Ender

[chop2chip]

I don't think teams put near as much stock into defensive stats as fans and sportswriters do.

If you are thinking in terms of runs saved (defense) = run created (offense), then I agree, but I think generally teams do a good job valuing defense on the market place. I just think fans put too much stock in publicly available defensive metrics when many of them are based on circumstantial measures rather than direct measures.

When you and I can open up and look at statcast data, it's going to be a game changer.

 

[zitothebrave]

I don't think teams put near as much stock into defensive stats as fans and sportswriters do.

Teams certainly put a ton of stock into stats. But they have an asset that us fans and writers don't have. Access to highly trained scouts. I can watch baseball all year long, and I can't see the things that a great scout can. Of course the issue with scouts is that they're human, they can make reference errors and so on so forth. ANd that's really the issue with defensive stats, is that at their core they still have humans making calls in them. Unlike offensive stats which are data input with minimal human judgement.

 

[yeezus]

What I don't understand is how you can have defensive ratings for guys like Babe Ruth. You can't possibly have anything close to reliable defensive stats for that. Like, no one has seen him play...how on earth are there defensive stats for him?

 

[chop2chip]

It's more likely that Markakis's positive defense is because of sampling rather than Ender. Realize his "positive" is 3.4 vs -0.1 from last year. It's something that a handful of good breaks could explain. RF doesn't get a ton of chances overall so a few breaks one way or the other could be their season. Of course the OF around you effects your performance as well, but if that was really the leading cause, then why is someone like Heyward have almost the exact same UZR/150 every year no matter if he had BOurn next to him or Upton or now the very mediocre at best Fowler.

I think you are misreading my point. We need a tremendously large sample size to get a really accurate measure on defense. I think I've read defensive metrics require something like 4,500 innings to shake out the noise. However, even with that in mind over three year period a lot can happen to either positively / negatively affect defense (injury, ballpark, surrounding talent). It's just really difficult to control for all of these factors to get an accurate measure of defensive performance.

I think UZR and DRS does a good job (even in a smaller sample size) of telling me whether someone is a "good", "average", "excellent", etc. defender, but I'm hesitant to take those values in plug into WAR to have it tell me someone's value.

For me, I would rather look at wRC+, baserunning, and DRS separately.

 

[thewupk]

What I don't understand is how you can have defensive ratings for guys like Babe Ruth. You can't possibly have anything close to reliable defensive stats for that. Like, no one has seen him play...how on earth are there defensive stats for him?

Defensive stats before 2002 aren't nearly as reliable but they are based on play by play data obtained from retrosheet. Still they correlate fairly well.

 

[yeezus]

Defensive stats before 2002 aren't nearly as reliable but they are based on play by play data obtained from retrosheet. Still they correlate fairly well.

But that data tells you so little? It isn't telling you where the Babe was positioned, how far the ball went, how far he went to get it, etc, etc etc.

I didn't know about retrosheet until now but damn...that is incredible.

 

[thewupk]

But that data tells you so little? It isn't telling you where the Babe was positioned, how far the ball went, how far he went to get it, etc, etc etc.

I didn't know about retrosheet until now but damn...that is incredible.

I don't know the math involved with Total Zone (defensive metric prior to 2002) but it lines up with historic views (Ozzie, Brooks, etc being amazing defenders). If anything I assume it just shows plays made by those players compared to their peers. The big take away I feel is that it shows up great at the extremes. If you were a bad defender it will show. If you were a great defender it will show. If you are somewhere in between that will show but clearly not as exact as we have today.