Category Archives: Defense

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

Defense, Players, Statistics

Defending Center

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a post making the case why Curtis Granderson should be the starting centerfielder for the Tigers over Nook Logan. The the bulk of the agrument was based on Granderson’s offensive superiority. I intentionally didn’t delve into defense for a couple reasons. First, defensive metrics are tricky. It’s rare that you can get all the metrics to agree on any given player. Second, that problem becomes magnified when you’re dealing with small sample sizes as is the case with Curtis Granderson. However, there are enough metrics out there that we can take a look, as long as we take a grain of salt along with it.

Baseball Musings has posted the PMR for centerfielders. I lifted the following table, and included some of the prominent centerfielders in the game. Please note, this isn’t a leaderboard, but a sampling of some who ranked near the top.

Player InPlay Actual Outs Predicted Outs DER Predicted DER Difference
Curtis Granderson 1044 119 110.91 0.114 0.106 0.00775
Andruw Jones 4309 365 337.56 0.085 0.078 0.00637
Jim Edmonds 3538 319 297.13 0.090 0.084 0.00618
Aaron Rowand 4128 388 362.99 0.094 0.088 0.00606
Nook P Logan 2730 282 270.92 0.103 0.099 0.00406

Baseball Musings: Probabilistic Model of Range, 2005, Centerfielders
Continue reading Defending Center →

Defense, Former Tigers, Statistics

Detroit Tiger-ish News

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  • Juan Samuel finds a job: Juan Samuel will be the manager of the AA Binghamton Mets. The former Tiger 3B/outfield coach is the second member of last year’s staff to find work in the minors. Bruce Fields will be the hitting coach in Buffalo.

    UPDATE: It appears that Lance Parrish will also be in uniform next year. He’ll be in the Dodgers organization managing Rookie level Ogden.

  • Caravan Connection: Roar of the Tigers hooked up with the Tigers caravan in Saginaw and scored some interviews. First up is Placido Polanco.
  • Omar’s leather: Baseball Musings continues to churn out PMR data. The first batch of position tables is out, and Omar Infante tops the list. In roughly a quarter of a season at short, Infante made 14 plays more than expected.

    However, if you look at just ground balls Infante isn’t quite as impressive. He is only 6 plays better than expected on ground balls, meaning that he fields more than his share of pop-ups or he was good at standing where line drives were hit. However, he is still second on the list. Second only to former Blue Jay, former Tiger, current Blue Jay John Macdonald.

    It should also be noted that even though Omar was second in difference of actual and expected, his actual DER was the highest among all shortstops for groundballs.

  • Monroe negotiations continue: The Tigers and Craig Monroe continue to negotiate a new contract. Monroe is the last of the Tigers arbitration eligible players not to sign. At least he seems to be in good spirits about it

    “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Monroe said. “I know my agent (Adam Katz ) has been talking with John Westhoff (the Tigers’ vice president/legal counsel). They’ve had a lot of conversations. Things seem to be going well, but I haven’t really thought much about my contract or talked to my agent much about it.

    “That’s why we hire agents. Let them take care of their part, I’ll take care of getting ready to play.”

  • Happy Birthday: I’m a few days late in posting this, but Ryan Sosin and the crew at Tigers Central celebrated their 5th birthday/anniversay/whatever this past weekend. Congratulations guys and keep up the good work.

detroit tigers, baseball

Defense

On Pudge’s Defense

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Last year about this time there was a pretty popular post about Pudge Rodriguez’s ability to thwart the running game. Last year, Pudge’s caught stealing numbers have suffered a little bit, but his reputation made him the catcher that was least likely to be run on. He led Major League Baseball with .51 stolen base attempts per nine innings despite throwing out only 29%. This year a slimmer and quicker Rodriguez gunned down 45% of would-be stealers. However, he was no longer the most feared catcher in the game, as 3 other starting catchers had fewer attempts.

Player                  Inn         SBA        SBA/9 Inn      CS%

Yadier Molina         959.1          35           .33         55%
Brad Ausmus          1065.2          57           .48         26%
Joe Mauer             999.2          54           .49         38%
Rod Barajas          1025.1          67           .59         32%
Ivan Rodriguez       1032.2          68           .59         45%

The table shows the catchers who had the fewest attempts per 9 innings. Not included in the table, but right behind Rodriguez was Chris Snyder. What’s interesting is that while the attempts against Pudge increased modestly in 2005, the attempts against the leaders were significantly below Pudge’s leading mark from last year.

So was this a league wide phenomenon? Comparing total attempts the last two years, the difference was only 55 fewer attempts (out of approximately 3000). I’m not sure what caused the shift, but a handful of catchers had the luxury of not being tested nearly as much as in the past.

As for what this means for Pudge, his reputation didn’t loom quite as large. In 2005 opposing managers probably noticed Rodriguez that Rodriguez had slipped in 2004. Will his reputation come back in 2006? He certainly will stand to benefit from having 3 left handers in the rotation, two of which are amongst the best at holding runners. The Tigers should be able to control the running game. The bigger question will be keeping the runners off the bases in the first place.

detroit tigers,ivan rodriguez,baseball

Defense, Statistics

Good and Bad Gloves

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David Gassko of the Hardball Times introduced a new defensive measure of range earlier this season. While the initial article didn’t do a lot to sell me on the system, he has calculated the 2005 rankings.

Ivan Rodriguez, Nook Logan, and Brandon Inge were the top defenders in the American League at their positions (Inge was actually tops among all third sackers). The fact that Logan beat out all AL centerfielders was surprising. Not that I don’t think Logan isn’t good, but just from a playing time aspect. Because the measure used is a counting stat (essentially runs saved), I didn’t think Logan would have enough time in center to finish at the top.

On the other end of the spectrum, Carlos Pena and Magglio Ordonez finished near the bottom at their positions. Again, I’m a little surprised merely from a playing time perspective.

But the most surprising finding is that Rob Fick was among the best first basemen.

Now whether or not you buy into this system – and I haven’t yet – it is reassuring that a couple of those critical “up-the-middle” positions were rated very highly for the Tigers. But then again, of the 3 Tigers who finished at the top it doesn’t appear clear cut that they will be manning those positions next season.

Defense, Roster Management

A good reputation is hard to run on…

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Down at the bottom of my last post, I threw out a factoid that Alan Trammell only pitched out 8 times last season because the threat of Pudge was enough to deter the running game. This is despite the fact that Rodriguez only threw out 29% of runners attempting to steal. Pudge’s low success rate gunning down runners led to some great discussion, and it really deserves a closer look.

There were several possible explanations for Rodriguez’s stuggles last year. Luke raised the possiblity that only the best basestealers are running on Pudge because of his reputation. Therefore, they would be expected to have a better success rate. Similarly, managers may be more selective in picking their spots and thus increasing their chances. I’m not sure if either of these concepts are true or not, but it seems reasonable that they could have contributed.

Jason attributes Pudge’s slide more to deterioration of skills. He posted the following data showing Pudge’s downward trend the last few seasons

2004 59 SB Att, 32.2% CS
2003 60, 33.3%
2002 41, 36.6%
2001 58, 60.3%
2000 39, 48.7%

From 1991-1999, he threw out 50.1% of the 772 would-be base stealers. Interestingly, he averaged 86 attempts per season during that time.

I’m most inclined to agree with Jason. The last 3 years have shown a sharp decline from where he was. Last year I’m sure he was hindered by his hip flexor injury. There were several times he didn’t come out of his crouch to try and throw runners out, and even his arm can’t overcome that. Maybe the new, not so pudgy Pudge will regain some quickness behind the plate.

In the meantime, despite playing in a division full of managers who like to run, he had the lowest attempts against per nine of any regular catcher in the AL. The table below shows innings caught, stolen base attempts (SBA), attempts per 9 innings, pitcher caught stealing (PCS), and caught stealing percentage for the starting catchers in the AL. I threw Brandon Inge in there as well for illustrative purposes.



NAME                  INN   SBA  SBA/9In  PCS   CS%

Ivan Rodriguez,Det    1051   59    0.51     3  0.29

Miguel Olivo,CWS/Sea  760.1  49    0.58     6  0.26

Toby Hall,TB         1011.1  67    0.60     6  0.28

Henry Blanco,Min      872.1  61    0.63     5  0.45

Rod Barajas,Tex       908.2  64    0.63     6  0.28

Dan Wilson,Sea        827.1  66    0.72     4  0.29

Jorge Posada,NYY     1102.1  92    0.75     2  0.26

Damian Miller,Oak     963.2  81    0.76    17  0.28

Javy Lopez,Bal       1092.1  94    0.77     6  0.23

Bengie Molina,Ana     762    69    0.81     1  0.25

Jason Varitek,Bos    1062.2 100    0.85     3  0.21

Gregg Zaun,Tor        789    83    0.95     2  0.26

Victor Martinez,Cle  1108   119    0.97     4  0.23
     


Brandon Inge, Det    312.2   51    1.47     3  0.38

I was surprised to see that Pudge’s 29% is acutally still among the best in the league, second only to Henry Blanco. You’ll also probably notice that overall those CS rates seem lower than you would expect. The key here is that typically, CS rates show all baserunners who are caught stealing while the catcher is behind the plate. Pitcher caught stealing is listed in the Bill James Handbook. It is what happens when a pitcher makes a move over to first, and gets the guy who took off too soon and is thrown out at second. It is recorded as a caught stealing, even though the catcher wasn’t involved. When you take those out of the CS rate, you see much lower numbers.

While another possible explanation for Pudge’s “dropoff” was the Tigers young staff that couldn’t hold runners, the opposite is probably true. While Jeremy Bonderman and Jason Johnson are bad at holding runners, Rodriguez may have benefitted from having 3 lefties in the rotation for half of the year.

So while Pudge’s demise may be exaggerated, his normal caught stealing rates are still on the decline, and he probably shouldn’t be the most feared arm in the AL anymore. On the other hand, former back-up catcher Brandon Inge had a terrific caught stealing rate, and yet it stopped absolutely nobody from trying to run on him.

Other Notes:
-Hardball Times takes a look at the Doyle Alexander/John Smoltz trade from 1987. While typically referred to as one of the most lopsided deals, it managed to help both teams accomlish what they were looking for. Alexander got the Tigers to the playoffs, and Smoltz became a fixture in Atlanta.
-The battle for the last bullpen spot is heating up, and the loser probably won’t remain a Tiger. Gary Knotts and Franklyn German are both out of options, and both competing for the last spot on the pitching staff. Trammell has said several times he only plans on keeping 11 pitchers. With the 5 guys in the rotation set, and Urbina/Pericval/Farnsworth/Walker/Rodney (if healthy) already slotted for relief there is only one spot left. Chances are neither would clear waivers so the Tigers risk losing one of them.

Defense, Statistics

Keying in on the Keystone

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David Pinto at Baseball Musings is continuing to publish the results of his Probabilistic Model of Range. He has churned out the positional data for shortstops and second basemen. Carlos Guillen looks decent, and Omar Infante doesn’t look too bad.


              
Guillen       Infante

3597          2710

Act. Outs         490           305

Pred. Outs     496.37        319.00

Act. DER         .136          .113

Pred. DER        .138          .118

Among their peers, Guillen was in the top third (and substantially ahead of Edgar Renteria, the guy the Tigers were looking to sign and displace Guillen) while Infante was right about in the middle. The table was compiled only of players that had 1000 BIP.

Interestingly in Guillen’s case, he had the highest actual DER of all shortstops. Also, his predicted DER of .138 was among the highest so for some reason the balls hit to/near him were more fieldable than most other players. I’m hesitant to make the leap that the Tigers pitchers manage to induce a high amount of weakly hit balls (at least to shortstop), but I don’t have any other explanations either.

While Infante’s numbers don’t really do much for me, it was only his first season with significant playing time at second. He’s also young and probably still has room to grow where it comes to positioning and familiarity with opposing hitters.

Over the course of a full season I’m assuming 4400 BIP for short and 4000 BIP) the two combine to be 28 outs below their predicted range.

Over the course of a full season (assuming 4400 BIP as a full season) the two combine to be 31 outs below their predicted range

I’m curious to see what Pinto’s numbers will show for the Tigers’ 3rd base situation, but I’m not sure that Brandon Inge will have the 1000 BIP to qualify.

For more background on the PMR, check out David’s other posts here and here.

UPDATE: Pinto just posted the centerfield ratings and he has further validated his system: Alex Sanchez rannks near the bottom.

Other Stuff
-I did some updating over on the sidebar. Added are some new Detroit sports links, and I cleaned up some defunct sites. I also removed the section for the 2004 preview and anchored a couple of interesting/highlight type items. So far that includes my interview with Dombrowski and a table that has Tigers’ salaries for 2005 (so far).

-Ordonez watch: Apparently the Cubs are interested and Ordonez will work out for them in California. Will he actually work out or is Boras trying to force the Tigers hand? Or is Magglio just trying to get somebody else to offer up multiple years like the Tigers have done. Did Boras hold off on these workouts all along so that he could get maximum value for his other slugging outfielders (Drew and Beltran) by effectively shrinking the talent pool knowing that he could always get a desperate team to cough up big bucks and years on the eve of spring training? It’s stuff like this that hurts my head but it is par for the course with Scott Boras. The level of suspicion that surrounds any Boras negotiation is almost comical, but well earned.

Defense, Statistics

Odds are…Tigers defense is poor

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I wasn’t planning on writing about the Tigers’ poor defense, but then David Pinto published his Probabalistic Model of Range for 2004. I love fresh stats, and this will dovetail nicely with the defense independent discussion from last week.

Pinto’s stats are compiled by looking at play by play data and measuring how likely it is that given ball will be turned into an out. He looks at the direction the ball was hit, the type of hit (grounder, flyball, linedrive, bunt), how hard it was hit, the park, and the handedness of the hitter and pitcher. Pinto’s method is very similar to Mitchel Lichtman’s Ultimate Zone Rating which I used extensively in my defensive preview last year. Lichtman went an additional step and expressed a player’s defensive contribution in terms of runs. Unfortunately for us (fortunately for Lichtman) he’s working for the Cardinals now and won’t be publishing his results.

The Probalistic Model shows the following totals for the Tigers

Balls-in-play: 4524
Acutal Outs: 3091
Defensive Efficiency: .683
Predicted Outs: 3169.2
Predicted DER: .701

The gap between the Tigers actual DER and predicted DER was the 4th worst in the majors. The result is that the Tigers missed out on converting 78 balls-in-play into outs. The pitchers are the real losers in this because innings get extended, run likelihood increases, and so does workload. And it’s not just a matter of pitchers having to face an additional 78 hitters. Considering that 64.9% of the batters against reached base (this includes the non balls in play as well), that means that Tigers pitchers faced an additional 120 batters over the course of the season.

Now hopefully I didn’t just mess up all those calculations and I don’t look like an idiot. Regardless, this just helps to support the commonly held belief that the Tigers defense is below average. The mainstream media typically point to errors and fielding percentage which are horrible measures of defense, but the Tigers were so far behind the rest of the league in those stats they still illustrate the point. It also meshes nicely with Jaffe’s dERA calculations which show that as a team the Tigers allowed 30 more runs than would be expected.

Here are some other defense related Tiger stats:
From the Hardball Times Baseball Annual:
-The Tigers line drive allowed percentage is 17.5% against a league average of 18.2%. This is signifcant because line drives are the type of ball in play most likely to turn into a hit.
-The Tigers groundball/flyball ratio is 1.25 against a league average of 1.15.
-The Tigers had 144 errors last year and 48.5% were throwing errors. The league average is 46.5% of errors are throwing errors.
-From a catching standpoint, the Tigers caught stealing rate was 37% against a league average of 32%. Pudge however only threw out 29% of runners while Brandon Inge threw out 38%. However Pudge’s reputation kept runners from trying to steal on him. With Pudge behind the plate runners tried to steal only .48 times per game. With Inge behind the plate they were trying 1.38 times per game.

Other Stuff
-Happy 4th Birthday to Tigers Central. Ryan and his crew do a great job over there.
-I received a bunch of emails from different website operators who want me to link to them. I’ve read your emails, I just haven’t had a chance to incorporate your links yet.

Defense, Pitching, Statistics

Tiger DiPS

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Jay Jaffe at Futility Infielder has compiled and published Defense Independent Pitching stats for 2004. As I always do when I see fresh stats, I scroll to find out if there is anything interesting to be learned about Tiger players. Fortunately for Tiger fans, there is some good news in here. But first, a little DiPS background.

For those that haven’t heard about Defense Independent Pitching it is an idea promoted/discovered by Voros McCracken. The theory is that pitchers do not differ significantly in their ability to prevent hits on balls in play. DiPS is a way of looking at the things that a pitcher can control without the help of defense (strikeouts, walks, homers, hit batsmen) and combining it with league averages for balls in play to see what a pitcher’s stats would look like with typical “luck” and a typical defense behind him. It is also adjusted for park effects. The resulting calculated ERA (noted as DiPS or FIP, or dERA) has been shown to correlate better with the subsequent season’s ERA, than using the traditional ERA. This is just a very quick explanation. For more detail be sure to read Jaffe’s article that accompanies the stats.

As for how this applies to the Tigers, the following table has the defense independent stats for the Tigers’ starters last year. Defense independent ERA is dERA. Earned runs above replacement is a measure of how many runs better than a replacement level pitcher the pitcher was last year. The d-E column is a measure of how the DiPS stats compare to the actual ERA. A negative number indicates that the pitcher was hurt by some combination of bad luck or bad defense.
table

Most surprising on this list is Jason Johnson, who was widely regarded as the Tigers’ weakest starter last year (despite a handful of very impressive performances). Johnson was among the league leaders in misfortune last year with an actual ERA three quarters of a run higher than his dERA. With a league average dERA of 4.63, it actually makes Johnson an above average pitcher. One pitcher who had even more bad luck was Derek Lowe who’s dERA was a full run lower than his actual ERA. His dERA of 4.40 is almost identical to Johnson’s. Fortunately, it will cost us $4 million for one more year for Johnson’s services as opposed to $36 million over 4 years for Lowe’s.

Jeremy Bonderman’s dERA of 4.37 is a big improvement over last year’s 4.81. At the age of 22 it is another indication that this guy maybe on the road to stardom.

Mike Maroth’s dERA is .44 worse than his actual ERA. However, he still showed great improvement last year as his 2003 dERA was 5.54.

By dERA Nate Robertson was a slightly below average pitcher last year. It was only his first full year in the rotation however. He struckout plenty of guys, but was hurt by home runs and some fatigue down the stretch.

So the good news is that while the Tigers didn’t have a dominant starter last year, the guys 1-4 were all average to above average. Also, all the Tigers starters showed improvement over the previous year. The bad news is that the Tigers pitching staff was victimized by poor defense. In looking at dER’s and actual ER’s there is a gap of 30 runs. Unfortunately the Tigers weren’t able to significantly bolster their defense this offseason.