04/24/24
April 08, 2006
Error ball?: Meet John Dewan. He is effectively Bill James, without the name cachet, and with fewer years invested in experimenting with baseball statistics. Dewan, in 2002, founded Baseball Info Solutions, a company that logs each pitch and ball put into play in a Major League Baseball season and sells the resulting data to some 12 teams.
So what does the plus/minus system say? The Red Sox, a team rebuilt around pitching and defense, stand to be worse defensively than the '05 club, while Derek Jeter rated second worst among shortstops.
Anything that leads to a better understanding of defensive prowess (and therefore, a better understanding of why ARod should be playing shortstop for the Yankees instead of Jeter) is a step in the right direction. If we'd had these ratings 20 years ago, why, I ... no, I still wouldn't have played college ball.
posted by wfrazerjr at 08:51 AM on April 08, 2006
I've read in other stat bibles that Jeter just isn't that good defensively. James wrote about Jeter (in the Fielder's Bible") : "Giving him every possible break on the unknowns, he is still going to emerge as a below-average defensive shortstop"
posted by ?! at 09:12 AM on April 08, 2006
I dunno. First off, I take issue with the article's contention that Dewan = (James - cachet). Dewan has built a system on the basis of creating new statistics via observation. James builds his systems by gleaning insight from existing numbers. A small point, I know. As for Dewan's system in general:
it doesn't account for a first baseman's ability to handle throws . . . It doesn't account for a hit-and-run play that forces a middle infielder to vacate his position. It does not account for an outfielder's arm . . . And it does not include how well a player handles bunts . . . And, the plus-minus system doesn't account at all for catchers. . . But it effectively does explain, in a rather mathematically sound manner, whether a guy can field his position or not.Unless he's a catcher. Or extremely good/bad at certain details. So it gives us partial information about fielders. Why not combine that with the other bits of partial analysis? And this bit of that excerpt: "And it does not include how well a player handles bunts, which Mike Lowell has done better than anyone in baseball the past three years." stuns me. If the system explicitly does not account for that, how do we know Mike Lowell does this so well? Because some other part of Dewan's book mentions it, but it apparently doesn't roll up into his fielding stats. Chris Snow is a young guy and seems like a decently rounded beat writer; he thankfully forgoes the "stats == geeks" tone of Boston writers a generation older, but his comprehension is just as fuzzy. My overall problem with the conclusion is the stats cited "prove" the 2005 Red Sox were better fielders, according to Dewan's system, than the 2005 versions of the players playing for the 2006 Red Sox. My mother still lacks wheels*. A last bit of empirical objection: I think Trot Nixon was an above-average outfielder at one point. 2005 was definitely part of his Fat Years. If he was the best rightfielder in baseball, I have a feeling Dewan's system also fails to adjust for stadium biases. Right field in Fenway is the largest in the bigs. Put it down to coincidence that the man who most often patrolled it comes out on top, but his partner in crime, Manny Ramirez, does his fielding in the smallest left field in Fenway and, save a dozen annual Sportscenter blooper reel submissions, does a decent job. Yet he comes out second-worst in the majors. *That is, she is not a bicycle. The author makes no claims on the ridability of said mother vis-a-vis the neighborhood.
posted by yerfatma at 09:54 AM on April 08, 2006
I read that Friday morning and it was too obtuse for me pre-coffee. And then I read it last night, and while I understand it, I don't agree with it. It seems to go against everything I've seen about baseball with many Gold Glovers having the biggest negative ratings. I fell asleep before the end of the game, but was sad to see Boston did commit an error last night. They hadn't yet in three games; I wanted to see how long they could go without.