Category Archives: Defense

A statistical look at defense as it relates to the Detroit Tigers.

2010 Season, Defense

The Tigers are a good defensive team

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I hear it all the time, people citing fielding percentage and errors as an example of Detroit’s ineptitude with the glove. They have the 9th most errors in MLB and only two AL teams have more (the Indians and the Angels) and their fielding percentage ranks 23rd overall. Those numbers aren’t great, but what is more troubling is the fact that so many are still using those stats when there are so many betters ones easily available.

Play by play data that tracks hit direction and type of hit has been available for a number of years. This is data that has been collected by video scouts and stringers that aren’t making a nebulous judgment about whether or not the play should have been made. They are just looking at direction and how hard it was hit and whether or not the play was made. The data then tells the story of whether or not the play should have been made by comparing the play to all the other plays and how often they get made.

So let’s look at some of this objective data and see what the objective data says about the Tigers fielding. Baseball Prospectus lists the Tigers team defensive efficiency ratio (DER simply looks at all the balls in play and figures out the rate at which they were converted to outs) as 16th in MLB. On this measure they come up middle of the pack.

Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) has the Tigers at 10th in MLB at 13 runs better than a typical team. A similar system called +/- has the Tigers at 11th in MLB at 25 defensive runs saved.

Revised Zone Rating is similar to fielding percentage in that it expresses things as a rate or percentage, but it uses a much more logical denominator. Instead of using the denominator as the number of balls that a fielder touches, it uses the number of balls hit to a player’s zone. Therefore it isn’t rewarding the slow of foot for not even getting to balls. In RZR the Tigers are 6th in MLB.

While there is variation in the systems, I just presented 4 defensive stats that aren’t subjective. They weren’t manipulated by me to make the team look one way or the other. The worst of those 4 said the Tigers were middle of the pack. The other 3 said the Tigers were above average to good.

The only metric that says the team isn’t good with the leather is the one that is frought with the most problems in methodology. It is the one that is most subjective. The one that doesn’t measure an ability to get to balls. Concluding that the Tigers  are a bad team because of fielding percentage would be an error in judgment.

2010 Season, Defense, Roster Management

Thinking more about the roster shuffle

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I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know how Carlos Guillen moving to second base will work. And even if I think I knew, I’m the guy who thought Scott Sizemore would outhit Austin Jackson and that Max Scherzer would be the biggest contributor from the big trade so being wrong is nothing new here. However I like the move and I like what the Tigers are trying to do.

Impact on Defense

It is interesting that the Tigers went with an offensive first approach in 2008, saw it fail miserably, and then went with a big defensive emphasis the following year. The 2010 season saw a little balance and something in between.

The results in 2010 have certainly been mixed. The Tigers error total is shockingly bad. The errors themselves have certainly been shockingly bad with dropped fly balls at in opportune moments. It feels as if if the Tigers have had more than their share of high WPA errors.

Pitchers like Rick Porcello have seen very high BABIPs and the team also ranks 22nd in MLB in terms of defensive efficiency. John Dewan’s +/- system has the team at +5 runs which ranks the team 20th in MLB. With UZR things are better and the team ranks 10th overall.

With mixed reports such as these I’d put the data together and say the team is a little below average with the glove. So why make a move that introduces a defensively challenged player into a prominent defensive role? Because Scott Sizemore was struggling in that regard as well.

Sizemore’s strength was never his glove, but the Tigers second base defense is one of the reasons for the overall struggles. The Tigers rank in the bottom third in both +/- and UZR at the position (not just Sizemore, the position as a whole). Interestingly enough the Tigers rank tenth in revised zone rating, so the second baseman have done a good job with balls hit to them. They just haven’t had the range to extend the position with only 1 play made outside of the zone.

That’s a long explanation to say that the Tigers are only weakened defensively if Guillen proves to be awful at the position.

Injury Risk

Guillen is a pretty good player when healthy. When healthy though has been a fleeting state for Guillen. Second base won’t make it easier for Guillen to stay healthy, but at this point I don’t know that it matters. The Tigers made him the primary DH and he still got hurt. Guillen will likely get injured again at some point this season but I doubt that second base would be the culprit.

Instead of trying to keep him healthy, the Tigers should try to get the most value from him when he is healthy.

Prudent Roster Management

Here’s the part that I like the most. The Tigers are really extending their 25 man roster by actively making it a 28-30 man roster. The doubleheader was a nuisance but it set a lot of things in motion. Even with the shuffle not playing out like I speculated the team is still doing a good job of trying to get the right mix for the situation.

The Tigers haven’t been particularly mindful of service time or option status under Dombrowski, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. The Tigers will use the players that they think will give the team the best chance to win rather than trying to milk out an extra year of club control.

Long term this has implications of course, but I don’t think trying to win now is a bad strategy.

2009 Season, Defense, Statistics

Tigers good at catching the ball

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In 2008 Detroit’s pitching was awful, but it had some help in allowing runs to score. After being a stellar defensive team in 2006 and a pretty good one in 2007, the ‘08 Tigers were awful. The team ranked 26th in UZR (-39 runs) and 24th in defensive efficiency. An emphasis on run prevention was the theme this offseason. And it seems to be working in the early going.

Continue reading Tigers good at catching the ball →

2009 Season, Defense

Henning on the Tigers left side defense

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Lynn Henning writes today about the Tigers infield defensive improvements (emphasis mine):

Those plus-minus ratings are part of compelling research done by scouts and video analysts for John Dewan, president of Baseball Info Solutions, and author of The Fielding Bible, a data-rich evaluation of major league defense that is carried by such Web sites as billjamesonline.net.

Dewan’s research joins with such indicators as Major League Baseball’s “Range Factor” index to help determine a fielder’s true effectiveness. The statistics are broader and deeper than the somewhat deceiving statistic known as fielding percentage, which states only how many balls a player reaches that are successfully turned into putouts.

Thank you Henning. While readers here know that fielding percentage is one of the most useless defensive stats, the greater baseball reading population doesn’t. That’s in large part due to the fact it is so commonly cited in articles like this.

And I don’t bring this up as a knock on mainstream writers because I know with limited inches there is only so much they can do introducing a new stat and explaining it. I’m sincerely appreciative of the fact that Henning took the time for the brief explanation of +/- and used it in favor of FP.

(Now if only he’d gone with zone rating instead of range factor.)

2009 Season, Defense, Offense, Statistics

Tigers WAR Projections

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It seems as if calculating wins above replacement, or WAR, has become the cool thing to do this offseason. We’ve delved into WAR here in the past when evaluating contracts. Now Fangraphs has made WAR available to the masses. Detroit Tiger Tales has already taken a look at the 08 Tigers numbers. And now a call to action from Beyond the Boxscore has inspired me to project the 09 team numbers.
Continue reading Tigers WAR Projections →

Defense, Statistics

Fangraphs now has UZR

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Fangraphs continues to become the stat site for sabermetric player stats. Today they announce the addition of MGL’s UZR fielding system which is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated fielding systems available.

UZR has been largely unavailable for the last several seasons because MGL has been consulting for big league teams. He’s posted leaders and trailers the last few years, but now the full data set is available. The only difference is that this set uses Baseball Info Solutions data instead of STATS Inc.

You can find them on the player pages and leader boards on Fangraphs site. But I thought I would drop in a few of interest here. These are runs per 150 games.

Jack Wilson: 06: -2.8, 07: 12.7, 08: 2.2
Adam Everett: 06: 24.9, 07: 24.4, 08: 10.0
Cesar Izturis: 06: -10.8, 07: -2.5, 08: 12.5
Edgar Renteria: 06: 2.1, 07: -2.2, 08: 1.1

2008 Season, Defense, Pitching

Hitting em where they ain’t

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We recently took a look at the Tigers team defense through the eyes of David Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range. As Pinto wraps up this season’s numbers, he calculated the PMR behind each pitcher. Not much went right for Nate Robertson this year, and it is little surprise that his woes were reflected in the PMR numbers as well.
Continue reading Hitting em where they ain’t →

2008 Season, Defense, Statistics

The Tigers according to PMR

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The Tigers defense was the cause of much consternation this season, and rightly so. Now that David Pinto has released his PMR defensive metrics, we can take a detailed look at each position.

If you’re not familiar with PMR, it is a system that looks at each ball hit into play and the probability that the ball should be converted into an out. That probability is based on a number of characteristics including the handedness of the batter and pitcher, the type of hit, the direction of hit, and how hard the ball was hit. It is based on data from BIS which also provides the data behind the +/- system and revised zone rating.

The table below shows how the Tigers fared at each position, as well as the primary players at each position. It shows the number of balls in play (this is constant at the team level), the actual outs and predicted outs, the plays made above or below expected and then a conversion to runs. The last 2 columns scale the plays and runs to 4000 balls in play which is approximately 150 games or the normal workload of a full time player.

2008 Tigers PMR
2008 Tigers PMR

Continue reading The Tigers according to PMR →

2008 Season, Defense

Defensive Projections

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Chone Smith has compiled defensive projections for the 2009 season. He’s used 5 years of data (combination of Stats Zone Rating, Revised Zone Rating, and Total Zone), and weighted it such that the most current season receives the most weight. He also regresses the results and uses the Fans Scouting Report. The more data available the less regression, and when data is scarce the scouting report carries more weight.

Cherry-picking out the Tigers (the numbers represent runs/150 games):

Outfield

  • Granderson: 13
  • Ordonez: -4
  • Joyce: (Corner) 7, (Center) -1
  • Thames: -5
  • Guillen: -3
  • Raburn (Corner) 4, (Center) -4

Infield

  • Inge: (3B) 10
  • Renteria: (SS) -6
  • Polanco: (2B) 9
  • Cabrera: (1B) -1
  • Santiago: (SS) -1, (2B) 1
  • Guillen: (3B) 0, (1B) 5

Now there’s a good chance Renteria isn’t back next year, so some shortstop free agents:

  • Orlando Cabrera: 1
  • Eckstein: -3
  • Everett: 19

Adam  Everett could be in a pretty steep defensive decline and even being +2 wins with his glove, his bat is so bad it probably can’t overcome it.  It’s not a great group that is out there, and one more year of Renteria if he can come cheaply might not be a bad bet.

2008 Season, Defense

Tango’s Scouting Report By the Fans

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Once again Tom Tango, aka Tangotiger, is conducting his scouting report by the fans, for the fans. I’ve linked to this in the past, but basically you the fan get to rate players defensively across several categories. Tom then compiles the data and makes it available to the masses.

He has instructions on his site, and the one I’d want to highlight is :

Try to judge “average” not as an average player at that position, but an average player at any position. If you think that Willie Bloomquist has an average arm, then mark him as average, regardless if you’ve seen him play 2B, SS, 3B, LF, or CF.

DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!

It’s an off day for the Tigers, so take 5 minutes of the time you’d spend watching the game, and take the survey. It’s quick, and easy. And the bigger sample size the better.

2008 Season, Defense, Trade Rumors

Inge to catch more, Pudge to catch less

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In today’s edition of what’s up Jimmy’s sleeve, we find an alternating catcher. The announcement came down today that Pudge isn’t the regular catcher any more. He and Brandon Inge will rotate behind the plate.

Neither are really hitting worth a lick and at this point Inge is probably the better defensive catcher anyways. Plus with Inge under contract next year and Rodriguez not, it’s clear they are testing the waters despite Leyland’s claims to the contrary. The announcement also comes on the heels of a Vance Wilson sighting in the the clubhouse. Is Vance almost ready to go, will he be ready by the trade deadline, and does Pudge get dealt?

But of course this comes about a week after skip announced that Inge would play more third base and Carlos Guillen would play more left field. So there’s always the chance that this experiment could last 12 hours.

You can hear Tom Gage discussing this and other Tigers items on the WDFN.com Podcast page.
[audio:http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/18227/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/18227/podcast/DETROIT-MI/WDFN-AM/TOM%20GAGE%206-9.mp3?CPROG=PCAST&MARKET=DETROIT-MI&NG_FORMAT=sports&SITE_ID=1128&STATION_ID=WDFN-AM&PCAST_AUTHOR=Sports_Radio_1130_WDFN&PCAST_CAT=sports&PCAST_TITLE=WDFN_-_The_Stoney_and_Wojo_Show]

2008 Season, Defense

Guillen to left field?

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The Tigers new left fielder is Marcus Thames, except for when it’s Carlos Guillen? Guillen has been taking flyballs in left and it’s another way to keep his bat in the lineup while trying to find a place where his glove doesn’t hurt the defense too much – at least that’s the story.

Out of all the “drastic” moves so far this one reeks the most of desperation. Guillen has no experience playing left field. None. He’s struggled at positions he’s familiar with so why move him somewhere he isn’t comfortable. Meanwhile you have another defensive liability in the infield who has experience in the outfield – Miguel Cabrera. Admittedly he isn’t a good outfielder either, and he’s been looking decent at first, but why not move Cabrera to the outfield?

Or why not move Guillen to DH?

Guillen to left field? It’s a possibility, Leyland says | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press