not catchable", and use that, on a per inning basis, to adjust all players.
It will result in a factor that is close enough to adjust over history, and still be within a run or two of an exact seasonal evaluation, rendering an "every season measurement" meedless.
But we have to do it. Who wants to take 2003?
Absolutely. I think it'd be interesting to count for all those parks if we could, of course I wish I just had the money so I could pay STATS to calculate ZR as I specify...
Honest moment: one reason I reveal all my techniques and formulas is because I am lazy. I want someone else to do teh work after I figure out how it can be done. SG in ATL and AROM pretty much shoed me down in doing all my calculations already, so I'm "teaching you to fish" rather than giving you a fish.
If he hasn't, I know he's working on it because he had me send him a couple years of data about a month ago.
Chris, I'll have to do that once I get a new job, which should be within a week or two. The schedule I'm on now drains me of all my energy.
Never have I seen an outfielder play so many singles into triples.
If this is your methodology, does the size of zone matter if you normalise your data? Every fielder would have made X plays above/below average per 100 chances in IZ, and Y plays above/below average per 100 chances OOZ..
***
Sorry, I don't know what you're asking...
That means looking at only half the sample, sure, but that's still useful, isn't it?
Is it possible that if one adjusts ZR for the Monster that they will start to overrate Manny? I am sure this has been brought up before, but does the LF zone at Fenway start the same distance from homeplate as it does in other stadiums (I assume so)? If so, is that likely helping the LFer's rating as he can play closer to HP and catch more OOZ balls then he could in another park and (after this new adjustment) not be penalized for in zone wall balls.
I admit this over-correction will likely be much smaller then the previous Fenway LF problem, but it is something to think about.
Forgive me for being an ignoramus on this point, but why is the Manny/Fenway thing so hard to figure? Can't we figure out how good a fielder Manny is in the abstract by looking solely at how he does on the road?
The problem is that fielding splits aren't readily available, IIRC. I think JoeArthur's work attempted to do just what you're saying but it was only one year of data.
But, Chris, aren't you taking the bad away from Manny b/c of the wall, but leaving in credit for the good? So, not only are we just removing the impossible zones from his ZR, but we are leaving in credit for the easier zones in which the wall helps (e.g., shallow hit balls where he plays more shallow b/c of the wall)? I don't know if that would help him or not, but for a layman, it seems to be a problem, no?
If the questions are "How good is Manny outside Fenway" and "How good are left fielders other than Manny at Fenway", the data I'm asking about is the entire dataset.
As noted, Manny presently doesn't appear to see significant improvement from that. I don't think this would overrate Manny to a significant degree (if at all). While the possiblity exists, I would surprised to see it as significant - FBs that get caught there are likely to be caught anyway, and I don't see Manny as catching as many LDs that are "short".
I believe that is how mgl adjusts for the Monster.
But maybe an average fielder would?
Maybe they would, but I don't think there's any evidence at this time to support that position.
Right, but the current problem with the Monster is that it colors the defensive eval a lot.
In addition to the zone discussion you guys started here, we've been talking about the run values MGL uses for UZR.
Just from a smell test standpoint, I have to think it has already happened. -10 to -15 runs I can see as that puts him right in line with similar body types at similar ages, but Dial's claim that there is another 13 runs of error out there and that Manny is average just doesn't make sense to me. Think of it this way...how many 34 year old slugging outfielders suffering through a knee injury are average defensively? Was Manny, at his defensive peak in RF, so good that you could even remotely expect this to be true?
That's not my claim. I don't claim that.
I'm sorry, Chris. Exactly what is your claim in post 38, then? Your conclusion seems to be that Manny was -12/150 but you thought that there FB/LD discrepencies on the order of 13 runs, rendering him average. Am I missing something?
I misundertood what you were saying.
No, I previously had Manny as -30. With the adjustments from counting wall balls, I figure him to be about -13 runs (maybe about -17).
I am sorry for the confusion.
You're welcome.
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