You Have to Earn the "D": How the Brewers' Atrocious 'efense Affects Their Mediocre Pitching

In this week’s ESPN Power Rankings, SweetSpot and Fangraphs blogger Jack Moore (who’s a really nice guy, and is really too smart to be only 20 years old. It’s infuriating, actually) points out that the BrewCrew rank dead last in defensive efficiency in baseball. Throughout the year, fans and media types in Wisconsin have been concerned about the team’s pitching staff, and the team’s apparent failure to identify decent starters to staff the rotation. But, as Jack and TCM discussed in a Twitter exchange, the team’s horrendous defense has significantly altered the perception of how that staff is doing. Just how much? Let’s look deeper.

Confounding the Defensive Metrics

By Bill

As you probably know if you've read my other blog at all, I've been a big fan of the advanced defensive metrics based on play-by-play data. UZR has always been my favorite, though I'm not really sure why, and I pretty freely refer to plus/minus defensive runs saved and Total Zone as well. The idea (oversimplified) sounds awfully good: every batted ball is categorized according to the hit type and the area into which it is hit, and the fielder gets credited (or not) according to whether or not he made the play and whether an average fielder at that position would be expected to make the same play.

I'm still a fan. I think. The thing is that, since all three of those statistics use basically the same data and appear to use similar methods, you'd think we'd see a lot of agreement among them. And my impression (from staring at these numbers obsessively for a couple years) is that they generally do agree; there might be differences in how the actual runs saved are calculated, because that's just never likely to be an exact science, but generally, a good fielder does well under all three metrics, and a poor fielder ends up looking bad in all three.

This season, it seems to me, there are a lot more cases of crazily broad variance among the three methods. Maybe relatedly, two excellent pieces have been written recently documenting some pretty serious problems with current defensive metrics: one by Colin Wyers of Baseball Prospectus and the other by Tim Marchman of SI. Rather than just kind of rehash what they've said, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the most perplexing cases in 2010 (with UZR/DRS/TZ):

• Starlin Castro (-0.5; +5; -12). I made brief mention of this one the other day. By UZR, Castro is the definition of an average shortstop; by plus-minus, he's awfully good, saving five runs in just 87 games; and by total zone, in those same 87 games, he's the worst shortstop in the league. So which is it? He's made a ton of errors, but he's seemed to be able to get to just about everything on the few times I've watched him, so I'd lean toward "average" (at least). The frustrating thing is that we'll have to wait at least a couple more years to really know (though scouting reports from you are welcome).
  
  
• Carl Crawford (+22.1, +12, +7). UZR says that the perennial Gold Glove snub has saved more runs, ignoring positional adjustments, than any other player in the league, and by more than 50% over the #2 guy, Tony Gwynn Jr. By plus-minus, he's at a slightly less impressive 14th among all positions. By TZ, he's at an almost pedestrian +7, just sixth among big league left fielders. Have to figure that one is a blip in Total Zone's formula.
  
  
• Ryan Braun (-14.2, -1, -2). Just a tick below average by the other two systems, but UZR sees him as the fourth worst defensive player in baseball relative to his position (only Carlos Quentin, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have cost their teams more runs). Plus-minus and UZR were about as down on him last year as UZR is this year, but he's an excellent athlete with a strong arm, so who knows? This is a frustrating one.
  
  
• Adam Dunn (-0.8, -7, -2). Actually, each of these numbers represents an improvement for Dunn, a famously awful fielder -- under any metric and regardless of whether he's playing first or left -- for the past five years. But while UZR and TZ agree with the fans that he's noticeably improved his defense (almost all the way up to average!), he's still the third-worst 1B in the majors by plus-minus.
  
  
• Jason Kubel (-6.8, -6, +1). Late add because I can't believe I missed him. Kubel started the season as the Twins' primary DH, so has played less than half a season's worth of innings in the outfield. Given that, those UZR and plus-minus numbers are close to bottom-of-the-league territory (-17.1 UZR/150). And, as one who has watched the vast majority of those innings, this is where my brain puts him; Kubel is quite slow, appears to have a poor reaction time, makes poor decisions, and doesn't have much of an arm. He's made some sparkling plays lately -- including a sprawling, diving-backward catch last night that saved at least a double -- that have convinced a lot of Twins fans that he's good out there, but it seemed to me that on most of them (including last night), a better and faster outfielder, like Jason Repko, would have gotten there in plenty of time without diving. So, it's odd to me that total zone has him a little above average. There's got to be something off with that one.
  

And, last and the opposite of least:

• Cleveland Indians (-37.2, +66, +7). This is what got me thinking about this. The other day, plus-minus mastermind John Dewan tweeted: "Did you know the Indians lead MLB with 58 Defensive Runs Saved?" That floored me, and apparently it would floor the other metrics, too. By UZR, Cleveland is second from last in MLB, just two and a half runs ahead of the Orioles. And then by Total Zone, fittingly, they're smack in the middle, at 15th of 30. So are they great, awful, or average? Who can say? For whatever it's worth, the biggest differences seem to be on Trevor Crowe and Asdrubal Cabrera (who looks to the observer a lot more like a +4 than a -4 out there, but that's neither here nor there).
  

It's worth noting that it's become clear as I've gone through this that there is still a lot of general correlation among the various systems; if a player has a high UZR, he likely has a pretty high DRS and TZ, too. But what can we do with all this when three systems approach a problem more or less the same way and come up with answers that can be up to 15 runs apart (in an area where 15 runs saved in a year is usually enough to lead the league at most positions)?

I think that until someone gets a better handle on this, you'd better just keep looking at all three. Before drawing a conclusion based on your favorite metric, you'd better make sure it's not wildly out of line with the others (or with past years', in some cases). Put differently, while I don't think I agree with all of the conclusion from Marchman's article, this line seems to get it just about right: "the point is to take these measures as a flashlight in a dark room. There isn't enough light in the room to tell if an object is seven or nine feet high, but there is enough to tell it's tall."

Moose Hunting

Lar's retrospective on the career of Mike Mussina yesterday on wezen-ball, ended on an interesting note:

"The last eight years of his career, though, which he spent on the Yankees, were not nearly as good as his first. Whether this is a product of his complacency after signing a big contract, or a result of the pressure of pitching in New York City, or just a natural result of his aging (after all, he didn't sign with the Yankees until he was 32), it's hard to say. It is clear that those Yankees years were not up to the standard that he set for himself in Baltimore, and that seems to be the main reason that some people don't remember him as being great."

That stuck in The Common Man's craw, and he started to wonder what, if anything, happened to Mussina during the move from The Charm City to The Big Apple. Now, The Common Man should preface this by saying that he is not a number cruncher by trade, and that some of the conclusions here may be rough. He leaves it to those with better resources and more time at their disposal (or just to the peanut gallery of armchair bloggers) to figure out if The Common Man is on to something here. All statistics were derived from that trustiest of trusty sites, baseballreference.com.

Here are Mussina's rate stats for his time as an Oriole and a Yankee:

Orioles ERA: 3.53
Yankees ERA: 3.88

Orioles K/9: 6.9
Yankees K/9: 6.2

Orioles BB/9: 2.1
Yankees BB/9: 1.8

Orioles HR/9: .94
Yankees HR/9: .96

As you'd expect, the raw data seems to indicate that Lar is right. Moose's ERA is a third of a run higher as a Yankee, and his declining strikeout and walk rates seem to indicate a pitcher who's compensating for a loss of velocity. In addition, the relative stability of his homerun rate could be a result of moving from a good homerun park (Oriole Park at Camden Yards) to a more difficult one (Yankee Stadium). Like most pitchers, as he aged Mike Mussina had to survive by pitching more to contact.

And given the state of the Yankees defense, perhaps this was exactly the wrong time for Mussina to have to make this adjustment. In his prime, up the middle in Baltimore, Mussina had Ripkens (plural), Harold Reynolds, Mike Devereaux, Robbie Alomar, Brady Anderson, and Mike Bordick, all players with excellent defensive repuations. Meanwhile, as a Yankee, he's had Soriano, Jeter, Miguel Cairo, an aging Bernie Williams, Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon, and Melky Cabrera. Defense has not been a hallmark of the Yankees of late, and Mussina's shift in pitching strategy seemed destined to lead to more basehits.

Indeed, if one crunches the defensive numbers, Mussina's Orioles allowed a .293 average on balls in play, while his Yankees allowed a .298 batting average. As Mussina's strike out rate dropped, one would assume that this more porous defense would affect his overall performance even greater. And indeed Mussina gave up 8.5 hits/9 as an Oriole, but 9.1 as a Yankee. And given how many Baltimore singles may have ended up as New York gappers, perhaps it's not a stretch to say that the majority of Mussina's problems in New York were caused by the disappointing defense playing behind him, rather than the attrition of his ability (during which he maintained a respectable K/9).

The case is, of course, far from proven. There's significant noise in that data and a lot of logical leaps that The Common Man made. Perhaps as Mussina gets closer to his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, others can do some of the heavier lifting, and demonstrate just how effective Moose remained in the Yankee years, and how deserving he is of baseball's highest honor. In the meantime, since it seems to bring you people back in droves (and The Common Man does love droves), here's Mike Mussina's Strat-o-Matic card from his fabled 1992 season (18-5, 2.54 ERA, 48 BB, 16 HR, 130 K in 241 IP, and a 157 ERA+):


As you can see, Mussina has a pronounced reverse platoon split. He allows fewer hits and less power to lefties (in his real season, lefties managed to hit just .220/.269/.280 off Moose, with just one homer in 459 plate appearances), has a strong ability to induce the double play (any grounder with an A next to it is a DP), and can go deep into games (8 innings without tiring). He even holds runners well, automatically decreasing their chances of stealing second by 15% (the hold -3 rating). In all, this is what The Common Man dreams about at night, when he thinks about the perfect pitcher. And only 23!