Fun With Numbers

1) Correct, although a far better argument as to why would involve a discussion of range. This is most easily demonstrated with, for example, a sure handed, no range shortstop (think Derek Jeter) against a shortstop who makes every play Jeter makes and then some but makes a few throwing errors on balls Jeter didn’t even come close to.

2) I’d say incorrect, although the argument could go both ways. Turns out that as long as a catcher can actually play the position their defence matters relatively little (there’s something like a two-win spread between Ivan Rodriguez and Mike Piazza per year, and that’s just not the sort of gap we’d expect from a critical defensive position). In order to define pitch calling as a skill, we’d expect some catchers to post a better cERA (basically earned run average with a certain catcher behind the plate) that other catchers handling the same pitching staff, and years of research into that have been fruitless. There’s an argument to be made that it is indeed the most important position, but I just don’t buy it, because otherwise we’d have seen some evidence in the data.

3) Correct, spot on.

4) Correct but the argument is very, very weak. Dave Cameron and myself have some significant work regarding true measures of pitching effectiveness (critically, any such metric must avoid hits entirely, as they can be strongly influenced by the defenders). Dave’s ‘Evaluating Pitching Talent’ is here and you can find some of my work here (numbers) and here (no numbers).

5&6&7) Correct, more or less spot on.

8) Correct, although again there’s a little bit of weakness in the argument. Try to get away from who he drives in (because it’s highly preferable to evaluate players outside of the context of their teammates) and focus on the player stats themselves. The best current measure of hitting ability is weighted on-base average (wOBA), which is essentially runs produced per plate appearance scaled to OBP for familiarity’s sake.

9) Correct, chemistry may or may not be important but it is completely impossible to predict.

10) Yep, DeJesus. He’s a better defender and less likely to fall off a cliff because he’s younger than Raul.

By agreeing with you. I get it. I’m supposed to tell you you’re not a novice.