Tango on Baseball Archives

UZR, 2000-2003 (December 21, 2003)

A million thanks to MGL for providing the data!
--posted by TangoTiger at 11:34 AM EDT

Posted 1:17 p.m., December 21, 2003 (#1) - MGL
Nice work on the chart Tango! How did you come up with the weightings? An educated guess? There is a typo in the weightings on top. The second 2002 should read 2000.

For readers not that familiar with UZR. Check out the UZR articles (part I and part II) on the Primer archives. A crach course:

UZR runs includes "range" and "hands" (hands inlcudes throwing and other errors) combined. A player like Jose Valentin at SS appears to be terrible with "hands" (high error rate), but excellent in range. A player like M. Bordick at SS appears to be good in range but great in hands. Keep in mind that there is much large variation in range than in hands, even for IF'ers. For OF'ers, there is very little variation in hands.

For DP lwts (IF'ers only), for every DP or missed DP (per opportunity, of course), equal credit is given to the fielder and the pivot man, although I don't know that the true split is indeed 50/50.

First basemen are not evaluated on their "throw receiving ability" although that is certainly part of thier fielding "toolbox."

Pop flies and line drives are not evaluated for IF'ers.

Finally, an OF'ers ability to keep players from stretching singles into doubles or doubles into triples, by virtue of the threat of their arm, is not considered in arm lwts. Throwing out a runner trying to stretch IS included. So keep in mind that the lwts value of OF arms is probably understated, maybe by quite a bit (50%?).

A couple of observations:

Lots of very bad and very good CF'ers! I think that the reason is that managers will throw or leave lots of people in center who don't really belong there. Not so, for example, at SS (Jeter not withstanding).

Cruz is interesting. Horrible UZR in CF and very good UZR in RF in about an equal number of games. Do you think he has some special skills that are not particularly suited for CF, but are for RF or he just can't get the hang of CF, or is it just a fluke and he is really a slighly below average CF'er and a slightly above average RF'er? I vote for the latter.

Are Hidalgo and Valentin two of the most underrated defenders in baseball? Underrated overall? Hidalgo's 2003 salary look about right at 8.5 mil. Valentin is underpaid I think...

Posted 2:00 p.m., December 21, 2003 (#2) - Darren
When I saw the Dec 21 date on Primate studies, I was hoping it would be UZR. Yahoo!

Posted 12:20 p.m., December 22, 2003 (#3) - Danny
Thanks, MGL.

Posted 12:45 p.m., December 22, 2003 (#4) - J Cross
From Gammons:

"More and more teams are using complex systems to evaluate players defensively. "We use our eyes as well as a combination of statistical analyses to rate players," said one general manager. "We feel it tells us a lot."

For instance, when the Red Sox were looking for a second baseman, their system showed that Pokey Reese two years ago was far and away the best second baseman in the game, which corroborated the wise eyes of Bill Lajoie. When the Oakland A's were in pursuit of Mike Cameron, it was partially because their complex system showed that he was far and away the best defensive center fielder in the majors, followed by Torii Hunter and Mark Kotsay (before Andruw Jones).

Another team's system makes the following observations:

Doug Mientkiewicz is clearly the best first baseman, followed by J.T. Snow.

Mark Ellis and Adam Kennedy ranked 1-2 in the American League at second base, with Placido Polanco right near them.

Eric Chavez is the best at third, better this season than Scott Rolen.

A-Rod and Nomar are far ahead of Derek Jeter, while Orlando Cabrera is far better than his reputation.

Jacque Jones and Garret Anderson are the top left fielders. Ichiro Suzuki the best right fielder.

The outfielder who ranks the worst on two different clubs' systems? Juan Gonzalez."

Okay, this IS Gammons but let's pretend for a minute that he's accurately reporting what GM's think. How well does this info mesh with UZR's?

Pokey Reese - UZRs agree. Cameron - check. Kotsay - check, Hunter ??

J.T. Snow - Is he saving a lot of bad throws?

Ellis, Kennedy and Polanco at 2nd are the same names UZR would come up with.

I guess the biggest disagreement is on the corner outfielders. Anderson, Ichiro and Jacque Jones? Did Jenkins and Nixon miss too many games to be counted? If so, then how does Juan Gone's sample count?

Posted 4:44 p.m., December 22, 2003 (#5) - tangotiger (homepage)
The homepage link lists a comparison between MGL and Pinto, sorted by biggest difference.

An in-depth look at Steve Finley would be enlightening. MGL?

Posted 2:15 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#6) - Chris Dial
Absent is Austin Kearns. How about a run-down of his scores? IMO, he's going to rival Erstad defesively.

I'm glad to see that people can understand that the difference btween the best SS and the worst is as much as the difference in the bats. Okay, after ARod. And moreso around the diamond - Bonds excluded.

Posted 2:54 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#7) - MGL
Chris, Kearns should be in the complete CSV file, is he not? He is indeed very good. +27 in 182 games in LF, CF, and RF (mostly RF - 128 games). That is +22 in UZR and +5 in arm, so his arm is great too...

Posted 3:08 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#8) - tangotiger
I used a cutoff of 48 UZR Games by position. Kearns was at around 40 in CF and RF.

Kearns was -1 with UZR and Pinto in CF, and +7/+4 in RF.

For 1999-2003, I have him at a true talent fielding level of +11 runs per 600 BIP, which puts him in the top 10% of all fielders.

Posted 12:46 p.m., December 24, 2003 (#9) - Jay Jaffe (homepage)
Please stop me before I misunderstand something here. At the top of Tango's comparison he writes:

UZR: MGL's UZR runs
Pinto: (Actual Outs - Expected Outs)*.8

I gather from the comparison that both of these are thus being expressed in runs, but I don't understand the .8. Are you saying that every ball which we expect a fielder to have gotten to that he didn't -- regardless of position -- is worth 0.8 runs?

Without some further explanation, that seems like a wildly inaccurate way of measuring the impact of a missed out. Please enlighten me as to what I'm missing here.

Posted 1:02 p.m., December 24, 2003 (#10) - David Smyth
It's not the impact of a missed out--it's the impact of losing an expected out (-.3 runs) and surrendering a hit (+.5 runs).

Posted 1:59 p.m., December 24, 2003 (#11) - Tangotiger
Jay:

===================
Suppose a team with Ozzie at SS gives up on average 12 non-HR hits, and 2.6 walks every game (which of course is 27 outs). Applying .50 runs per non-HR hit (I know it should be closer to .57, but I just want to keep it basic), and .30 runs per BB, and -.10 runs per out, and we get 4.08 runs scored per game. And per game, we see that Ozzie's team faces 41.6 batters (again, let's not worry about DPs, etc).

Now, let's say Ozzie was traded for Spike, and let's say for every 41.6 batters faced, there is one ball that Ozzie gets to that Spike doesn't. So, for those 41.6 batters, Spike's team records 13 non-HR hits (1 more than Oz), 2.6 walks, and 26 outs (1 less than Oz). However, there's still one more out to go! Since Spike's team gives up 13 non-HR hits / 26 outs, we can estimate that this team will give up 13.5 non-HR hits, 2.7 walks, and 27 outs per game ( a total of 43.2 batters, a remarkable 1.6 MORE batters than Oz). Anyway, applying our LW constants, and we see that Spike's team gives up 4.86 runs per game.

This number is .78 runs MORE than Ozzie. This is the result of Ozzie getting to one more hit than Spike. .50 runs for the hit, and about .30 runs for the out gives you the .80 runs.

Posted 2:13 p.m., December 24, 2003 (#12) - MGL
Tango, not a big deal, but the typo (2002 should read 2000) is still there in the link...

Posted 1:45 a.m., December 28, 2003 (#13) - Joel Wertheimer(e-mail)
MGL and Tango,
I've been reading this section and your fanhome stuff for awhile, and I've been too timid to join conversation until now. Just to start, thanks for the incredible work you guys have done.

I didn't know anywhere else to put this, so:

I was thinking about defensive positioning, and how it eludes the scope of UZR thus far. But couldn't franchises which have time and resources that we do not have do some work on this.

For example, we know that certain managers last year were really lazy about reading scouting reports and seemed to be bad at positioning their fielders (Grady Little). A fairly sure-handed, supposedly slightly-below average second-baseman quickly became known as "The Statue" and if it weren't for some offensive-heroics in the September and the playoffs would have been remembered as such for the Red Sox.

Clearly, we can't regard an ill-positioned Walker's UZR as representative of his true range skill and hand skill. All over the league we'll see players whose talents and deficiencies are enhanced or masked by bad managerial work or lack of preparation.

A team like the Red Sox could hire a scouting staff to look at the positioning of various players pre-pitch, whether on tape or in person. Each player would be assigned a specific position on the field pre-pitch, and then the teams could find what the ideal positioning for that specific batter/pitcher matchup would be. Maybe there would not be enough individual data for each matchup, but the teams could break the batters up by hit charts and the pitchers up by pitcher type.

Next, the team would figure out some positioning-metric, such as mean deviance from ideal pre-pitch position. Teams could find out the correlation between this deviance and UZR, or their preferred metric, giving them some sense of how the bad positioning affected their UZR. Further, this relationship could be non-linear and that extremely bad positioning had an exponential effect on UZR. Maybe for really good fielders, positioning doesn't matter, etc, they make up for it with their range and the balls they don't get to, nobody could.

After applying those adjustments, teams would have a better idea of the TRUE SKILL LEVEL of individual players. Combine that skill level with good preparation by the team and managers (which NFL players are great at, and you never hear of it in baseball outside of Curt Schilling).

Posted 3:37 p.m., December 28, 2003 (#14) - tangotiger
Joel,

Thanks for taking the time to drop in. Not sure why you would be timid. Hundreds of different people have posted here, and only a few of them have mysteriously disappeared.

Your point about positioning is definitely valid. How much impact it has though needs to be established.

And, would this affect only one player on the whole team? Looking at the team-level UZR for Bos/2003, and we have:
CF: +11
RF: +7
1B: +1
SS: -2
3B: -7
2B: -26
LF: -27

I'd have to ask why would we think that the 2B were not being positioned properly, but the SS were. Prior to 2003, Nomar and the other Bos SS were pretty average, and this average performance was repeated again in 2003.

The LF in Boston, from 1999-2003 were:
Ramirez: -22 / 162 GP
O'Leary: +16 / 162 GP
Rest: -6 / 162 GP

(Each of the 3 above had at least 200 GP).

So, again, do we want to blame bad positioning for Todd Walker, but bad talent for Manny? Todd Walker, from 99-03, was -10 per 162 GP. Walker is simply not a good fielder.

Posted 3:54 p.m., December 28, 2003 (#15) - MGL
Yes, of course, inherent in a player's UZR is his positioning, good or bad. Same thing for pitchers and batters, right? So yes, when we use a performance metric to estimate a player's "skill", we are including some apsects that have nothing to do with the player himself (manager, scouts, etc.).

One, I doubt it is THAT big a deal, as I think that no manager, team, or scout is going to "tolerate" an awful positioning by a fielder. All teams have advance scouts, etc. In fact, if there is ANYTHING that most teams do well, it is that. It is illogical to think that Little and the BoSox, especially with Epstein and James on board, are going to promote or tolerate bad positioning from Walker or anyone else.

So to answer some of your questions and concerns, which are very good ones BTW:

1) I don't thnk that postitioning makes much difference as long as it is reasonable and I think that most teams employ reasonable positioning.

2) You can probably optimize positioning with a complex video or visual analysis, but it would be difficult.

3) I don't know if the affect of positioning would be "linear" or not accross all player talent levels, but as I said I don't think the affect is large anyway, and for small effects, linearity or non-linearity are almost the same. I highly doubt that positioning makes NO difference for very good fielders. If I had to guess I would say that positioning is roughly linear to SOMETHING across all talent levels.

Posted 7:57 p.m., December 28, 2003 (#16) - Joel Wertheimer
The one place where the Red Sox new brass did not have an influence last year was with Grady. Theo was very hands off with the team management. But you are probably right on Walker. I was more just using that as an example.

I also think it is possible, that for Nomar positioning doesn't matter that much, his problem are his hands, not his range. He gets to all kinds of balls, it's errant throws that are his problem. Walker is just terrible.

I wonder if positioning is more important for the corners than the middle of the field. 3rd base and 1st base positioning seems like it would be particularly important for line-outs, but UZR doesn't take that into account, right? Even for hard hit grounders though.

Posted 8:30 p.m., December 29, 2003 (#17) - Dave
I want to make a comment regarding the UZR rating of Manny Ramirez. I believe that I read somewhere that the Green Monster negatively effects the UZR rating of Red Sox left fielders. I think that the UZR of Boston left fielders in the past 20 or 30 years is around -7 or -8. Is it possible that Manny is underrated defensively. I know that O'Leary had a good UZR, but could that have been a small sample? I know that Manny was rated as being a good right fielder when he was with Cleveland. Is there any reason to think that he is now worse defensively than when he was with Cleveland? It seems as if he is over his injuries. Has he gotten worse with age or is he better than people think?

Posted 10:02 p.m., December 29, 2003 (#18) - MGL
Dave, my UZR includes park adjustments. The 2 parks/positions that have signifciant adjustments are Coors Field and Fenway/LF, so that should already be factored in to Manny's UZR.

As eacxh year/team is just a small sample of a player's true UZR and his true defensive ability, you get a best estimate of both by combining UZR's over time to get a large sample size. When a player has a large (or small) difference between his UZR from one year or team to another, it is much more likley that this is just random fluctuation than that his talent got better or worse. In 298 games over the last 4 years, mostly in LF, Manny has a UZR of around -18 per 162. That means that he is likely a very bad OF'er, which shouldn't surprise anyone as there is nothing in his offensive stat profile that indicates any kind of speed or quickness, one or both of those usually being requisites to good OF defense. I usually don't like to even look at a player's yearly stats, be it for offense or defense. I like to look at total multi-year stats so that I am not tempted to read into any year to year patterns, as almost everyone is tempted to do, and does do (and you have attempted to do), as that is part of human nature apparently...

Posted 5:14 p.m., December 30, 2003 (#19) - Dave
MGL, I was not looking at year to year patterns. My comments had to do with what I had read about Manny's UZR's with Cleveland. It was my belief that in his first 6 seasons in RF, he had a positive UZR per 162. If that is the case, then it would indicate that Manny was a decent right fielder earlier in his career. It would also provide a reason to doubt the accuracy of this season's UZR which suggests that Manny is a very bad OF. Do you have his UZR's over the first 6 years of Manny's career?

I think that it is possible that Manny's UZR's over the last 298 games is an inaccurate measure of Manny's true defensive abilities when healthy? I would not be surprised if Manny was a bad defensive outfielder between 2000-2002 since he was injured. I just think that he is currently better than what his 2003 UZR indicates. If I am correct in my belief that Manny is a decent defensive outfielder when healty then Manny will probably have decent UZR's between 2004-2006 as long as he can stay away from injuries the way he did in 2003.