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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Orlando Cabrera And The Infield Defense Tango

Like pretty much everyone else, Stephen Smith goes into his offseason analysis, most of which I agree with, but naturally enough there were a couple areas of disagreement. In the section about shortstop, Stephen writes
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

  1. The number of putouts at first improved.
  2. The number of assists at third base improved.
  3. The number of assists and putouts at short improved.
Chone Figgins got 95 assists in 437.2 innings at third, while Dallas McPherson only managed 86 in 483.1, which tells you that McPherson is a slightly sub-par third baseman (backed up by his 97 Rate2 in 2005), while Figgy is a somewhat above average fielder (101 Rate2 in 2005). The biggest single improvement was the increase in assists that Figgins got, but hot after was the improvement in assists and putouts from short, the position all but exclusively manned by Cabrera.

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.


Comments:
Where are these people who are calling for Cabrera to be replaced by Brandon Wood? Well, obviously, in like two years, but it's not like people are seriously suggesting it happen for 2006.

-Chronicls
 
Eckstein's NL defensive numbers are against 8 batters and one pitcher pretending to bat, so take 'em with a grain of salt.

BTW, Brandon Wood cannot legally drink until March, so lucky he wasn't called up late and forced to avoid the champagne mist.
 
Yeah, that Wood thing was a total strawman. I haven't heard anyone call for him to replace Cabrera this year. I wouldn't pencil him in anywhere until mid-2007 at the earliest.
 
I don't think anyone's called for it, but Rich and I had discussed it previously.
 

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