In the 2004-2005 off-season, the Yankees blew up the whole project. Brown and Mussina stuck around because of their contracts, but everyone else was out. Lieber left for the Phillies, El Duque signed with the White Sox, and the Yanks traded Javier Vazquez for Randy Johnson. To replace the two departures, the team signed Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright. It was hardly a perfect solution. In fact, it seemed like more of the same, just with different names. Unsurprisingly, the team ERA, while numerically lower in 2005, ranked worse in relation to the league.

Clearly, the Yankees replaced very good pitchers with far inferior ones. In 2003 the staff posted a 3.66 FIP, second in baseball. In 2004 that jumped to 4.27, 12th in the majors. In 2005 it was just about the same, 4.28, but that ranked 15th. For years I thought the conversation ended there. Worse pitchers means a worse pitching staff. Not only were the five starters inferior to the ones in 2003, but injuries forced the Yankees to trot out even worse arms.

But as we learned in 2009, even a team with a middling pitching staff can post a quality ERA if it has quality defenders behind it. The 2009 Mariners posted a team 4.39 FIP, which ranked 9th in the AL. Yet their team ERA of 3.87 was No. 1. The difference was in the team defense. The Mariners posted a team 85.5 UZR, 16 runs better than the next best team. In other words, with a pitching staff perhaps negligibly better than the 2004 and 2005 Yankees teams, the Mariners still managed the top ERA in the AL. (Though, of course, having an ace like Felix certainly helps.)

Defensive stats weren’t widespread in 2003, but if they were perhaps the Yankees would have taken a different approach to rebuilding the pitching staff. The team UZR that year was -62.2, second worst in the majors and worst in the AL. In 2004 that was even worse, -76.3. To put that number into even more grave context, the second worst team, the Red Sox, were at -34.1. Yes, the Yankees defense in 2004 was more than twice as bad as the second worst team. While the pitching staff was not nearly as good as 2003, the worsened defense exacerbated the problem.

Yet that’s nothing compared to 2005. The Yankees, as a team, posted a -137 UZR. That’s a 137-run penalty due to their defense. The second worst team, the Reds, ranked at -67, so once again the Yankees were twice as bad as the next worst team. The second worst AL team, the Royals, ranked -52.4, so the Yankees were even worse when compared to their own league. Finally, to continue with the theme of worst, the -137 UZR is, by far, the worst team UZR since 2002, when we began tracking UZR.

While the Yankees still ranked last in 2006, a -73.9 UZR, they were a bit closer to the next worst team, the Pirates at -53.3. In terms of the AL, however, they could be considered even worse. The White Sox ranked 13th that year at -29.3, putting a huge gap between the two teams. It wasn’t until 2007 that the Yankees started to improve, with a -8.8 UZR, which ranked 21st in the majors. After a step back in 2008, the Yankees jumped up to 19th in the majors in 2009. The defense still isn’t great, not even in the top half of the league. But compared to 2005, they’re a team of Ozzie Smiths.

Photo credit: Kathy Willens/AP

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Were the 2005 Yankees the worst defensive team ever?

In Tampa, all eyes are on the new guys, and that obsession thrusts Curtis Granderson, who just wants to fit in, into the spotlight. Other than the return of Javier Vazquez to serve as the team’s fourth starter, Granderson is the biggest acquisition, and he’s being asked to replace Johnny Damon in the lineup. Considering Damon’s departure involved stealing two bases on one play and being lauded as a key offensive piece to the Yanks, that’s no small feat.

So after an off-season during which we obsessed over left field and searched for ways the Yanks could fill a left field gap, the reporters asked Curtis Granderson about his take on the corner slot. Maybe he’ll be the one to take it, he said to MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch. “People forget that I came up as a left fielder,” Granderson said yesterday. “In the Minor Leagues all the way up to Double-A, I didn’t start playing center field consistently until my second year in the Minors. Even when I came to the big leagues, I played a few games in left. I have no problem going back over there if that happens to be.”

It seems so simple, but does it make sense for the Yanks? In essence, the team would be shifting Brett Gardner to center field while deploying Curtis Granderson as the left fielder. On days in which the Yanks are facing a lefty and want to rest Gardner, they can slide Granderson to center and use Randy Winn, Marcus Thames or someone else in left. Granderson is versatile enough and comfortable enough to make the move.

The numbers too bear out this alignment. Playing his home games in spacious Comerica Park, Granderson has generally been an above-average center fielder. He put up double-digit UZR totals in 2006 and 2007 before slipping below 0 in 2008. He rebounded last year with a 1.6 mark, and we can assume that he would be as good if not better covering ground in left. Brett Gardner meanwhile has shined as a center fielder. In limited duty, he put up a 9.5 mark in 2008 and a 7.2 mark in 2009.

As for the guys they would be replacing, a duo of Granderson in left and Gardner in center would far outshine Johnny Damon and Melky Cabrera. Damon, after two disastrous years in center with the Yanks, had an above-average full-season showing in 2008 as a left fielder but saw his UZR slip to -9.2 in 2009. Melky, meanwhile, put up a 0.6 mark in center in 2008 and a 1.4 mark in 2009. Even assuming just a duplication of their 2010 numbers, the Gardnerson/Gardner duo would be nearly 9 defensive runs above average while the Cabrera/Damon duo would be just under -8 defensive runs below average.

The wild card in these moves remains Brett Gardner’s offense. The Yankees won’t ask Curtis Granderson to move to left if they don’t believe Gardner can hold down a starting job for long enough, and the team might not ask Granderson to move if their plan includes pursuing Carl Crawford after he hits free agency next winter. After all, they might not want Granderson to be bouncing back and forth between the outfield slots for one year with a more certain solution just around the corner.

With run prevention the next frontier in baseball analysis and team-building, the Yankees are bound to give many outfield permutations a good hard look in Spring Training. When Opening Day rolls around, no one should be surprised if the solution to the Johnny Damon hole had been around since early December after all.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Sticking the new guy in left field

Make sure you check out Sean’s first two entries, and check back in for the rest of the series.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Looking at minor league defense

Anyone paying attention knows the story. Instead of looking for highly regarded offensive players, Zduriencik and his staff sought the best defensive players. Baseball games are won, after all, by outscoring your opponents, and a team can accomplish this by either adding runs on their side or subtracting runs from their opponent’s side. The Mariners chose the latter, and went from allowing the fourth most runs in the AL in 2008 to allowing the fewest, by 40 runs, in 2009.

Yet, not a whole ton changed in the Mariners rotation. They had many of the same pitchers pitching a similar number of innings as 2008. The big mutation came on the defensive side of the ball, where they assembled a top flight group of players who could turn batted balls into outs. This included an outfield featuring Franklin Gutierrez, baseball’s best center fielder last season, and Ichiro, plus Endy Chavez in the first half and Ryan Langerhans in the second, both above average defenders. Their infield defense went from good to better as well, as they replaced the weakest link, Yuniesky Betancourt.

It seems that other teams have caught on, adding more defensive-minded players this off-season. The Red Sox let Jason Bay walk so they could sign the cheaper and defensively superior Mike Cameron, and then picked up Adrian Beltre to man third. The Yankees let Johnny Damon walk in favor of giving playing time to Brett Gardner and Randy Winn, inferior offensive players but far better at running down fly balls. Yet the Yankees hold an advantage over both the Mariners and the Red Sox: they still have a powerful offensive core.

The Mariners, as we know, still do not have a terribly powerful offense. They might have improved, though losing Russ Branyan’s production certainly hurts a bit. The Red Sox have a far better offensive team, but their core players do not match those of the Yankees. Martinez and Youkilis compose a solid 3-4 combo, but they’re no Teixeira-Rodriguez. Dustin Pedroia is a very good leadoff hitter, but he’s no Derek Jeter — and the gap extends even further if Ellsbury mans the leadoff spot. So while the Red Sox might prevent a few more runs, the Yankees figure to score quite a few more.

This I like, because it represents a balanced approach. The Yankees can afford to go defense in the outfield, particularly left field, because they already have a strong core of offensive players. The Red Sox chose to go defense in the outfield as well, but they will do it to the peril of their offense. Make no mistake, however: the Red Sox will do very well next season, despite what some pot-stirrer says. But I like the Yankees chances better. They’ve minded the defense, but only because they already possess a monstrous 3-4 combo and an exemplary leadoff hitter. The Red Sox, defensively savvy as they may be, just don’t have that core.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Balancing offense and defense

In his blog entry today, Buster Olney points us to the blog of former catcher Brent Mayne, who has been writing about catching. It’s promotion for his book on the subject, but he does offer up useful tips for catchers. Today has to do with the basics of setting up around the plate. His advice for catchers:

This is how you can help. Work fast. Put the signs down quickly and intuitively. Get the pitcher in a good tempo and remember the less time he has to think, the better. DO NOT set up too far on the corners! Unless your pitcher’s name is Greg Maddux or Cliff Lee, setting up away from the plate is an excellent recipe for a walk-a-thon. Only split the corners of the plate with your crouch when you are way ahead in the count. Make the pitcher throw good low strikes yielding weak ground balls. Set up around the plate and make the offense put the ball in play right now.

Easier said than done, of course, and your pitcher can always mess up the rhythm by shaking off too many signs. Still, it’s advice I like. Whether it actually works I’m not sure. But I’d feel a lot better about Joba if Posada handled him like this.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Implicit advice to Posada regarding Joba

Over the next week or so we’ll discuss the most commonly used stats on this site. Many of these require heavy math, and we know that can turn off many people. This series of articles will attempt to explain what goes into these stats without getting into any of the heavy math. We’ll include as many resources as possible, however, in case you want to dive into the calculations yourself. By the end of the series, we’ll replace our woefully outdated and partly inaccurate guide to stats.

Linear run estimators

You might have heard the term linear weights, and maybe it intimidated you. For our purposes, however, the term linear run estimators works better, though it means the same thing. Using data from actual baseball games, a linear run estimator assigns a certain run value to each offensive event. On average, the event is said to be worth that many runs. Here’s a simple table to describe the value of each hit type (from Tango):

There are other linear models that put these events into context, such as the base-out situation, but for the main UZR calculation we need only worry ourselves with the linear estimator.

Field zones

To determine a fielder’s range, we need to determine a zone for which he is responsible. A baseball field can be broken into 78 zones, of which UZR uses 64. They’re labeled by the position or positions they’re closest to, and also by depth. You can see a diagram of all field zones at Retrosheet.

Determining league average

If I told you that a certain player, say Herp Aherpaderp, hit 18 home runs, what could you make of that data point? Not much, really, unless you also knew the league average number of home runs that year. If Herp Aherpaderp played in the NL in 1920, he would have led the league. If he played in the NL in 2001 he would have been tied for 51st. Comparing players to their peers is important in rating them.

What we need to know here is how many hits and how many outs passed through each zone. Thanks to baseball stats companies, like Baseball Info Solutions and STATS, those numbers go on record. We further need to know which player made the plays in that zone. For example, if we’re looking at Zone 56, the one between short and third, we want to know how many outs the shortstop recorded, and how many outs the third baseman recorded. Finally, we want to know the run value per hit to that zone, which we can find using the above table.

Assigning credit and fault

At this stage we encounter math, so bear with me as I explain. Obviously, we want to know the rate at which balls in play in a particular zone turned into outs and hits. Using that and the league averages, we can then determine how many more or fewer balls a player got to than the league average player. Then, using the run value per hit, we can calculate how many runs the player cost or saved his team.

To make things a bit clearer, we’re just trying to determine which player was responsible for which hits. So if there are 1,000 hits and 1,500 outs in Zone 56, we want to know how many of those outs the third baseman converted, and how many the shortstop converted. Using this ratio, we can determine the responsible party for the hits. So, if the third baseman made 70% of the outs recorded from Zone 56, 1,050 in this example, he’s also responsible for 70% of the hits, or 700. That’s the baseline we apply to individual fielders.

Then we find the value of the balls the player caught and add subtract the value of the balls the player allowed for hits. This gives us the number or more or fewer balls the player got to. Multiply that by the run value per hit, and you have UZR runs.

What about errors?

Errors can be tricky when calculating range, because when a fielder makes an error he usually got to the ball, but could’t field or throw it cleanly. To this end, UZR initially counts errors as outs, again because the fielder got to the ball and therefore has the range to get to that ball in the future. But we still need to factor in errors somehow.

Instead of calculating the error rate for each zone, UZR calculates it by position. It uses the total number of errors committed by players at a certain position and determines the rate by dividing it by the total number of ball players at that position got to. We can then determine how many more or fewer errors a particular player made, and then, multiplying by the run value of an error, we can determine how many more runs he cost or saved his team.

That counts only reached-on-errors, ones which caused the batter to reach first base. There is another type of error, non-ROE, which means a different calculation, since it means a runner moving up rather than a runner reaching base. That’s taken care of with UZR, too.

Adjusting for other factors

Obviously, other factors play into how a defender fields a ball. First up is Park Factor, a metric I’m assuming we’re all relatively familiar with. UZR breaks down park factor into positions, including the infield as one position. The idea here is to make small adjustments for how certain parks play. If an infield plays badly — has high grass, has messy lips — that factors into defense. So does outfield space. Those all get factored into UZR.

Batted ball speed is seemingly the most important adjustment. A third baseman might be able to not only field a tapper between him and the shortstop, but have enough time to set his feet and throw. On a sharp grounder, however, the play becomes more difficult. Game stringers — people who watch the game and record every event — classify ground balls as soft, medium, or hard, and fly balls as easy, medium, and hard. Those all factor into UZR as well, with each zone getting a weight for each batted ball speed. It takes into account the difficulty of catching a lightly hit fly ball to a shallow zone, as well as a hard fly ball to a deep zone and everything in between.

Batter handedness plays a part, too, since that can cause fielders to adjust. Also, batters of a certain handedness tend to hit balls harder to certain zones and softer to others. This adjustment is made so that, for example, a shortstop defending against a left-handed batter doesn’t get extra credit for fielding a ball in the 6M zone — i.e., shortstop up the middle — when he might have been positioned there in the first place.

Then there’s pitcher ground ball ratio. This doesn’t make a huge difference, since on average a pitching staff has a, well, average GB/FB ratio. It still gets factored, though, to ensure accuracy.

Finally, we get to the base-out situation that I mentioned earlier. Again, this has to do with positioning. Middle infielders are more likely to get to their middle zones with a runner on first, since they’re playing closer to the bag for the double play.

Criticism

Earlier this week, Mike Rogers at Bless You Boys examined UZR, noting its ups and downs. He makes good points as to the limitations of UZR. The main point is the subjectivity of the batted ball type. What one stringer sees as a medium hit fly ball another might see as hard. Also, limiting the data to just three classifications might provide simplicity, but it also detracts from accuracy. And, as far as accuracy goes, UZR doesn’t always agree with other defensive metrics, most notably John Dewan’s plus/minus.

Yet despite its limitations, UZR remains the best tool we currently have to measure defense. When using it, however, Mike points out five rules we should abide by.

1. 1 year of UZR data is on par with about 50-55 games worth of offense.Would you judge Miguel Cabrera’s talents at the plate on just his games from April 1st through June? I wouldn’t, and neither would you (or so I hope). So don’t do it with defense. Personally, if I have three years of UZR data for a player, I’d rather have four. If I have four years of UZR data, I’d rather have five. I don’t believe that you can have enough.
2. One full year of defensive data is at least 1200 innings worth of data.
3. Do not use UZR per 150 games (UZR/150; found on Fangraphs’ player pages) if at all possible. It’s way too misleading.
4. If Player A is a -10 one year, +10 the next year and then +0 the next year, he’s likely an average fielder. Large swings in year-to-year data isn’t out of the norm, but you should always use an average (preferably, a weighted average) and be conservative with it.
5. When possible, use multiple defensive systems to grade a player (UZR, John Dewan’s Plus/Minus system, etc).

The biggest shortcoming with using multiple years of data, as I see it, is that if a player is in physical decline we still might rate him positively because of previous years’ data. But that’s just a minor quibble.

To remember

The most frequent criticism I hear of UZR is that we can better assess defense by just watching. Observation, combined with a knowledge of the game, should allow us to assess the defensive abilities of a player. Unfortunately, as Mike mentioned in his defensive stats post, our eyes can deceive us. Our memories get distorted, and the effect gets multiplied as we become further removed from the event. The data used in calculating UZR was observed by human eyes and recorded as such — usually by multiple people per game, to weed out bias.

In other words, UZR is based on eyeball data. It just takes a heap of such data and compiles it into a workable statistic. It tries to factor in all those contextual questions we have after seeing raw data — like how Herp Aherpaderp hit 18 home runs. Well, when did he hit those 18 home runs? In what park did he hit those home runs? Were a bunch of them cheapies that barely cleared the wall? With these questions reasonably answered, or at least accounted for, we can get a better idea of a player’s defensive abilities.

Resources

The best and, in my opinion, only place to get started is by reading explanations by the man who created UZR. That’s Mitchel Lichtman, co-author of The Book. Here are his two UZR primers.

UZR Part 1
UZR Part 2

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The stats we use: UZR

Evaluating defense has come a long way from the days of fielding percentage and errors, as more advanced statistics can more precisely measure the difficulty of a play based on where and how hard the ball was hit. In a piece for MLB.com, Doug Miller chronicles all of the newfangled defensive stats being used today, speaking to both the developers of various defensive statistics as well as team officials. Allow me to excerpt at length:

One of the pioneers of these stats, “The Fielding Bible” author John Dewan, says it all seems complex, but it isn’t. Dewan’s main stats, the DRS metric and Plus/Minus, are the result of logical data culled from comprehensive, painstaking attention to detail throughout a Major League season.

Simply put, Dewan’s company, Baseball Info Solutions, has upwards of 2,000 “scouts” who pore over video of every game played in the course of a 162-game MLB season and track each batted ball, analyzing how hard the balls are hit, how close or far they are from each fielder deemed to be responsible for making the play, and the result of what said defender does.

Many factors go into the point totals, including adjustments for things like stadium dimensions, wall height and even the occasional bonus points for home-run-saving catches.

Successful plays are awarded with a positive point total, points are subtracted for perceived failures, and the scores are added up and equated to “runs saved” throughout a year. Dewan and most other defensive-stat purveyors tend to agree that 10 runs saved equals one win over the course of a season.

“For Boston last year at third base, for example, Mike Lowell, who was unable to move well because of injury, cost them 20 runs, and now they have Adrian Beltre, and he added about 20 runs,” Dewan explains. “Right there, the Red Sox have added four wins. Plus they’ve added three wins at short with Marco Scutaro and a couple more in the outfield with Mike Cameron. It’s a huge improvement.”

UZR, developed by Mitchel Lichtman, is similar to DRS in its variables such as park adjustment, and to Dewan’s Plus/Minus in the sense that its scores are based on how often each defensive player is better than average on balls hit into their specific “zones” on the field.

Gutierrez, for example, led baseball with a UZR score of 29.1, while Aaron Rowand of the San Francisco Giants was one of the lowest-ranked center fielders in the game with a UZR of 1.3.

“Gutierrez had as much to do with our success as anybody last year,” Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said. “He made our outfield better, he made our pitching staff better, he made our whole club better.”

For Dewan, Lichtman and David Pinto, who came up with the similar PMR metric, watching the Mariners improve by 24 games gave strong evidence that these stats are legit and the old methods of ranking defense, fielding percentage and range factor, are becoming antiquated.

Of course, defensive stats are far from perfect, just like offensive and pitching stats aren’t perfect either. Moshe Mandel at TYU pointed out the uncertainty of UZR given the naturally small sample sizes of defensive chances (think about how many balls a given fielder actually makes a play on in a game), and suggests a weighted system based on about three years of data. Jeff Zimmerman at Beyond The Box Score used a similar system and four years data to create UZR projections for 2010, which project the Yanks’ to be a below average defensive team next year (disclaimer: this was long before any major moves were made this offseason).

The more information used to make an evaluation, the better. By no means should statistics replace scouts, because there’s far too much information stats can’t measure. A spreadsheet won’t tell you if a hitter is losing bat speed (though they could suggest it), nor will they tell you that the guy throwing 97 is at risk for injury because his mechanics are deeply flawed. However, at the same time a scout’s eye won’t tell you that Nick Swisher’s down year in 2008 was a function of bad luck more so than declining skills.

The statistics born out of the game of baseball, just like the game itself, continue to evolve. What we have in UZR, +/-, RZR, PMR and the like are the most advanced defensive metrics ever available. They’re not perfect and they suffer from the same sample size issues as do the more traditional stats, but we’d be foolish to ignore them just because the don’t agree with what our eyes tell us. Like the dude from Memento said, “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.” Statistics are facts.

Frankly, we’ve only seen the tip of the defensive metric iceberg, just wait until HitFX and this monster get fully implemented.

Photo Credit: David J. Phillip, AP

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Looking at defensive stats

Johnny Damon went through a transition in 2007. He left Spring Training pondering retirement. While nothing came of that, he faced many problems early in the season. By the end of April he was hitting .229/.349/.329, a far cry from his impressive pinstriped debut a year earlier. He then battled calf issues in May, eventually missing a few games at the end of the month, but ultimately missing the disabled list. By June, Joe Torre had seen enough. He installed Melky Cabrera as the everyday center fielder, relegating Damon mostly to designated hitter duties — made easier because of Jason Giambi’s foot injury. Damon played just 10 games in center field from June through September.

After spending most of June and July as a one-way player, Damon started seeing more time in left field later in the season. This made sense. Johnny was, by reputation, a good defender in center field. Having to cover less ground in left field, Damon could be a defensive asset to the Yankees. According to UZR, he was. In 271 innings over the season’s final two months, Damon accumulated a 7.5 UZR. That stood in contrast to his numbers in center field, -7.6 in 377 innings in 2007. It also brought to light Damon’s UZR deficiency in center field — he’d been in the negatives since 2003.

When Joe Girardi took over in 2008, it was clear Damon would play left field every day. His bat played well enough for left field, and his range at that position would give the Yankees a boost on defense. Sure enough, Damon posted another great defensive season according to UZR, posting a 6.7 mark (11.6 per 150) in 659.1 innings in left field. Because the team struggled to score runs, and because they demoted Melky Cabrera in August, Damon slid over to center for 285 innings, and again posted a negative UZR figure, -7.8. Damon clearly wasn’t a good center field option for 2009, but it stood to reason that he’d once again be an asset in left.

The plan didn’t work out how the Yankees expected. From the start Damon looked shaky in left field. That he dropped a few balls early in the season, including in a June game against the Red Sox, did him no favors with the fans. Soon after the drop against the Sox Damon revealed he was having eye trouble, a “fluttering” issue that doctors connected to his caffeine intake. Still, fans tend to remember players who drop fly balls. No one forgot Damon’s infractions.

Not only was there visual evidence of Johnny’s deficiencies in left field, but the go-to defensive stat, Ultimate Zone Rating, ranked Damon among the worst left fielders in the game. After posting a 11.6 UZR/150 in 2008, Damon fell into the negatives in 2009. He ended with a -12.1 per 150 mark in 2009, which seems to confirm the eyeball test. Damon just wasn’t that good in the field in 2009, and at age 36 it’s difficult to project an improvement for 2010.

Still, it’s possible that Damon wasn’t as bad in the field as fans and UZR say. A fan’s opinion is often skewed by a few standout memories, and nothing stood out about Damon’s defense more than his dropped balls and “happy feet” as he got under fly balls. That will leave a negative impression for sure. And while it might be the best known measure of defense — at least of those publicly available — UZR has its shortcomings as well. For instance, it rated Juan Rivera, Carlos Lee, and Raul Ibanez in the positives this season. Those aren’t three players generally considerd good defenders.

I haven’t seen many scouts comment on Johnny Damon’s defense, and even so I’m not inclined to believe an anonymous scout quoted for an article. We’ve seen that too many times, and it often seems like the opinion offered is not of a consensus, but rather just the quote that best fit the writer’s article. The closest thing I’ve seen is Tangotiger’s Fan Scouting Report. The idea is to get a good feel for a player’s defense through a huge sampling of fans. Yet that system seems flawed, though that could just be from underexposure. Damon ranked fairly low on the left field scale, ahead of only the players with terrible defensive reputations: Ibanez, Alfonso Soriano, Manny Ramires, and Delmon Young, etc.

There is one more defensive statistic to consider, and it’s a bit more kind to Damon than UZR. Revised Zone Rating, developed by John Dewan. Like all defensive stats it has its ups and downs, but Dewan did some hard work concocting this metric. There are two aspects to consider. First is the straight RZR, or how well a fielder did on balls hit into his zone. Damon’s mark in 2009 was .906. For context, Carl Crawford, tops in UZR, was at .914. The top left fielder in the league was David DeJesus, at .927. Of course, criticism will flow because Ryan Braun, considered a poor defender by scouts and by UZR, ranked second at .919. Damon ranked fourth in the majors.

The other aspect of RZR is OOZ, plays made out of the player’s zone. This is an important aspect. Players might be able to make all the plays within his zone, but it takes a very good fielder to make plays on balls outside his zone. Crawford is king in this stat, making 105 plays outside his territory. DeJesus follows, and Braun ranks fourth. Again, this will open the number to criticism. In any case, Damon ranks 11th in this stat, making 46 plays out of his zone. The only players below him with 1,000 or more innings in left field are Garret Anderson, Raul Ibanez, and Chris Coghlan.

It appears that any way we look at it, Johnny Damon was not a good fielder in 2009. This came as a surprise during the season, since Damon was so good in left field just a year before. We know, however, that certain skills decline with age, and by most measures Damon’s fielding range dropped off a cliff. This is no guarantee that he’ll continue to patrol the outfield poorly in 2010, but given his age it’s not wise to predict a turnaround.

The best we can hope for, I think, is that some component of UZR unfairly judged Damon, and that fan sentiment towards his defense was skewed by a few egregious plays early in the season. RZR didn’t think that poorly of Damon in 2009, and I thought that while his range wasn’t quite what I remembered it, it wasn’t as bad as the general perception. Damon is no longer a superior defensive outfielder, but I think that given an opportunity to start 75, 80 percent of games, he can patrol his position serviceably in 2010.

Photo credit: Associated Press

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Is Johnny Damon really that bad on defense?

I’m not going to bother to explain Jeff’s methodology, but all of the math is explained here. The individual projections can be found in this big Google Spreadsheet. Let’s kick off this post by taking a look at the projections for the players that we can assume will be back in pinstripes next year, and how they compare to last year’s UZR.

There’s more red than black, but the  good news is that in general, the projections see most of the Yankee regulars improving in 2010 (Jeter, Gardner, and Melky in center being the notable exceptions). Pitcher and catcher defense is so hard to quantity that UZR doesn’t even bother to try, hence Jorge Posada’s exclusion. As a team, the Yanks had a -18.5 UZR this season, 8th best in the AL and 19th best overall, so an improvement would be pretty sweet.

The only position in the field the Yankees have to fill this offseason is leftfield, and Johnny Damon has to be considered the odds on favorite to fill that vacancy. The incumbent leftfielder had a -9.2 UZR last season, a drop of nearly 16 runs from the year before and 17 runs the year before that. It was noticable watching the games too, as every routine fly to left in 2009 seemed like an adventure. Zimmerman projects Damon to bounce back to -2.1 UZR in 2010, which would be a welcome improvement.

If Damon doesn’t return, my personal choice to replace him would be Mike Cameron, who hasn’t played leftfield in the big leagues since 2000 and has just 9.2 career innings at the position. Regardless, it would be a waste to use him in left, because his centerfield defense is still very good. Cameron put up a +10.3 UZR in center in 2009, and projects to post a +3.9 UZR next year. Assuming Melky slides over to left to make room for Cameron, you’re looking at a combined +4.8 UZR between left and center in 2010. If you instead have Damon in left and Melky in center, it would be -2.2. Hell, even if it was Damon and Gardner, it would be +1.6 UZR between the two positions. Cameron and Melky would clearly be the best defensive alignment in this scenario.

Moving on to actual leftfielders, the two big names are obviously Matt Holliday and Jason Bay. Holliday projects to post a +4.9 UZR in left next year after +5.7 this year. Bay projects to have a -9.8 UZR next year, which is actually an improvement over this year’s -13.0 mark. The guy is just awful in the field. Whoever signs him for huge money and three or four or however many years is going to regret it by year three.

A Holliday and Melky arrangement would be good for +3.0 UZR in 2010, Bay and Melky an unsightly -11.7. Replace Melky with Brett the Jet, and you’re looking at combined UZR’s of +8.6 and -6.1, respectively. Matt Holliday would clearly be the best defensive option in leftfield among free agents for the Yanks, although factoring contracts, adding Cameron and sliding Gardbrera to left would be more cost efficient.

Of course, if the Yanks really want to go big for leftfield defense, the answer is trading for Carl Crawford. The Other CC has long been the best defensive leftfielder in the game (he leads all LF in UZR over the last two years, and has ranked either first or second every season since 2003 with just one exception), and he projects to put up a +10.6 UZR next year, the best at the position. Whether or not the Yankees decide to part with a few quality young players to get him is another story all together, I’m just making an observation about Crawford’s defense.

By no means are those the only leftfield options for the Yanks, they’re just the most discussed options. They could bring Xavier Nady back (projects to have a -1.9 UZR next year) and hope the elbow holds up, but that’s quite a risk. Neither Mark DeRosa or Chone Figgins played enough leftfield over the last four years to qualify for the projections (minimum 63 games), though DeRosa projects to have a +2.7 UZR in right while Figgins projects to -2.7 in center. Rick Ankiel projects to have a -2.4 UZR in center but doesn’t qualify for left, while Marlon Byrd projects to have +0.8, -0.8, and +1.0 UZR’s going left to right. A trade for David DeJesus would bring a studly +8.9 UZR to leftfield in 2010.

Obviously defense is only half the equation when it comes to evaluating a players worth, or maybe even less depending on how you feel (a run saved is as good as a run scored in my book), otherwise Randy Winn and his projected +2.5, -1.1, and +8.8 UZR’s in the outfield (going left to right) would make a lot of sense for the Yanks. However his .262-.318-.353 batting line with a .302 wOBA (fifth worst among all outfielders) in 2009 scream “STAY AWAY!” Ditto Endy Chavez and his projected +3.1 UZR in left and .300 career wOBA.

Remember, these are just projections for one year. UZR is best used with multiple year samples, however we’re all guilty of referring to one year totals to prove a point. Zimmerman’s projections are just that: projections. Just an educated guess at what might happen in the future, so don’t take them as gospel. Sure would be nice to see the defense improve again next year, though.

Photo Credit: Tim Shaffer, Reuters

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

2010 UZR Projections and the Yankees

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

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