Thursday, October 20, 2005 |
Orlando Cabrera And The Infield Defense Tango
Orlando Cabrera's 2005 performance went unappreciated by many people who don't understand the importance of strong defense to protecting a pitching staff. Cabrera was signed not to bolster the offense but to protect the pitchers by turning into outs ground balls David Eckstein couldn't field. As with Kennedy, Cabrera was arguably the league's top defensive player at his position. Offensively, his numbers were below his career averages. Despite the calls by some to dump Cabrera for Brandon Wood, in the real world Wood hasn't proven himself above High-A ball. Double-A shortstop Erick Aybar is also in line, but neither will be ready for 2006. Expect Cabrera to keep his job. The offense will come from elsewhere.First, I want to make the case in favor of this argument using Zone Rating, just to be somewhat evenhanded. And indeed, Cabrera turns up as having the third-highest zone rating in the AL. But then we discover that Eckstein's .833 ZR would make him the fifth best shortstop in the AL. But that said, ZR is something of an opaque stat; we don't know what a player's zone is, and so we essentially have to take their word on it.
So we move on to Baseball Prospectus's Rate2. Eckstein's Rate2 was 100, exactly league average, while Cabrera's was 104. (Of course, Rate2 also has the same opacity problems as Zone Rating.) But that's four runs per one hundred games, an imperceptible difference. Considering Cabrera's offensive value, 18.9 VORP versus Eckstein's 39.5, the difference in offensive value becomes increasingly wide; the difference between the two players, if you believe these numbers, is somewhere around a wash if you prorate Cabrera's defensive value.
Now, granted, there was no realistic reason to believe Eckstein would tally such a large offensive value going into the season; his health problems were well-known, and outside of his injuries, his bat wasn't 2002-grade in 2003 or 2004, either. Some have suggested that Eckstein will take a big hit once the NL Central gets used to his scrappy batting style. It strikes me as a possibility, anyway, but for now, we note the offensive disparity between the two and move on.
Looking at defense generally, it's useful to observe that the Angels' defensive efficiency did improve from 2004 to 2005, going from .688 in 2004 and eighth, tied with the Yankees for seventh, to .702 in 2005, tied with Seattle for fifth. How did that improvement happen? The traditional metric, fielding percentage, is horribly flawed because the denominator, total chances, are an opinion. Instead, I'll throw that out and just look at putouts (PO) and assists (A).
2005 2004 Diff Pos. PO A PO A PO A ============================================ 1B 1,370 87 1,338 92 +32 -5 2B 288 459 293 455 -5 +4 3B 111 305 119 277 -8 +28 SS 275 406 258 395 +17 +11 IF* 675 1,170 670 1,127 +5 +43
*IF = infield exclusive of first base
So this is interesting. The 2005 Angels pitching staff had a groundball to flyball out ratio of 1.01 -- so close to unity it's fair to say this staff didn't rely on either the infield or the outfield in particular. And the story was the same in 2004, so we can't say that a staff change had anything to do with how the balls ended up being distributed. But what I find very intriguing, with the number of innings played virtually identical between the two seasons, is that
- The number of putouts at first improved.
- The number of assists at third base improved.
- The number of assists and putouts at short improved.
So what does all this mean? I'm not sure myself, but you could make a case that much of the team's infield defense improvement can be chalked up to Chone Figgins learning how to play third base. Dallas McPherson, an inferior defender, will be there all next year hopefully; we believe though do not know that his bat will make up for the holes in his glove. I still maintain that Cabrera's defense isn't worth his paycheck; he remains an expensive stopgap until one of the kids is capable of replacing him.
-Chronicls
BTW, Brandon Wood cannot legally drink until March, so lucky he wasn't called up late and forced to avoid the champagne mist.
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