Answers Aweigh!

Posted: November 9th, 2007 | Filed under: Baseball | 8 Comments »

Mike: “Why was Jeter chosen for 3 straight gold gloves? Someone needs to pick the brains of those voting writers.”

Well, the writers do not vote for the Gold Gloves — they are chosen by managers and coaches. But I don’t say this with any sense of overconfidence; I’m quite sure that we as writers would have given Jeter AT LEAST those three Gold Gloves and maybe more. Hey, we’re as vulnerable to hype as anyone, maybe moreso. Jeter is a great player playing in New York, he’s won every single year he’s been with the Yankees, he’s clearly a winning ballplayer. He’s the kind of ballplayer managers absolutely love. And with the dearth of great fielding candidates in the AL the last few years, it’s understandable why Jeter won.

Understandable but also ridiculous.

Steve: How about some love for senior citizen Omar Vizquel putting up great defensive numbers this year?

Vizquel, at age 394, scored a +14 Dewan Score, which placed him sixth in baseball. Not bad for a guy who was (I think this is right) in a double play combination with Frankie Frisch.

Chris: I had a quick question about the Fielding Bible awards. You guys – the people you mentioned the other day, Dewan, Richman, James, etc – are voting, right? So my question is, I guess, what the heck are you voting based on? I happen to love Dewan’s work. And I respect and like just about all the people on that list – I played thousands of SOM games as a kid, almost always with a 1 holding it down at SS and in CF. And I love your blog. I also do my best to keep up with things in baseball. So that’s why I’m compelled to ask: why vote? Why not just give the award to whoever has the best +/- according to Dewan.

I’m pretty sure the Fielding Bible Awards was Bill James’ idea — or something brewed up between him and Dewan — and I can’t speak to exactly why they came up with it. I think their thinking was that the Gold Gloves are broken, and it would be fun to have a panel of people from all walks of baseball (we have a couple of people working inside baseball, a newspaper guy, an Internet guy, a radio guy, a strategy board game inventor, a fan poll, and some researchers, we’re really just missing an announcer and maybe a mascot), give them the information, and let them vote.

I want to say here that John very specifically tells us that we absolutely, positively should vote on any basis we want. That is, we are not instructed or encouraged to use his plus/minus system or any other fielding stats. And you can tell from the votes that everybody is going at it his own way — John Dewan, for instance, picked Omar Vizquel as his No. 1 shortstop though his plus/minus system had Tulowitzki No. 1. I love the system, as mentioned here, and I used it as a tool, but I used other things as well (I talked to scouts and baseball people, looked at other stats, used a little bit of my own judgment). There were many disagreements among us (except at first base where eight of the 10 had Pujols at No. 1).

I think he’s hoping — and I suspect the idea will shift and mature over time — that by getting different points of view along with his own statistics that the Fielding Bible Awards will offer an interesting and new look at fielding and baseball. And I think John would like to see how his system stacks up with the way people think. And, yeah, I’m sure he wanted a little bit of publicity too.

Steve: “Tony Pena Jr. once he stops having those occasional mental lapses has a chance to win a Gold Glove.”
There have certainly been times I’ve been impressed with his range (and then smacked myself in the forehead when he botched the routine grounder) but Gold Glove potential? Really? That caught me off guard … any evidence to suggest such from the Fielding Bible group or the Dewan Score?

Had to add this question because I’m a Pena fan, and he had a really nice defensive year despite his 23 errors. He actually placed seventh overall among shortstops (third in the AL) with a +14, which is really good for a rookie who was traded to the American League a few hours before the season started. He made 55 good fielding plays, which ranked him sixth in baseball. He also made 28 defensive misplays, which was high — I will bet he cuts that down quite a bit. I think with more knowledge about the hitters and after he gets used to the long season, he certainly could be a Gold Glove candidate.

That is, of course, if he hits enough to stay in the lineup, which is a question.

Jonathan: I’m surprised Carlos Beltran did not make it as a top base runner.

I’m a little surprised too. Beltran scored only a +5 as a baserunner, which is way down for him. He did have his usual brilliant base-stealing year — 23 out of 25 attempts — so that helped his overall numbers. But yeah, Beltran was only nine of 29 going first to third, which is barely better than league average and very low for a guy with his speed and instincts. Bill also includes a run-scoring stat in there — what percentage of the time does the runner score a run? Beltran scored 29% of the time, just barely above the league average of 28%. More on that in a minute.

Mike: I’m a big Royals fan, and there is no way that David DeJesus is a better base runner than Mark Teahen. It’s not even close. I mean, I respect Bill James but that has to be a glitch in the system, isn’t it?

Well, I have to admit this bothered me too (as well as several other emailers and commenters). I mean, in all seriousness, I’ve always thought DeJesus is an alert and energetic player. But Teahen seems to me to be some sort of base-running savant. I did not get this. So I did break it down to figure out how in the heck this happened.

Here’s what I found:

First to third (number of times a player went first to third on a single)
League average: 27.2%
DeJesus: 15 of 36, 41.6%.
Teahen: 9 of 18, 50.0%
– While DeJesus’ numbers are good (and he got twice as many chances), Teahen’s percentage is better, which is what I would have suspected. Teahen is not especially fast — scouts keep insisting to me that he’s an average to slightly above average runner and no more — but he goes first to third as well as anyone I’ve seen.

Score from second (number of times a player scored from second on a single)
League average: 58.9% (not including Kenny Lofton in the playoffs)
DeJesus: 14 of 24, 58.3%
Teahen: 11 of 17, 64.7%
– Advantage Teahen. DeJesus is right at league average while Teahen, again, is well above.

First to home (number of times a player scored from first on a double)
League average: 43.5%
DeJesus: 3 of 4, 75%
Teahen: 6 of 8, 75%
– This time, Teahen had more opportunities. But it’s the same percentage. Both numbers are really high.

Bases taken (bases advanced on passed balls, wild pitches, balk, sac fly, defensive indifference steal).
DeJesus: 29.
Teahen: 22
– Well, here’s one advantage for DeJesus — he was helped by the fact that he was on base probably 30 more times than Teahen. Still, DeJesus was opportunistic — he ranked fourth in bases taken behind some pretty good runners: Grady Sizemore, Jose Reyes and Ichiro Suzuki. Fifth on the list, oddly, was David Ortiz. I should do a whole post on that. Teahen’s bases taken, by the way, are way above average too.

Base running outs (Outs made either by getting doubled off or trying to advance an extra base):
DeJesus: 3
Teahen: 1
– What’s amazing about Teahen is his instincts — he NEVER seems to make a mistake on the bases. Last year he made zero base running outs. This year he made one — and it was when he got doubled off on a line drive (I believe I remember the play — he was on second at the time. And if I remember it right, he didn’t have a chance).

So, all in all, I look at those numbers and think — yeah, DeJesus is good, but Teahen is better. Better going first to third, second to home, at least as good going first to home, and he has better instincts on the bases. But, as mentioned, there is one more number Bill considers: The percentage of time that a runner scores.

League average: 28%
DeJesus: 37%
Teahen: 32%

And there’s the difference. Teahen’s run-scoring percentage is excellent. But DeJesus’ is off the chart. He scored 101 runs this year — the first Royals player to score 100 since Carlos Beltran, I believe — despite hitting .260 (he walked some and set a team record for most hit-by pitches so that helped).

Trouble is: I don’t think this run-scoring part should be included in the base-running stats. I understand why it’s there — in the end, the idea is not to get on base. The idea is to score runs. And while there are so many other factors involved (who is hitting behind you, who is pitching, how big the park is, what inning it is, etc.) you do want to reward those base runners who do their jobs best. That is, the base runners who score most often.

For me, though, you are already rewarding those players by rating how they go first to third, second to home, how many bases they take and so on — I think ability to score runs is already covered.

Of course I say this with the caveat that Bill James is brilliant and I’m an ignoramus who flunked accounting.

Anyway when I look at these base running stats, it’s clear to me that while DeJesus is a good base runner, Teahen is better. It doesn’t seem right to give DeJesus an advantage (slight as it may be) because he scored more runs. DeJesus hit at the top of the lineup where he was followed by professional hitters (including Teahen) while Teahen hit in the middle of the lineup followed by Ross Gload, an often struggling Alex Gordon, and, eventually, Jason LaRue.

I emailed Bill for his thoughts on Teahen vs. DeJesus. Not surprisingly, he had not put a whole lot of thought into that duel before. He did think it would be interesting to study some film to see who is really better. And then he wrote, unprovoked: “I probably should take the adjustment for runs scored as a percentage of times on base out of the formula.“

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