The Mariners OF Defense 2003-7
Update [2008-3-4 13:15:51 by Matthew]:: Other teams and entire MLB have been added below in the comments.
Thanks to Derek for the inspiration.
Derek's chart was thought provoking, but it didn't do much to answer an immediate question it raised in me; so how has the Mariner OF defense changed over time? To answer that, we'd need batted ball data for all Mariner pitchers in which to compare the OF putouts against.
To that end, thank you Retrosheet. I wrote up a quick perl script to parse through the event files and pulled the following information for years 2003-7^.
The conclusions are pretty evident.
- The 2007 staff allowed many more line drives, about 50 more than normal.
- Bavasi's strategy to build a groundball heavy staff failed, FB+LD did not change from 2006 to 2007.
- Starting in 2006 and continuing last year, the Mariners' OF was markedly worse at turning flyballs into outs, about 50 plays per year.
Hattip to Nadingo for reminding me about 2004. Now, correlation does not imply causation, but...
2003: Ibanez makes 0 starts in the OF (for SEA).
2004: Ibanez makes 108 starts in the OF.
2005: Ibanez makes 57 starts in the OF.
2006: Ibanez makes 158 starts in the OF.
2007: Ibanez makes 131 starts in the OF.
Raul 4 DH
For John. Primary starters:
2003: Winn, Cameron, Ichiro
2004: Ibanez, Winn, Ichiro
2005: Winn (Ibby after trade), Reed, Ichiro
2006: Ibanez, (Reed+Willie+Doyle), Ichiro
2007: Ibanez, Ichiro, Guillen
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Comments
How many runs is this costing us?
good gravy
by JI on Mar 2, 2008 8:42 PM PST up reply actions
nice work
by Bearskin Rugburn on Mar 2, 2008 8:41 PM PST reply actions
Send an open letter
by TIF on Mar 2, 2008 8:47 PM PST reply actions
This is why I believe even Jeremy Reed
Wlad, Reed, Jimerson, Lofton, Patterson, anyone but Raul for LF please!!
A blog-thingy about the Mariners and stuff.
Excellent post.
Scary to think what would have happened
What do 2004, 2006, and 2007 have in common?
Raul Ibanez, starting Left Fielder!
Hey matthew - a quick request
I'd just like to put these figures in context, and I'd also like to see how well it lines up with THT's outfield +/- figures (or the defensive metrics).
Seconded.
Geoff Baker needs to read this.
give him some credit
by Bearskin Rugburn on Mar 3, 2008 10:06 AM PST up reply actions
Geoff has stated that he paid close attention
This is a very convincing chart!
Worse Pitching does play a big role in this
Line drive rate I buy, that's obvious
HoRam's and Weaver's HR/FB% (and HR/G) were actually lower than career norms. That doesn't lead me to think they were serving up gopherballs at an increased rate.
Well if the pitcher throws a ball that is
When I am talking about Weaver and Horam throwing balls that are easier to hit, I am talking about the Mariners rotation overall and how the addition of these two pitchers last year increased the amount of easy-to-hit-hard pitches thrown over the course of the year (from 06 to 07). So if you agree that FB and LD PO%'s decrease when more easy-to-hit-hard pitches are being thrown by a bad pitching staff, then that could help explain the decrease in these numbers from 06 to 07. Still, the decrease is not even that major. I am skeptical of how much credit people are giving to the Mariners poor defense in explaining this trend when the pitching also got significantly worse from '06 to '07 (although I don't know the numbers exactly for this).
My whole point is that I don't agree
For instance, if Weaver was easier to hit and thus the flyballs he gave up were hit 5% further than those of say Washburn's (even this I'm not granting is true, just hypothetical), the OF could compensate for that by playing deeper.
What you would need is not a longer distance on the average flyball yielded, but a wider dispersion. Again, it's not something I can buy until I see a conclusive study on the matter.
Hmm okay
I don't think playing deeper would help much. I think if the balls are being hit harder, then there will be a wider dispersion, because the distribution of distance travelled will have more variation. This is just based on simple physics. If balls are hit harder, on average, they have access to more space where they could land. The exact location would depend on bat alignment. Its not like you would take all the balls hit and increase their speed by 5% - that wouldn't increase the variation - there would still be balls hit at lower speeds, but also some hit at higher speeds.
So I think if a hitter can read the pitcher, and can see his pitch well, and is able to make good contact with the pitch, he can hit it harder and as a result there will be greater variation in the distribution of places where that ball could go, which would decrease the PO%.
Yes, its finite
Also I'm not necessarily talking about "true" fly balls, the kind that always leave the yard if hit hard enough. I'm also talking about "high drive" hits that are sort of in between the two, and these are the ones that have the greatest amount of variation in where they land. For example, the kind of ball that typically settles into the gap about 4-5 seconds after being hit.
What you are talking about is guesses.
I'm not sure how I could get numbers on it
I believe what you're talking about is BABIP
Actually the 06-07 doesn't really even matter
Suggestions Needed Regarding Other Teams
I'd be interested in Boston and Cincinnati
Cincinnati especially
Boston I won't do
How about
Anaheim because I'm always so surprised that defensive metrics LOVED Erstad and Anderson;
Oakland because they've had so much turnover, and because they had to use Jack Cust and Nick Swisher in the OF last year and STILL had a better DER than Seattle;
New York because I think it might be interesting to see the DER plummet as Bernie got old, then to see what difference Melky made last year.
Cinci is ok, but I'm a bit wary of extreme pitcher's or hitter's parks...
Thanks for updating this Matthew
Well, Tango put a link up
Per Request
OAK, ANA, NYY, TB, DET and NYM

WTF is up with the '04 Tigers? That seemed like one of the worst collections of OF in recent history. Craig Monroe, Bobby Higginson, Nook Logan, Rondell White and Alex Sanchez. Were they secretly good? I think Detroit's park is messing with some of these numbers.

Man, the 2003 Mariners OF was insane. How insane? Well, here's the entire MLB:

And the plus/minus plays for the Mariners compared to MLB average:
Year: (LD/FB plays), (total plays), (est. runs)Keep in mind that traditionally the NL >>>> AL when it comes to defense so any AL OF that's MLB average is going to be one of the best OFs in the AL.
- +42/+67, +110, +88
- +17/+16, +33, +27
- +24/+47, +71, +57
- +5/-1, +5, +4
- +20/-28, -8, -6
BIG CAVEAT: NUMBERS NOT PARK ADJUSTED. SAFECO FIELD HELPS BOOST OF NUMBERS!!!!!!!
I imagine there will be a lot of surprise
Why?
LDPO% seems to vary from year to year, probably randomly (that's your next assignment - how does LDPO% correlate with.. oh, FBPO%, RZR, UZR, PMR?).
THT numbers show the M's were below average in RZR for the outfield, but made more out of zone plays (Ichiro). That makes sense, and while it's not out of line with what you've presented here, I do wonder how to weight the low RZR versus the high OOZ. These data would tend to suggest the RZR matters a bit more (as you'd expect, really).
It's also interesting to see how much the league averages move in LDPO and FBPO%.
Doyle
by larrybowa on Mar 4, 2008 8:37 AM PST reply actions

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