Can Billy Hamilton's Legs Make Up for his Bat?

Photo Credit: Keith Allison

Billy Hamilton is having one of the strangest seasons I've ever seen.  He has been absolutely terrible at the plate.  Really, really bad.  Thus far, heading out of the All-Star break, he is hitting .220/.269/.287 with a 52 wRC+.  Compared to his 2014 season, when he was merely not good, he is making more contact (19% K rate in 2014, 15% in 2015).  However, this contact has been more often soft contact (22% Soft, 21% Hard in 2014, versus 23% Soft, 17% Hard contact in 2015) and he has been hitting slightly fewer ground balls (41.5% in 2014, 40% in 2015).  There have been times when I have been more confident in the pitcher's offense than in his, which doesn't happen very often with starting position players.

Remarkably, there are currently four qualified batters who have a lower wRC+ than Hamilton this year.

Alexei Ramirez, 43 wRC+, -1.0 WAR
Mike Zunino, 45 wRC+, -0.3 WAR
Chris Owings, 48 wRC+, -0.7 WAR
Omar Infante, 48 wRC+, -0.3 WAR
Billy Hamilton, 52 wRC+, +1.6 WAR

Ramirez and Infante, at least, have a history of being at least decent, if not plus, hitters for their positions.  Zunino is a catcher with a good defensive reputation.  Owings is a sophomore and former good prospect who has fallen on hard times.  If any of those guys don't pick up their offense in the second half, however, there's a good chance that they'll lose their starting position.  As a result, they won't achieve "qualified batters" status by the end of the season.

Going back 10 years (2005-2014), there are only five players who have managed a full season of playing time with a wRC+ lower than Hamilton's:

2006 Clint Barmes, 38 wRC+, -0.7 WAR
2010 Cesar Izturis, 46 wRC+, -0.4 WAR
2006 Ronny Cedeno, 48 wRC+, -1.8 WAR
2006 Angel Berroa, 48 wRC+, -1.5 WAR
2013 Alicedes Escobar, 49 wRC+, +1.1 WAR

(of note: Zack Cozart in 2014 had a 56 wRC+, +1.2 WAR)

Therefore, while Billy has been unquestionably bad at the plate, it hasn't quite risen to historical status.  The interesting thing to me about these two lists, beyond the magnitude of these hitters' offensive struggles, is that only two of them show up as having positive WAR: Alicedes Escobar and Billy Hamilton.  In both cases, the players' WAR totals are buoyed by strong baserunning numbers and strong fielding numbers.  There are those who will scoff at fielding data, but I can swallow that an elite defensive player like Escobar could still be worth 1 win above replacement.  That's still well below average, and not good.

Hamilton, though, currently has 1.6 WAR.  That puts him on pace for almost exactly 3 WAR, which would put him as a slightly above-average baseball player.  This is despite owning (if it doesn't improve) a batting line that would rank him 6th-worst since 2005.  Is that really possible, or is WAR broken when it comes to Hamilton?  Let's go component by component.

Hamilton's Baserunning

Perhaps more than any other ballplayer, Billy Hamilton's value comes on the basepaths.  While last year he was caught regularly, this year he has become far better at determining the best time to go.  Heading into last night's game, he had stolen 44 bases and been caught only 6 times, good for an 88% success rate.  That's Barry Larkin-level success rates, except that Larkin only topped 44 bases in one season.  Hamilton is on pace for 83 thefts.

And it's not just his basestealing.  Hamilton sails from first the third with ease, and scores from first on anything even remotely resembling an extra base (assuming he hasn't already stolen second).  He's been brilliant.

The two best baserunning totals since 2005 are Mike Trout in 2012 and Willy Taveras in 2008 (+14 runs each).  Hamilton is already 17th on that list at +10.6 runs, with 76 more games to play.  That puts him in really good position to be at the top of this list by the season's end.  He might even do that by the end of August.

Given everything we know about his actual baserunning abilities, I believe these numbers.  He's really special out there.  He might not reach +20 runs by the season's end (which he's currently on pace to do), but would anyone really be surprised if he posted the best baserunning season of the past decade at +15 runs or so?

Hamilton's Fielding

Thanks in large part to MLB's condensed games, I've been able to watch at least the meaningful plays of almost every Reds game this season.  The thing that has stuck out to me, even more so than Hamilton's baserunning, is his defense.  I can't count how many times I've seen a ball hit hard into the gap, cursed in anticipation of a double, only to see Billy somehow close on the ball and catch it running.  And then there are all those times when he's made those brilliant diving plays in shallow left-center.  He's wicked fast, and to my eye it seems like he takes good routes.  He's been amazing to watch.

Hamilton currently has +11 UZR, which is the fielding metric that FanGraphs uses in WAR.  That ranks him 37th among center fielders over the past decade+,  and 2nd this season behind Kevin Kiermaier.  He is one of only 6 center fielders to have made a play that Inside Edge classified as a "Remote Chance" play, ranks 3rd among CF's among plays ranked as "Unlikely," and 9th among CF's on balls judged as having an "About Even" chance to catch them.

Last year, Hamilton was a +22 UZR center fielder, which is what he's pacing right now.  The best center field seasons of the past decade have been in the 20-30 range, topped by Franklin Gutierrez's 2009 season at +34 runs.  I think most of those are probably overestimates high due to the volatility of fielding stats, but they were all very good fielding players (a young Andruw Jones, Coco Crisp, Carlos Gomez, Michael Bourn, Willy Taveras, etc).

Therefore, I think evaluating Hamilton as a +15-20 run fielder in center field is pretty fair.

Offense + Baserunning + Fielding + Position = WAR

Let's put it all together.

Offense: Hamilton is on pace for -32 batting runs above average.  Let's assume, for now, that he won't improve and go with that.

Baserunning: Let's assume +15 runs as a baserunner

Fielding: I'm going to be slightly conservative and put him as a +15 fielder.

Position: I'll give him the standard +2.5 runs/season bump for CF's, prorated down to +2.1 runs for 86% playing time (he misses games here and there with small injuries due to his playing style).

Replacement: I'll peg Replacement Level as -2.25 wins below average, which is about -20 runs vs. average on the season, prorated down to -17 runs due to playing time (using 9 runs per win).

So, if this is correct, it would be Billy's valuation at:

-32 (offense) + 15 (BsR) + 15 (fielding) + 2 (pos) + 17 (field) = +17 runs above average, or 1.9 WAR.

In other words, Hamilton rates out as almost exactly a league average player.  I'm not arguing he's a plus player, and he's definitely not an all-star.  Just that he's a unique, extreme, league-average ballplayer.  You can even argue that I'm being conservative.  Maybe he's a +20 run fielder.  And his rest of season projections have him about equal to his 2014 offensive performance than his miserable 2015 performance (ZiPS has him at .251/.301/.346 the rest of the way).  But league average feels about right to me.  I really don't think Hamilton is killing the Reds this year, especially not hitting 9th as Price is smartly deploying him.

I don't know how long this will last.  I worry that Hamilton's all-out play in the field and on the bases will slow him down over the coming couple of years.  And if he slows, I don't think his game is amenable to almost any kind of aging.  But for now, I think he's an acceptable starting outfielder.

And who knows?  Maybe he'll still learn to hit a little bit.  After all, even just taking a few more pitches, given the generally poor results when he actually swings, could really help his value.

Jay Bruce Changed His Approach Last Year

Photo credit: Trev Stair

On the heels of yesterday's (rather inconclusive ) post about Matt Adams, I decided to take a closer look at Jay Bruce's career splits.  My main question was how much a batter's splits on how often they hit balls to left, right, and center vary over their career.  I choose the left-handed Bruce because most teams employ the split against him, as he's known as a pull hitter.  He also talks about the importance of using the entire field in interviews, so it's something he's apparently working on.  Here he is, for example, talking about Devin Mesoraco:

"He understands that staying to the big part of the field and really taking what the pitcher gives him is something that's going to beneficial for him," said Jay Bruce. "It's not so much a feast-or-famine thing when you're cutting down the area of the field you use."

First, here are the percent of batted balls that Bruce hit to left, right, and center field (courtesy of FanGraphs):

2014's sample size is insanely low.  I almost didn't include it, but it does provide some insight into why Bruce has struggled so far this year.  In terms of any future prediction, however, I'm ignoring it.

For most of Bruce's career, he's been pretty constant, with a slight trend toward more balls hit to center field and fewer hit to left (his opposite field).  Last year, however, he made a pretty dramatic change.  He hit far fewer balls to his pull side, and far more to left and center field.  In other words, as he referenced, he was using the entire field, not just right field.  It may be a coincidence, but last year he posted the second-highest BABIP of his career (0.322; career 0.294).

Enter Blake Murphy's article this morning.  He reported that:
1) Balls thrown to the outside of the plate are hit to the opposite field more often, and:
2) Pull hitters often hit balls in the air to the opposite field, not on the ground, negating the concern with pitching lefties outside when deploying the infield shift.

So, I went to Baseball Savant to compare Bruce's 2012 and 2013 seasons.  First, here are all of his ground balls and line drives between the two seasons:

Jay Bruce: Line Drives & Ground Balls in 2012 & 2013

The increase in balls hit to left field last season is pretty dramatic--even after we eliminate all of his fly balls.  Bruce was definitely hitting more balls to his opposite field last year.

Now, let's look at what he did on pitches inside and outside.  Here is Bruce on balls thrown to him on the inside half of the plate (zones 3, 6, 9, 12, & 14 at Baseball Savant).

Jay Bruce - Line Drives & Ground Balls on Inside Pitches

Not a big difference.  Pitch Bruce inside and he'll try to pull the ball.  That's more or less what would be expected, because he's a power hitter.

Ok, now, what if you pitch him outside?

Jay Bruce - Ground Balls & Line Drives on Outside Pitches

Wow.  In 2012, if you pitched Bruce outside, he often (usually?) would still hit it to his pull side.  In 2013, however, he started going the other way with the pitch far more often.  And look at the results: he got 75 hits on balls on the outside half of the plate last season, including six home runs (3 were opposite-field).  If you're spraying the ball all over the field, you become far tougher to defend, and you're likely to pick up more hits.

Despite his success, it is worth noting that of his hits to left field in 2013, only eight were on ground balls (and one of those was an infield hit).  All the rest were on line drives, which may or may not be defendable by infielders.  And, as you can see, he's just not making outs on ground balls to third, either (probably because teams are usually shifting on him).  Therefore, if I'm defending Jay Bruce, it makes sense to play your outfield "honest," but you can probably still deploy the shift against him and succeed most of the time.

Now, so far this year, Bruce is struggling.  When he's making contact, he's hitting almost everything to right field.  If he can get back to what he did in 2013 and use the entire field, especially on outside pitches, he stands to see him performance increase.  That's something I'll be watching to see him do in the coming month.

Matt Adams is Beating the Shift

Mike Petriello had a nice article yesterday describing what the Reds observed first-hand when they faced the Cardinals: Matt Adams has been beating the shift.  He's mostly doing this by taking the ball to left field, especially on outside pitches:

But just about no one really bunts against the shift, especially not power hitters like Adams. (So far as I can tell, he has never successfully done so in the regular season, though he has tried in spring training.) Instead, he’s just taken advantage of it in a simpler way. In all of 2013, he had 17 hits to the left side of the field. In 2014, in less than 10 percent of the season, he already has 11.

Interestingly, it seems to be because he's offering more at pitches on the outer half of the plate:

All these minor differences begin to add up. Adams is seeing a higher percentage of pitches on the outside of the plate, he’s swinging at more of them, and he’s making contact with more of those — and overall, he’s got a .425 BABIP across all pitches. So maybe this is small sample size noise, but considering how close he is to matching his 2013 opposite field hit total, maybe there’s some amount of signal to it. Adams probably can’t exert a huge amount of control over where the ball goes — this isn’t billiards — but he can exercise some choice on which balls he chooses to swing at. Understandably, more outside pitches lead to more balls the other way. (And raises questions about whether teams choosing to shift should be more in tune with their pitchers about where their pitches go.)

I tried to visualize this by going to Mike's preferred site, Baseball Savant, and looking at spray charts.  Below, I'm reporting all ground balls and line drives by Adams in 2013 (left) and 2014 (left).  Green squares are singles, purple squares a ground-outs, blue-green triangles are doubles, green triangles are line-outs.

...I dunno.  I think this is a case where I'd rather just have the total event numbers than try to extract it from this.  But if you compare what's happening in left field, I'd say that Adams has roughly half as many left field events as he did in 2013.  And far less than half of the events to right field.  I'm going to have to look around and see if I can find a better source for this info that will compile the numbers better.

In any case, I think the notion is interesting here.  I love that the Reds are going to invoke the shift on batters this year.  But if you're going to do it, you have to be aware of how you're planning to pitch the batter.  If the pitching approach is to pound a hitter outside, then it might not make sense not to do a dramatic shift.  Not a revolutionary idea, but one worth keeping in mind.

.....

Update: I'd forgotten this, but FanGraphs actually provides a Pull/Center/Opposite split.  Here are Matt Adams' career splits:

Direction	AB	H	%BIP	wOBA
To Left	78	32	24%	0.418
To Center	118	39	36%	0.353
To Right	131	55	40%	0.547

And Adams' 2014 performance:

Direction	AB	H	%BIP	wOBA
To Left	19	12	39%	0.643
To Center	9	1	18%	0.099
To Right	21	8	43%	0.434

So, we're seeing Adams hitting many more balls to left field.   But it's worth keeping in mind the sample size here; we're dealing with a total of 50 PA's, here.  The difference between this year's pattern and his career pattern is about 10 balls hit to right field.  That's not irrelevant, but we might not want to declare him to be a radically new hitter based on 10 balls hit to right field.

Also, just for comparison, here's Jay Bruce's career numbers:

Direction	AB	H	%BIP	wOBA
To Left	520	157	23%	0.345
To Center	720	235	32%	0.370
To Right	1012	395	45%	0.508

Bruce looks to be even more of a severe pull hitter than Adams--though Adams was at about these numbers prior to the season.  It's no wonder that pretty much every team plays him to shift.

Why outfielders should throw to the cutoff man, part II

Last sunday, I highlighted a neat article by David Kagan at the Hardball Times that demonstrated the importance of understanding ballistic flight paths when explaining why outfielder should hit the cutoff man.  In my post, I also noted that accuracy on shorter throws by the infielder is also likely important, a point that +Joel Luckhaupt expanded upon when noting that the outfielder's throw is also more accurate when traveling shorter distance.

I thought I'd do some back-of-the-envelope calculations (seriously, I found a spare envelope and sketched this out) to illustrate the point.  Let's assume that any given fielder has a certain throwing accuracy, which we can measure in degrees.  To visualize this, put your nose up to the circle at the center of this protractor:

Our target is at 90 degrees.  If a player's accuracy is + 2 degrees, that would mean that, under stressful, rushed conditions, that player would be able to routinely make a baseball travel within a "window" that is between 88 and 92 degrees.  It's a very small window, but Major League Baseball players are pretty amazing people.

The longer the distance traveled, however, the more a minor angular error in the trajectory he fires a baseball  will result in a ball sailing away from his target.  If we take an outfielder who is 270 feet from home plate, lobbing a baseball at a runner heading home, small angular errors can result in the ball missing the plate by quite a bit:

At 270 Feet
Angular Error (Plus/minus Degrees)	Misses Home Plate By (Feet)
0	0.0
0.5	2.4
1	4.7
1.5	7.1
2	9.4
2.5	11.8
3	14.2

This is where the cutoff man comes into play.  Let's assume (as David did in his article) that the cutoff man is 90 feet from home plate, rather than 270 feet.  Let's further assume that the average MLB fielder's throwing accuracy, under pressure, is +2 degrees.  This is a guess, but it seems sort of reasonable.  Here's what happens (graphic is showing a blimp's-eye view of the field):

The infielder and outfielder have the same throwing accuracy in my diagram: both are +2 degrees.  But the infielder is so much closer than his throws don't have the opportunity to deviate from their target as much.  With some simple trig, we can estimate that the infielder's throws all come in within 3 feet of the plate (roughly the length of a player's arm + glove), whereas the outfielder's throws might come in up to nine feet from the center of home plate.  In other words, the outfielder's throws will be three times as wild as the infielder's, simply because he is three times as far away.

Therefore, not only is hitting the cutoff man allowing a more direct route (lower launch angles negate the time it takes the infielder to catch, transfer, and throw again), and not only does doing so help prevent the hitter from advancing to second base on a throw home, but it also means that the ball will usually arrive in a better location for the catcher to make a play on the runner than if it was thrown all the way from the outfield.

Catcher Framing is a Thing

Devin Mesoraco isn't bad at framing.  But
it's an area where he can improve.
Photo credit: Shawna Pairan

Arguably the biggest change that occurred in the time that I was away from blogging has been the growing realization of how important catcher framing is.  While some of the initial studies were dismissed because of preposterous effect sizes, subsequent work--though more conservative--has found that nevertheless catcher framing is really important...so important that it can completely dwarf the catchers' other contributions, including their offensive contributions.

I've had a longstanding interest in catcher fielding.  At one point, I developed my "own" catching metric that inadvertently converged on work of Chris Dial in an effort to evaluate overall catcher performance due to stolen bases, errors, passed balls, etc.  But I'm way behind on this framing stuff.  Here's an attempt to catch up.

The Data

Last month, Harry Pavlidis and Dan Brooks pushed out a new set of catcher framing statistics that they call RPM (for Regressed Probabilistic Model) framing.  They seem very rigorous.  They are WOWY measures (to account for pitcher influence), include adjustments for umpires, and are regressed to the mean.  Their top-10 table is pretty interesting for Reds fans:

2008-2013 Catcher Framing Leaders, per 7000 opportunities (~1 year)

Jose Molina	35.9
David Ross	32.8
Yasmani Grandal	32.4
Jonathan Lucroy	31.0
Chris Stewart	28.3
Gregg Zaun	23.8
Mike Zunino	23.5
Ryan Hanigan	23.3
Carlos Corporan	22.3
Brian McCann	22.2

Those are totals for 2008-2013...and wow.  Not only was Ryan Hanigan brilliant with his arm, but he also provided outstanding value with framing.  I think it's interesting to see David Ross there near the top, who is another long-standing favorite of mine.  Also right there at the top, despite far less playing time, is former Red farmhand (and exchange currency for Mat Latos), Yasmani Grandal.

But more than the names, look at the magnitude!  +36 runs for Molina?  +23 runs for Hanigan?  That's worth ~3.6 and 2.3 wins apiece!  The swing is something like 50 runs per season.  Honestly, I can hardly believe the size of this effect, and it certainly makes me regret that Hanigan trade--despite my hopes for Devin Mesoraco this year.

And you can see what the Rays are doing here: if Jose Molina and Hanigan can keep doing what they do this year, it (almost) doesn't matter what they do on offense--they're bound to be above-average players.

Also, since they'd already done it for catchers, they can do it for the pitchers as well!  Here's the top 5:

Tom Glavine	40
Tim Dillard	21
Mariano Rivera	20
Francisco Cordero	20
Sam Lecure	18

Heck, yeah, Sam LeCure!  I think it must be the facial hair.  Plus, the guy is unquestionably crafty.  For a right-hander.

Projecting Framing

On Monday, Harry published a set of catcher framing projections for the coming seasons.  Because the RPM data are already regressed, they were able to use a simple 3-2-1 weighting on past years to generate projections for 2014 catchers.  The highlights for Reds players:

Brayan Pena: +4.4 runs
Devin Mesoraco: -6.6 runs

I *think* these are based on projected playing time, rather than a full season of play.  Therefore, Pena is probably a bit better than his +4 rating would suggest.  Last year, for example, he was a +3 player in a half-season of play.

FWIW, Ryan Hanigan projects a +18 runs/season.

I'm going to add these projections to my series preview spreadsheets.  For most players, it doesn't matter much.  But for some, it makes a big difference.  For example, Friday night during the Reds broadcast, Chris Welch correctly pointed out that Travis d'Arnaud is an excellent pitch framer.  He projected as a +16.6 run framer in Harry's data.  Adding that to his other projections pushes his fielding projection to +16 runs, and his WAR projection shoots from +2.5 WAR all the way to +4.1 WAR.  It's a huge boost, but I can't see any reason to discount those projections.

At the team level, with both Jose Molina and Ryan Hanigan behind the dish, the Rays are projected to be +40 runs (4 wins) above average, by framing alone.  It's really impressive.  Catchers are really important.

Catcher Height Matters

One last thing.  Last April, I was listening to an episode of Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller's excellent Effectively Wild podcast, which was my main link to baseball last season (and is mandatory listening).  On it, Ben mentioned a study that he did that checked whether catcher height was related to framing skill.  In particular, he found that taller catchers, like Joe Mauer, were better at framing pitches that were high in the strike zone.  And further, shorter catchers, like Jonathan Lucroy, were better at framing pitches low in the strike zone.  

It's not a huge effect: the correlation between high strike calls and catcher height was 0.35.  For low strike calls, it was -0.12, which is probably not significant.  But it's a neat idea, and at least for tall catchers, it might be a thing.  If you have a pitcher who lives up in the strike zone, all else being equal, you're best off choosing a taller catcher than a shorter catcher (assuming otherwise equal framing skill).  Fun tidbit!

Why outfielders should throw to the cutoff man

A Cardinal Sin of outfielding is to throw home directly, rather than bypassing the cutoff man.  I've always wondered, however, if there are times when that really is the optimal decision for an outfielder.  Allowing the infielder to catch, grab, and then throw the ball must take time, and that's all time that the ball could be advancing toward home plate.  I figured air resistance might be negating some of that gain, but I wasn't sure that it would be enough to matter.

Therefore, I really liked David Kagan's article at Hardball Times last week on the physics of hitting the cutoff man.  David's piece shows that, in fact, one of the major advantages of hitting the cutoff man is that it is a straighter path to get to home plate.  When you throw directly home, you have to use a high launch angle because you have to overcome gravity every step along the way.  Throwing to the cutoff man is a more direct route, and the infielder then has a nice, short throw, again with very little need to elevated launch angle. His diagram shows this best:

Once one also includes factors like air resistance that leads to decreasing velocity during flight (blue line), the total flight time of a ball thrown directly home from 270 feet was 2.75 seconds, compared to just 2.39 seconds.

Now, when hitting the cutoff man, the infielder still needs to catch, transfer, and throw the ball, which must take another half-second to a second (this would be a fun thing to measure...I'll be watching for that in future ballgames).  Therefore, if the infielder is major league baseball-level efficient, we're looking at nearly equal travel times.

Consequently, the benefits of hitting the cutoff man seem to be as follows:

1. Nearly equal time to plate, because the gains of bypassing the infielder are mostly offset by higher launch angle, and thus distance traveled, that are required to get the ball to home plate from the outfield.
2. Improved accuracy by infielder on throw, because slight errors in trajectory angle make less of a difference when you're closer.  I'm guessing this is a really big deal.
3. Ability to prevent the batter from advancing to second base.

Postcript: I'd like to formally apologize to my infielders in 8th grade little league when I bypassed the cutoff man and tried to throw out a batter running to third base.  I didn't succeed, but we might have if I'd thrown to the cutoff man!

BPro's nFRAA: 2008-2011 Averages

Data-dump post!

I pulled together three+ year (2008-2011) nFRAA averages for all players who have played in 2011 and have at least 150 PA's during that time span. The left side of the spreadsheet just reports those totals, and a per-season rate (per 700 PA's instead of innings, since that's how BPro lists it in their spreadsheet).

I also did a very unscientific "regression" of sorts on the data. The values reported at BPro are already regressed within each season based on their performance. However, if we're trying to infer something about talent level--which is the point of a 3-year average in my view--there is even greater uncertainty than with a performance/value estimate. Therefore, I've required that players effectively have 2.5 seasons of data here before we use their straight up 3+ year average. If they have less, I regress toward average in proportion to how much data we do have. Why 2.5 seasons? It's just a wild-ass guess, but it feels about right based on the data. If you don't like it, that's ok--this is why I'm reporting all of the data. You can use whichever per-700 PA stat you wish, or come up with your own way of making an adjustment. Just please be very wary of the raw per-700 PA numbers for guys with less than a few seasons of data.

One qualifier: I was a little sloppy in that I assumed all PT occurred at the player's primary position, as listed in BPro's table. Obviously, this is not true, and for some players it will result in erroneous estimates. For most players, however, I think it's probably close enough for my purposes.

Another: I'd hope this goes without saying, but please don't just use this as the be-all end-all estimate of a player's fielding performance. I would tend to be fairly skeptical of Jose Lopez's performances, for example, given how different they are from other measures and his reputation.  But it's good data, and worth considering as you evaluate a player's fielding skills.

CTrent on Defense

CTrent has a nice article on the Reds' fielding. To my disbelief, he actually quotes me from an e-mail exchange we had:

"Through Wednesday's games, I had the Reds at 49 runs above average in the field," Inaz wrote in an e-mail. "That's an average of two different fielding stats (UZR and a team-level one from Hardball Times), plus catchers. Since 93% of all runs are earned runs, that would mean that we'd add ~46 runs to the Reds' ER if they were an average fielding team, shifting their team ERA from 4.31 to 4.62.

"tRA, which is my personal favorite fielding- and context-independent pitching stat, they have the Reds' actual runs allowed as 73 better than predicted in their model (I'm getting that from the xRR number), which would be ~69 more earned runs than expected. That pushes team ERA from 4.31 to 4.81," Inaz said. "Last one: the Reds' FIP, another fielding-independent pitching stat (this one only looks at k-rate, bb-rate, and hr-rate), puts the Reds expected team ERA at 4.66 compared to their ERA of 4.31. That one matches up well to the first estimate."

Pretty fun to see my crap alongside quotes by Baker, Arroyo, and Rolen, even if I'm clearly the least articulate of the bunch. :)

It's probably pretty obvious, but the e-mail exchange between myself and CTrent led directly to my fielding post at Red Reporter, which comes at this stuff from a slightly different angle.

@RR: Reds can catch the ball

Excerpt:

If one of the front office's major goals heading into this season was to improve the team's fielding, they seem to have succeeded: the Reds are clearly one of the best fielding teams in the league.

How much does it matter? Let's run with a figure of +50 runs this season, which is where I have the Reds in the BtB Power Rankings, and is a rough average of all the other run estimates. Add that to the average of ~40 runs below average that Reds teams have been from 2004-2008 (by bUZR), and you have a total of a 90 run improvement in fielding this year compared to the 2004-2008 teams. In the current NL run environment, that's roughly a 10-win improvement compared to the 2004-2008 teams!

Unfortunately, it doesn't mean they're an improved team, because the offensive dropoff is worse than the fielding gains...