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I think that there are a lot of big picture baseball stories that we saw unfold this offseason. A lot of important things happened. As written by Joe at RAB, the top end of the free agent market has taken a serious hit. Nearly all GMs, including Brian Cashman, have been on a very strict budget this year. Both as a necessity of the recession and as a part of the gradual evolution toward more rational decision making, these same General Managers have seemed to be a lot smarter than in past years – avoiding the overpriced, aging, overrated players. Except for Ed Wade.
However, I think that the big picture story that we’ll look back on years from now and judge this offseason by is the reevaluation of defense by major league teams, and at other times by fans. Defense has always been the hardest thing for us to quantify online.
For the most part, we’ve figured out how offense works. Runs are scored at a predictable rate (with some random variation) based upon hits, bases, walks, baserunning, etc. We also know pretty well that hitting is 50% of the game – since a run scored is as valuable as a run saved.
The question that is still up for debate is the other 50% of the game. Run saving has two components – pitching and defense. Some people will tell you that pitchers control the vast majority of the remaining 50% – somewhere around 39-40%. Some will tell you that the reality is more evenly split – pitchers control maybe 30-35% . That’s a huge difference – the difference between defense-heavy players being assets or liabilities.
Major league teams have bet on defense this offseason. The Red Sox replaced a very productive hitter in Jason Bay with a less productive defensive specialist in Mike Cameron, and are doing everything they can to jettison Mike Lowell. The A’s paid good money for Coco Crisp, and appear to be strongly considering Adrian Beltre. Jason Bay couldn’t find a decently huge deal that guys like Carlos Lee got a few years ago, but Chone Figgins and Placido Polanco did.
Teams that have showed unexpected and prolonged strength in the past few years have mostly been strong defensive clubs. Most notable have been the Mariners and Rays. Neither had a particularly strong set of pitchers – the Mariners practically were picking people out of the stands to pitch after Felix Hernandez – but both had top notch defensive arrangements. Ben Zobrist, Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, and the rest in Tampa Bay provide almost as much value according to Fangraphs on defense as on offense. The Mariners took this strange paradigm to new levels in 2009 – Gutierrez, Ichiro, Beltre, and Jack Wilson are collectively impotent with the bat, but gold glovers on defense.
This is a very pertinent condundrum for the Yankees. Brett Gardner is probably a very good to elite defensive player. How good is subject to debate, but our eyes as well as our aggregated eyes (statistics) confirm that he tracks down a lot of balls in center field. Our eyes as well as our memories confirm this about Curtis Granderson too, but for now let’s leave him out of the question.
If defense is more valuable than we used to think it was, we need to rethink what we assume about players like Brett Gardner. Melky Cabrera had a slightly, by some accounts significantly, better bat, but much poorer glove, and the Yankees let him go without much hesitation. The Yankees look to head into 2010 with their second straight year of well-improved defense on paper. Four years ago, we all saw through Brian Cashman stating that he was prepared to go into the season with Bubba Crosby as his center fielder. While Crosby was a lot worse player than Gardner, I don’t think that we should be too surprised if the Yankees go into 2010 with Brett Gardner as their starting center fielder, or a big part of a platoon.
Update: One more thought that I’d like to add on. Part of this problem is that we don’t have an openly-available, reliable defensive measure. The best we have is UZR/150, which has its problems. Teams have professional scouts and professional statistical analysts at their disposal, so they have a much better read on how good players are on defense. That’s why reading the decisions of smart MLB teams is so important. We shouldn’t try to be super-precise with defensive evaluations as fans, and instead recognize that the best we can do is reasonably estimate plateaus. Its more important for us to correctly value what it means to be a “very good center fielder” in terms of value than try to estimate an individual player’s value.
Photo Credit: Tom Szczerbowski/US Presswire
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6 Responses to Defensive Revaluations
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TIQ IQ
You are a dog with a bone on this guy. I just don’t see it. He looked so out-classed at the plate against good pitching and even average lefty pitching, meaning he does not pair well with atema that already has a liability (Granderson) against lefty pitching. In the field, he is really fast but I don’t have him as an elite defender in center. Can you cite a unbiased scout/analyst that ranks him as elite in the field?
when he is in Cf the gaps are not as big , he plays fairly shallow, his arm is just below avg. not afraid of being aggressive and going into walls or a dive.. no he is not jim edmunds or torri hunter, but he does not get paid at that level.. much better than what we had , nady damon matsui swisher hairston.abreu melky was good and an accurate arm but going back to the wall looked lost. what would holliday give us ?? or bay?? cameron he is 5 years from good, bubba crosby, brett is far better than all of them. as far as needing a scout for an opinion for a player i have watched every game he played, not needed for me..scouts are good for info on guys i don’t know about.. JD we see what we see, but we all process differently. I know i left out a few other guys out there.also, now we are only talking defense right?/ granderson had an off year with the glove . he looked lost at times . i hope he fixes it now..
At this point, Gardner had BETTER prove to be an above average defender, because if you give him a full season of at-bats I think he WILL prove to be practically an automatic out at the plate. He’d be hitting .235 in late May and if the Yanks aren’t in first place and playing well, this blog would be all about who the team should trade for and who they’ll have to give up to get them. (Not to mention the “I told you we should’ve re-signed Damon” posts.)
I think they traded Melky because, between him and Gardner, Melky has enough to get you what you need in return. He can hit, and its not like he’s a lousy CF. The only games I couldn’t watch last season were the Saturday afternoon games (screw you, FOX network), and not once do I remember thinking Melky was a liability in CF. I’m sure someone could throw stats at me that argue the contrary, but I just didn’t feel it, and I do remember seeing Melky run down some balls driven into the gap and make some nice diving catches. And he does have a cannon of an arm. (Is Gardner’s better?)
There would not be a single weak spot in our lineup if it was Damon in LF, Granderson in CF and Swisher in RF, and the offense they provided would far outweigh whatever defense issues they’d have.
I don’t feel gardner will be a full season starter, i think cashman traded bruney to have hoffman play left. until he don;t produce, why else does he give bruney away. ?? and the question was not about offense but about defense only.. melkys arm was a little above avg. he was accurate to me not a canon..werth has a canon markakis has a canon. melky again to me is not close to those guys and others in pure arm strength. melky needed to be woken up and this trade will help him and for sure will help cano..no more abreu and melky.. you don’t think cash and other were frustrated with melky for several years? thats why AAA was a great demotion for him it should have been under torre and certainly girardis first year , they went too long that year with him and cano..so the yanks gave cano big $s, and melky bus fare.. cash is proteting his investment in cano by sending melky off to be a pro or play in a sand box.
We are all rooting for Gardner and maybe a platoon with Hoffman makes some sense. The problem is that the best situation might be platooning Gardner and Hoffman but having Gardner play center on the days that he is in the lineup. That means that Granderson would be moving from center to left regularly. Has that been done before? Is that possible? My point about the scouts/analysts is that I recall a few analysts saying that Gardner is not so great in center but is a big hustle player.
As for Grandy moving from LF to CF, it is not the ideal situation but, Melky did it last year. The only time I can see Brett not playing CF is when a very very tough lefty is pitching.
There may have been a scout or two saying Brett wasn’t that good in CF but, it was a very few. He would have trouble in LF/RF, he has only played out of CF a hand full of times, if they want him in LF/RF they would have him working out this winter. Or they may just trade him. What ever they do with him, somewhere he will be a starting CF. He is not an automatic out as some have stated, he was injured last year.