2007 Reds Spring Training in Review (pt. 1) Intro & Hitting

Overall Record: 18-12-1
Pythagorean Record: 15-15-1
Runs Scored: 142 (4.6 r/g)
Runs Allowed: 143 (4.6 r/g)
Team OBP: 0.347
Team SLG: 0.412
Team ERA: 3.95
Team FIP: 3.86
DER: 0.693

What Happened?
The Reds began spring training with more optimism than they'd had in years, following a moderately successful season in which the Reds were legitimate contenders until the last series on the year. With this momentum, expectations were high. The question was no longer whether the Reds will ever contend, but rather whether they could continue to contend this season.

Unlike previous years, there were very few jobs available to be "won." Entering Spring Training, the following players were considered "locks" for the opening day roster:

The Starting Eight (8)
Ross, Hatteberg, Phillips, Gonzalez, Encarnacion, Dunn, Freel, Griffey

The Bench (3)
Conine, Castro, Valentin

Rotation (4)
Harang, Arroyo, Lohse, Milton

Bullpen (6)
Weathers, Stanton, Coffey, Cormier, Bray, Majewski

That's 21 players, leaving 4 spots on the active roster--one of which had to be a 5th starter, and one of which was probably going to be 7th bullpen pitcher--open to contest. These were the primary contenders:

Bench
Chad Moeller, Josh Hamilton, Chris Denorfia, Norris Hopper, Bubba Crosby, Jeff Keppinger, Mark Bellhorn

Starting Rotation
Kirk Saarloos, Matt Belisle, Elizardo Ramirez, Bobby Livingston, Homer Bailey, Paul Wilson

Bullpen
Saarloos, Belisle, Victor Santos, Jared Burton, Jon Coutlangus, Dustin Hermanson, Kerry Ligtenberg, Brian Meadows

In the end, injuries played as large a role as anything in determining who would make the final cuts. Milton, Bray, and Majewski all went down with (hopefully) short-term ailments, opening an additional rotation slot and two bullpen slots (7 total slots then available for opening day). Furthermore, Norris Hopper, Jeff Keppinger, and Elizardo Ramirez all went down on relatively small injuries, while Chris Denorfia suffered a season-ending injury to his ulnar collateral ligament, forcing him to undergo Tommy John Surgery. All told, the Reds started the season with 7 players on the 15-day disabled list (Jerry Gil also hurt his elbow).

The Reds ended up taking Hamilton and Moeller as their additional bench players, and Belisle, Saarloos, Santos, Coutlangus, and Burton as their extra guys in the bullpen. Belisle was given the 4th start of the year, though a move was anticipated on Sunday, April 8th to get Milton back on the roster as the 5th starter (as it turns out, Burton was put on the DL). Crosby, Bailey, and Livingston were demoted to AAA, while Bellhorn, Wilson, Hermanson, Ligtenberg, and Meadows were released.

In the meantime, the Reds had a fairly exciting series of exhibition games in the Grapefruit League (see graph above). They began the preseason with six consecutive wins, and continued winning until they were 10 games over 0.500 by mid-month. They slid a bit from there, but still finished with an excellent 18-12-1 record. A few of their losses were absurdly one-sided affairs (as tends to happen in spring training when using non-roster players), which caused their Pythagorean Record to be much closer to 0.500. But whatever, it was still fun.

Stories of note included Josh Hamilton's amazing spring debut, Paul Wilson's failed bid to come back from multiple arm surgeries, Adam Dunn's "new approach" to hitting that is meant to be more Ichiro-like, Ken Griffey Jr.'s move to right field, and Dustin Hermanson's failed bid to become the team's closer.

Player Performance Evaluation - Hitting

I was a bit liberal in who I allowed to get on these charts--in this case, anyone with 34 or more plate appearances made the cut (including Conine, but excluding Griffey, Bruce, etc). Also, while I do point out differences between 2006 and spring training stats below, please don't read too much into them. Unless I specifically say so, I'm not predicting regular season performance based on these stats.

How They Hit - OBP v ISO
Vertical and horizontal lines indicate 2006 league averages. Some big-time overlap in the bottom-center. The lower group shows Ross, Hopper, and Janish, while the group above that shows Gonzalez, Denorfia, Bellhorn, and Conine.

• The top-right quadrant is the place to be, and despite strong springs from a number of players, only Phillips, Dunn, Hatteberg, and Encarnacion made the cut. Hamilton's outstanding spring is largely seen in his OBP, though he did show decent power.
• Phillips is an interesting case. There have been a number of articles out recently that have suggested that players showing substantial spikes in their spring training slugging percentages vs. their career averages tend to have breakout seasons. Dave Ross is an example of this--had a very high SLG in spring training and went on to have a career year. Brandon Phillips' 0.676 SLG in this spring training was more than 300 points higher than his career numbers, and ~250 points higher than his 2006 numbers. So we might be looking at the start of a huge year for the guy. I hope so.
• The same is not necessarily true for spikes in OBP, such as in the case of Josh Hamilton or Ryan Freel. One reason for that will be discussed below.
  
• The lower-left quadrant showed some players who were struggling, including Dave Ross (coming off a career, breakout season) and Javy Valentin.
• Prospect Jerry Gil showed impressive power for a middle-infielder, slugging 4 extra-base hits in 34 AB's. Didn't get on base much though, which is consistent with his record.
  

Handling the strike zone - %K vs. %BB
Horizontal and vertical lines indicate 2006 league averages. Three overlapping groups of player names in this one, moving bottom to top: Wise & Phillips, Ross & Janish, and Gonzalez-Crosby-Mueller-Valentin.

• I'm not sure that it's worth reading much into this, but:
• Denorfia and Hatteberg placed in the upper-left quadrant as usual, though Hatteberg's strikeouts were substantially up from last season. I do expect Hatteberg to decline a bit this season, and an increase in strikeouts could drive down his batting average quite a bit.
  
• Freel and Encarnacion both substantially decreased their walk and strikeout rates to move from the upper-right to the lower-left. I expect both to move back to toward the upper-right in the regular season, as they have always been fairly patient hitters.
  
• Dunn and Bellhorn are players who classically have lived in the upper-right part of this graph throughout their career (i.e. they see a lot of pitches), so it's no surprise to see them there this time as well. Dunn's walk and strikeout rates were both substantially down from last season though (17% BB and 29% K in 2006, 11% BB, 22% K in spring training), perhaps as a result of a change in approach. It will be interesting to watch those numbers in April and May.
• The lower-right is the worst place to be on this graph, and we do see a few disappointments there. Most notable is Dave Ross, who kept his high strikeout rate from 2006 but completely forgot how to take a walk. Hopefully he'll figure that out again soon.
  

Good performance, or just good luck?

The solid line reflects 2006 league averages for qualified players, according to THT. Dotted lines reflect the first standard deviation from the mean for the 2006 data, and is presented to give an idea of the expected spread. OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) is a good, simple measure of overall offensive performance.

Batters do have some control over BABIP, and the best hitters maintain BABIP's higher than league average season after season (this is generally not the case for pitchers). Nevertheless, drastic deviations from league average are often due to chance events (e.g. being "hit-lucky" for a short period of time), and are fairly common in small sample sizes like those we see in spring training. Therefore, it's useful to look at this stat when trying to discern skill from luck.

Ryan Freel, Josh Hamilton, and Adam Dunn all enjoyed unusually high BABIP's during spring training. In contrast, Scott Hatteberg and Juan Castro had very poor BABIP's. To get an idea of how these players' spring performances might have changed if they had had a more "normal" BABIP (i.e. normal luck), I added or removed singles (including fractions of singles--the values shift a lot for each hit when you're dealing with this small a sample) from their spring lines until their BABIP was equal to 0.310 (0.310 was the NL-average among qualified players in 2006). The results are reported in the table below:

Player	Spring BABIP	Spring OPS	Hits adjusted	Adjusted OPS
Dunn	0.441	1.155	-4.45 hits	1.001
Freel	0.455	0.942	-4.77 hits	0.711
Hamilton	0.475	1.012	-9.7 hits	0.758
Hatteberg	0.257	0.803	+1.85 hits	0.879
Castro	0.235	0.594	+2.55 hits	0.710

Dunn's totals didn't shift much, thanks to his high walk rate and (more importantly) his high isolated power. But the springs of Freel and Hamilton look very different with the BABIP adjustment. This analysis predicts that Freel "should have" had only a marginal spring (OPS breaks down to a line of 0.262/0.346/0.365).

More interesting though, given the fanfare he's received, was the finding that Hamilton's line dropped down to a more "human" 0.268/0.337/0.421 using this adjustment. Now, I still think that's an outstanding spring training for a guy in Hamilton's circumstances--and I still think he should have made the team, especially given his apparent defensive abilities and offensive promise--but this adjusted line certainly doesn't have the sparkle that his actual numbers do. Note: the reasons that so many hits needed to be removed from his total are that a) his BABIP was extremely high, and b) he had more plate appearances than anyone else on the Reds' squad.

As far as the underachievers go, Scott Hatteberg's adjustment didn't turn out to be very large (his BABIP wasn't all that low anyway), but Juan Castro's spring looks decidedly different if he could achieve a 0.310 BABIP, virtually matching Ryan Freel. However, I will throw out the caveat that there is some skill involved in achieving that high of a BABIP, and Castro is not a particularly good hitter. He did have a 0.313 BABIP for the Reds last season, but more often seems to be in the 0.280-0.290 range during his career. Therefore, the adjustment might be a bit generous in his case. If I instead set his BABIP at 0.285, which matches his 2005 season, he gets an OPS of 0.672--still an improvement, just not as substantial.

I'll close with some relevant stats for Reds' hitters in spring training:

Player	PA	R	H	2B	3B	HR	TB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	SB	CS	%BB	%K	BABIP
Hamilton	81	6	29	4	2	1	40	0.403	0.457	0.556	1.012	0.153	1	0	10%	16%	0.475
Encarnacion	76	10	22	2	1	3	35	0.310	0.355	0.493	0.848	0.183	1	0	5%	12%	0.322
Phillips	70	11	23	3	1	6	46	0.338	0.357	0.676	1.034	0.338	1	0	3%	17%	0.340
Dunn	63	7	20	1	0	5	36	0.377	0.476	0.679	1.155	0.302	0	0	11%	22%	0.441
Denorfia	62	7	14	1	0	1	18	0.264	0.355	0.340	0.694	0.075	3	0	11%	16%	0.302
Gonzalez	59	4	14	4	0	0	18	0.259	0.322	0.333	0.655	0.074	0	3	8%	15%	0.311
Ross	56	4	11	2	0	0	13	0.216	0.286	0.255	0.541	0.039	0	0	5%	25%	0.297
Bellhorn	53	4	10	0	0	1	13	0.233	0.377	0.302	0.680	0.070	0	1	15%	32%	0.360
Hatteberg	53	7	11	3	0	2	20	0.244	0.358	0.444	0.803	0.200	0	0	15%	15%	0.257
Valentin	50	1	11	0	0	0	11	0.239	0.300	0.239	0.539	0.000	0	0	8%	20%	0.306
Castro	45	2	9	4	0	1	16	0.209	0.222	0.372	0.594	0.163	0	0	2%	20%	0.235
Freel	44	10	15	4	0	0	19	0.385	0.455	0.487	0.942	0.103	2	2	7%	14%	0.455
Janish	43	6	10	1	0	0	11	0.256	0.302	0.282	0.584	0.026	0	0	5%	26%	0.345
Wise	40	5	10	2	0	0	12	0.263	0.300	0.316	0.616	0.053	1	1	3%	18%	0.323
Crosby	38	9	8	3	0	1	14	0.235	0.316	0.412	0.728	0.176	1	0	8%	16%	0.259
Moeller	36	6	9	2	0	1	14	0.281	0.361	0.438	0.799	0.156	0	0	8%	17%	0.333
Votto	37	9	8	1	0	1	12	0.286	0.459	0.429	0.888	0.143	1	1	24%	24%	0.389
Hopper	36	4	9	1	0	0	10	0.265	0.278	0.294	0.572	0.029	1	0	3%	8%	0.281
Gil	35	6	6	2	1	1	13	0.176	0.200	0.382	0.582	0.206	1	1	3%	29%	0.217
Conine	34	3	10	2	0	0	12	0.323	0.382	0.387	0.769	0.065	0	0	3%	21%	0.417
Machado	28	3	3	1	1	0	6	0.136	0.321	0.273	0.594	0.136	1	0	21%	14%	0.167
Griffey	20	2	5	1	0	0	6	0.263	0.300	0.316	0.616	0.053	0	0	5%	15%	0.313
Bruce	15	1	3	1	0	0	4	0.200	0.200	0.267	0.467	0.067	0	1	0%	27%	0.273
Godwin	10	1	3	1	0	0	4	0.333	0.300	0.444	0.744	0.111	0	0	0%	20%	0.375
Keppinger	10	5	6	0	0	1	9	0.750	0.800	1.125	1.925	0.375	0	0	10%	0%	0.714
Jorgensen	9	1	1	0	0	0	1	0.167	0.444	0.167	0.611	0.000	0	0	22%	33%	0.333
Cruz	8	2	2	1	1	0	5	0.286	0.375	0.714	1.089	0.429	0	0	13%	38%	0.500
Dickerson	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0	0	0%	60%	0.000
Strait	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0	0	0%	60%	0.000
Stubbs	5	1	2	0	0	0	2	0.400	0.400	0.400	0.800	0.000	0	0	0%	20%	0.500

Coming up next....2007 Reds Spring Training Review (pt. 2), Pitching

2006 Reds Fielding Review

Fielding is a more difficult for the average fan (well, me, at least) to evaluate over the course of the season than pitching and hitting, because traditionally there haven't been very good statistics to help us make sense of what we see. With pitching and hitting, it's relatively easy -- we can count hits, homers, runs allowed, etc, and have a good century of more advanced statistical assessment to fall back on as we evaluate players.

But fielding hasn't had that benefit. Sure, we can count errors, and this clearly told us that Eddie Encarnacion wasn't doing a very good job of making accurate throws from third last season. And we can count assists from the outfield whenever someone gets gunned down at the plate. But these numbers don't tell us much about the more subtle, and arguably more important aspects of fielding, like how much range a fielder has, how well a second baseman pivots on the double play, or whether runners are intimidated by an outfielders' arm and therefore avoid even trying to take the extra base.

Fortunately, tools to assess some of these things are finally becoming available, and here I've tried to use them to piece together some details on Reds player performance last season--hopefully I'll be able to explain enough to keep you folks with me as we move along, as some of this stuff is a bit new and somewhat obscure. Let's start with a look at total team defenses from around the league last year:
Here I've plotted two +/- totals of Reds' defensive performance. The horizontal axis plots BIS's +/- totals (those found in the Fielding Bible) for 2006 teams, which I extracted from The Hardball Times 2007 Annual. The units are +/- plays saved vs. average, and each data point is essentially just the sum effect of all players on each team. On the vertical axis are THT's +/- team totals, which are based on batted ball statistics. They ask how many runs the team defenses saved, given the average outcomes of the batted ball types (i.e. ground ball, fly ball, bunt, liner, etc) these defenses encountered.

As you can see, both the BIS and THT data indicate that the Reds' 2006 defense was bad--either 2nd or 4th to last in the league, depending on how you measure it. Yikes. One positive I'll throw out is that this is actually a substantial improvement compared to 2005. THT's +/- runs saved totals for the 2005 Reds came out as a disastrous -57 runs, so their -18 total this year represents almost a 40-run improvement (that's ~4 wins!). BIS's data in the fielding bible rated the '05 Reds as -96 plays below average, so by that metric the 2005 Reds were better by 35 plays...even if this still put them 2nd to last in the league.

An aside: the last time the Reds were above average in fielding according to BIS's numbers? 2003, when they were 12 plays over average thanks to an above-average infield (Casey, Jimenez, Boone, and Larkin...with help from Castro, Olmedo, Lopez, and Branyan).

We can look closer at the BIS +/- plays statistic, which is split into the infield and outfield in the THT Annual, to learn where the Reds are failing:
Totals for infield and outfield defense using the BIS +/- system, as extracted from The Hardball Times Annual 2007. Units are plays made vs. average.

It turns out that the Reds infield and outfield were both really bad last season, though the outfield was responsible for a few more plays that didn't get made. In the case of the Reds' infield, the middle infield (-15 plays) was slightly worse than the corner infield (-8). Hmph.

With this not-so-rosy picture of the Reds' defense in mind, let's go through the positions and try to understand the underlying causes of these trends.

Before we get started, a few quick notes about the graphs that follow: +/- ZR data were extracted from The Hardball Times' stats output, and were converted to a +/- stat following the methodology I developed here, though I did standardize them to roughly a full season's playing time (defined as 200 BIZ for 1B, 400 BIZ for all other positions) for all players. +/- PMR data are reported as actual plays - expected plays, as reported by David Pinto's PMR system. I also standardized them to a ~full season's worth of playing time (defined as 4000 balls in play).

Infield
+/- PMR vs. +/- ZR for all infield positions. The blue vertical and horizontal lines indicate average performance according to PMR and ZR, respectively. Green bars indicate the range of the first upper standard deviation for the 2006 MLB infielders (it varies a bit by position), whereas the red bars indicate the range of the first lower standard deviation. Good fielders will be in the upper-right quadrant, with truly outstanding fielders being above and to the right of the green bars. Bad fielders will be in the lower-left quadrant, with truly terrible fielders below and to the left of the red bars. Scott Hatteberg and Brandon Phillips overlap slightly in this figure (sorry).

Let's take this one position at a time.

First Base

Last year first base was essentially a platoon position, with Rich Aurilia and Scott Hatteberg splitting time. PMR rated them as roughly equivalent performers there defensively, while ZR rates them as drastically different: it says Hatteberg had slightly above average range, while Aurilia was awful.

In the case of first base, I don't really trust ZR as much because there are apparently a TON of plays made by 1B's outside their zones of responsibility--so much so that out of zone plays sometimes are more numerous than plays in the zone. I don't think BIS defines their 1B zone very well. So in this case, I'm comfortable with concluding that Aurilia and Hatteberg were both roughly average defenders last season. Hatteberg may actually have been a bit better than average: he was listed as the 4th (tied with several others) best first baseman in baseball last season according to the BIS +/- system as reported in the Bill James Handbook 2007...the only Reds fielder who made one of those good lists.

There is more to playing first base than fielding grounders and liners, of course--the best first basemen are often lauded for their ability to help their infielders by converting wild throws into outs. Unfortunately, while BIS apparently has a mechanism in place to track such efforts, I don't have access to it. About all I can report is that both Aurilia (0.994) and Hatteberg (0.996) had fielding percentages that ranked near the middle of the pack for qualified first basemen last season (mlb range = 0.988 to 0.998, median = 0.995). So at least they weren't dropping balls that they should catch.

Second Base

Shortly after Krivsky acquired him on April 7th, Brandon Phillips took over the second base job and never gave it back. The primary reason that he played there initially was his defense, which certainly looks impressive when you watch it. The kid's got flair.

But both ZR and PMR agree that Phillips is actually only marginally better than average defensively. Of course, an average defender, like an average hitter, is quite a bit above replacement level, so he still has a lot of value--particularly if he continues to improve his offensive game like his spring training slugging percentage indicates he might. But it's not fair to say that he's among the league's best defenders, at least based on his 2006 performance.

Third Base

(Note for the technically oriented: I used a straight [+/- PLAYS] + [+/- OOZ] calculation for ZR at third base. I'm no longer convinced that 3B should be treated differently than all the other positions, despite the findings I reported here--see comments in that link for discussion).

In 2005's second half, Edwin Encarnacion was actually rated by the Fielding Bible as a plus-defender. But last year, he clearly struggled, as evidenced by his 25 errors in just under 1000 innings (0.915 fielding percentage -- last among qualified 3B's in 2006). This hurt his overall range substantially, with both ZR and PMR listing him as a full standard deviation below average. Eddie absolutely has to improve his defense this year. He seems to have reasonably good ability to get to balls, but he has to be able to consistently field and throw the ball across the diamond to allow those skills to be a positive for the team. If he could drop his errors by 10 this year--a reasonable number--he'd move up to being almost (though not quite) average.

Nevertheless, for all the bitching and moaning about EdE's defensive struggles, the guy who received the second-most innings at that position--and sometimes caused Eddie to be benched in his favor--was actually worse. While it's true that Rich Aurilia didn't make nearly as many errors (0.953 fielding percentage), PMR indicates that he would have made upwards of 20 fewer plays overall than Encarnacion, once we normalize for a full-season's playing time. 20 plays! ZR rates them closer, but still indicates that Aurilia was not as good as Eddie. After writing my Reds 2006 Hitting Review, I was ready to nominate Aurilia as the Reds' most valuable position player for 2006. But when you factor in his defense, I don't know that I'd say that any more.

Shortstop

(Note: Data for all three Reds' shortstops listed above are based on the total 2006 data for each player, not just those innings they played while employed by the Reds).

Felipe Lopez was often criticized as a miserable defensive shortstop, and these data indicate that those criticisms were entirely justified. I'm a big proponent of strong defense up the middle (I'll readily compromise on the corners in favor of offense), so I was fine with the idea of dealing Lopez prior to The Trade. Unfortunately, the guy they got to replace him--while better--was also below average. Royce Clayton wasn't awful last season defensively, but he was still below average. And given the minimal amount of offensive production he provided, there wasn't much point in having him in a starting role. In fact, it would have made far more sense to declare Juan Castro the starting shortstop. Castro was rated well above-average at short last season by PMR, and actually out-hit Clayton substantially (Clayton: 0.235/0.290/0.329, Castro: 0.284/0.320/0.421) while with the team. I doubt Castro would maintain that sort of offensive production in the long term, but if you're going to have a no-hit shortstop, you might as well have a guy who can catch the ball.

Speaking of no-hit shortstops, how would our new SS, Alex Gonzalez, fit in? Since this is a 2006 Reds review, I didn't include him in the graph, but Gonzalez's playing time-adjusted ratings last season were +3 outs above average according to PMR and a whopping +27 plays above average according to ZR. This would place him near the top of the graph, just right of the vertical blue line. I'm inclined to split the difference between these two stats and place him somewhere around 10-15 plays above average. That would put him slightly below Castro in terms of range, but Gonzalez will probably hit better than Castro, at least in terms of power. Hopefully.

Bunts and Double-Plays

The BIS statistics reported in the Hardball Times 2007 Annual include separate assessments of the ability of teams to make plays on bunts and double plays. Here's a graph of all the teams' performance in those statistics (vertical and horizontal blue lines indicate league averages):It's interesting to see that no teams fell deep into the -GDP, -Bunt category...though the Reds were on its edge. Their performance on bunts was actually right around league average, but they didn't do well on turning double plays.

While I don't have access to individual the BIS player stats, David Pinto recently released PMR-based assessments of shortstop double-play ability that shed some light on those numbers. All three Reds' shortstops last season were rated as below average: Lopez and Castro were both rated 4 double plays below average, while Royce Clayton was rated a miserable 14 below average. Alex Gonzalez, by contrast, was rated 3 plays above average, which ranked him in the upper third of MLB shortstops. Again, defense should be improved with Gonzalez at short.

Outfield

Here's a graph comparing ZR and PMR for qualified Reds' outfielders (all lines and bars are defined in the same way they are in the infield graph--scroll up for details):
First, let's talk about the good: Ryan Freel. Freel came out looking brilliant in this analysis, showing some of the best playing time-adjusted range in baseball. I always knew he was fast out there, but his performance places him a standard deviation above the mean in both metrics. Amazing.

Unfortunately, the other two mainstays in the outfield--Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr.--were bad. Zone Rating liked Dunn better than PMR, but both agree that he's below average...it's just that PMR thinks he was a disaster. My impressions were that Dunn had an awful first half in the field, and then improved from that point on. But I don't have data on that.

Even worse, however, was Ken Griffey. Junior, according to both PMR and ZR, was the worst center fielder in baseball. PMR puts a full season of Junior in center field as resulting in 32 plays below average. My ZR translations put him at -41 plays per season. We knew he was bad, but that rate has him missing a ball that an average fielder would have caught in one out of every four games. Yikes.

A few outfielders didn't make the graphs because they played in too few innings to make the PMR reporting cut, but below I'll list the ZR +/- figures for a few of these individuals. Keep in mind that these are extrapolations for a full season's worth of play based on a small number of innings in the field, so I do not consider them very reliable:

• Left Field
• Ryan Freel, -5 plays/season
• Chris Denorfia, +11 plays/season
• Center Field
• Chris Denorfia, +32 plays/season
• Quinton McCracken, -14 plays/season
• DeWayne Wise, +11 plays/season
• Right Field
• Todd Hollandsworth, -9 plays/season
• Chris Denorfia, +41 plays/season
• Norris Hopper, +55 plays/season
  

Outfielder Throwing Arms

John Walsh has put together a very nice system for evaluating throwing performance. It has two primary measures: Hold Rate, which measures the proportion of runners who try to take an extra base on an outfielder's arm, and kill rate, which measures the rate at which a fielder actually guns down base runners. Here, I'll borrow a page from Walsh's most recent article on this system and plot Reds' outfielders for for these numbers (100 is the mean for each score, higher is better). Unfortunately, I could only find data on three Reds outfielders:
Both Griffey and Kearns were successful at impacting the running game without flashing a lot of kills, given their opportunities last year. Dunn, on the other hand, had only average success at controlling base runners, while also having a below-average kill rate (wasn't he a QB??).

Griffey, in particular, surprises me here. His hold rate was about the same in 2005, but his kill rate was a substantially higher (though still below average) rate of 71. I wonder if his throwing arm is starting to go along with his other skills--and that base runners hadn't caught on to this yet, resulting in a still-positive hold rate.

It's also possible, of course, that Griffey makes up for any lack of throwing arm by being really good at getting the ball back into the infield. My own observations (caveat: I'm no scout!!) suggest to me that he plays angles really well, that he's really quick to get rid of the ball, and that he has an accurate arm, even if it's not that strong. Doing those things can go a long way toward preventing base runners from advancing.

Catchers

There are two primary elements to catching: working with the pitcher to help them excel, and shutting down the opponents' running game. The latter is easier to examine than the former:
Two measures of catchers' abilities to affect the running game: % of would-be base stealers caught, and stolen bases attempted per game. The latter might be considered an indication of runner intimidation. As usual, solid lines indicate MLB averages among qualified catchers (I used 578 innings, as there's a big drop-off between that player, Gerald Laird, and the next catcher, Gregg Zaun). Dotted lines represent +/- one standard deviation from the mean.

Reds catchers were extremely good at stopping the running game in 2006. All caught an above-average number of would-be base stealers, with Dave Ross and Jose Valentin coming in more than a standard deviation above average. In fact, only these qualified catchers had equal or better caught stealing percentages than our two guys last season: Ivan Rodriguez (0.46), Gerald Laird (0.41), Yadier Molina (0.41), & Jose Molina (0.41). Perhaps reflecting their arm strength (and probably also reflecting the reputation of GABP as being a hitters' park), there were also very few stolen base attempts against Reds catchers last season.

Handling pitchers is tougher to assess. One important aspect of a catchers' job is to serve as a backstop--one often hears announcers talk about how important it is that pitchers can trust their catchers to knock down anything they throw up there, even if it's bounced in the dirt. Another aspect of catching has to do with "calling a good game," which essentially means helping pitchers get the most out of their skills on any given day. Here's an attempt to assess those things:
On the vertical axis is Wild Pitches + Passed Balls per game. As long as you're not catching a knuckleballer, this is generally an indication of how good you are at stopping errant pitches and preventing runners from advancing. The solid blue line is the MLB mean of qualified catchers, with dotted lines being +/- one standard deviation. The horizontal axis lists catcher ERA, which is simply the ERA of pitchers while the catcher was in the game. The red vertical line is the Reds' team ERA in 2007.

First, let's deal with the y-axis. Both Jason LaRue and Javy Valentin looked like absolute brick walls up there, stopping almost every pitch that comes their way. In contrast, Dave Ross was "only" average.

Catcher ERA is interesting. It indicates, on the surface, that pitchers threw far better with Ross behind the plate than Valentin. But one needs to be very careful about interpreting this stat. First, Ross was the personal catcher of Bronson Arroyo even before he took the starting catching job from LaRue, and Arroyo enjoyed a career year last year, finish up 4th in the league with a 3.29 ERA AND leading the league in innings pitched. Ross was behind the plate for most of those starts. Valentin, on the other hand, due to his Spanish skills, was the personal catcher of Elizardo Ramirez. Ramirez had a nice couple of months for the Reds, but imploded badly later in the year. So those two pitchers alone could explain a big part of the variation we're seeing here.

What I should have done, but haven't taken the time to do, is to compare the ERA of each pitcher with each catcher, and then noted the average effect each catcher had on the staff. Maybe I'll sit down and try to figure out an efficient way to do that sometime. But for now, I'm going to punt: for what it's worth, Valentin's CERA the previous three years was 4.92 (team ERA 5.15), 5.51 (team ERA 5.19), and 4.77 (for tampa bay, team ERA 4.93). So I don't think his 2006 numbers are revealing any kind of real deficiency in his performance behind the plate.

Looking ahead to 2007

Defense is still an underappreciated part of the game, but I think the statistical fan community is finally coming to grips with how important a role it plays in determining team wins. And this season, the Reds defense looks like it will be much improved.

With the departure of Aurilia, Lopez, & Clayton, and the addition of Gonzalez, along with the improvement I expect to see from Encarnacion, the Reds infield defense could actually be average or even slightly above-average this season. That would go a long way toward helping to improve the Reds pitching staff's performance--and a lot of our guys might need that help. This will be a solid core to build on, and I'm looking forward to watching them play.

Similarly, the outfield may be much improved, simply by shifting Griffey from center field to right field. Based on 2006 data, a full season of Ryan Freel in center field instead of Griffey would net the Reds a total of somewhere between 46 (PMR) and 72 (ZR) additional outs. If you assume slightly less than a run saved per half a play, that works out to somewhere between 20 and 30 runs saved, which is the equivalent of ~2-3 wins. We might lose some off this total by sacrificing Freel's defense in right field to Griffey. But Junior should be much closer to league average out there than he was in center, so the loss shouldn't be too dramatic.

Dunn will, in all likelihood, continue to be bad, although his comments this spring about trying to become a good outfielder are encouraging...simply because it's never appeared to be a major emphasis in his game. If he could make himself even an average fielder, given his offense, that'd be huge.

Tables
As with the hitters and pitchers, I'm closing by posting a set of relevant fielding stats for the 2006 Reds, courtesy of The Hardball Times and Baseball Musings. Many, many thanks to those sites for allowing free access to such great data.

Last	Pos	Inn	PO	A	TE	FE	FPct	+/-ZR	+/-ZR (~162G)	PMR+-	PMR+- (~162G)
Hatteberg	1B	1088	997	69	1	2	0.996	2	4	3	4
Aurilia	1B	329	301	26	1	1	0.994	-10	-39	2	6
Dunn	1B	17	15	1	0	1	0.941	-2	-93	---	---
Encarnacion	1B	9	9	0	0	0	1.000	0	-43	---	---
Phillips	2B	1216	331	334	8	8	0.977	2	3	7	7
Freel	2B	91	23	25	1	0	0.980	2	34	---	---
Aurilia	2B	41	13	14	0	0	1.000	0	-3	---	---
Womack	2B	40	11	17	0	0	1.000	1	34	---	---
Olmedo	2B	40	5	13	0	2	0.900	1	34	---	---
Harris	2B	12	4	3	0	0	1.000	-3	-266	---	---
Castro	2B	5	0	2	0	0	1.000	0	34	---	---
Encarnacion	3B	931	74	196	16	9	0.915	-16	-28	-13	-18
Aurilia	3B	356	24	78	3	2	0.953	-7	-31	-11	-40
Freel	3B	88	7	25	0	0	1.000	3	58	---	---
Castro	3B	64	4	16	0	0	1.000	3	88	---	---
Lopez	SS	1336	187	389	14	14	0.951	-20	-21	-35	-33
Clayton	SS	1054	171	340	6	12	0.965	-8	-10	-7	-9
Castro	SS	548	89	190	3	5	0.971	6	15	12	28
Olmedo	SS	21	4	6	0	1	0.909	-2	-111	---	---
Phillips	SS	15	1	3	0	1	0.800	-3	-178	---	---
Aurilia	SS	198	37	68	0	1	0.991	-3	-16	---	---
Dunn	LF	1321	279	7	4	8	0.960	-11	-9	-21	-21
Freel	LF	41	10	1	0	0	1.000	0	-5	---	---
Denorfia	LF	27	4	0	0	0	1.000	0	11	---	---
Wise	LF	22	4	0	0	0	1.000	1	65	---	---
McCracken	LF	14	3	0	0	0	1.000	1	145	---	---
Ross	LF	9	1	0	0	0	1.000	-2	-155	---	---
Hollandsworth	LF	8	1	1	0	0	1.000	-1	-122	---	---
Hopper	LF	3	1	0	0	0	1.000	0	145	---	---
Griffey Jr.	CF	870	229	6	3	2	0.979	-27	-41	-22	-32
Freel	CF	400	127	4	0	0	1.000	9	31	4	14
Denorfia	CF	85	20	0	0	0	1.000	2	32	---	---
McCracken	CF	40	15	0	0	1	0.938	-1	-14	---	---
Wise	CF	36	14	1	0	1	0.938	0	11	---	---
Hopper	CF	14	1	1	0	0	1.000	0	11	---	---
Kearns	RF	1228	346	7	5	2	0.980	16	13	3	3
Freel	RF	360	101	7	1	4	0.956	8	23	8	29
Hollandsworth	RF	118	22	0	0	0	1.000	-1	-9	---	---
Denorfia	RF	118	34	2	0	0	1.000	5	41	---	---
Hopper	RF	70	25	1	0	0	1.000	4	55	---	---
McCracken	RF	10	3	0	0	0	1.000	0	-28	---	---

Were Dunn's HR-rates depressed in 2006?

Very interesting post today by Greg Rybarczyk, also the operator of HitTracker.com, at The Hardball Times about home runs. Here's an excerpt (JE = a "Just Enough" home run barely clearing the wall, PL = a "Plenty" home run [essential "normal"], and ND = a "No Doubt" home run):

When we examine the 2006 season data (which is available here), we find that the MLB average breakout of home runs by type was 27% JE, 55% PL and 18% ND. For hitters with above average power, the ratio shifts to 25%/55%/20%, and for the elite sluggers, the ratio becomes 23%/54%/23%, as “No Doubt” homers make up a larger fraction of their output.

He then goes on to look at which players deviated from those ratios. Three Reds players came up as being rather low last year in terms of their Just Enough home run output, indicating that they may have "unluckily" missed out on a fair number of not-quite-enough homers: Adam Dunn (5%/55%/40), Edwin Encarnacion (7%/67%/27%), and Dave Ross (10%/62%/29%).

I've written before about Adam Dunn's apparent bad luck last year, and this might give us some clue as to what specifically may have gone wrong. I'm excited to see Encarnacion on that list, as I think he's poised to have a great season. Ross is also intriguing--I'm almost certain that he'll decline a bit this year, but these data indicate that it's possible that he may have had more power last year than he showed--and what he showed was already ridiculous.

Other News

• Yesterday, this blog received the most hits it ever in one day by a considerable margin. This was due to be continued incoming traffic from David Pinto and TangoTiger's kind links to my zone rating article, as well as numerous bloggers who linked to my reflections on opening day as they recapping coverage of that game. Thanks to everyone who came by, and I want to especially thank those who linked to me. It is always very much appreciated.
• Curt Schilling has a blog. It actually makes for a pretty good read now and then. For example, after his most recent pummeling by Kansas City, he posted a very interesting recap of what it was like to struggle like that on the mound. It's really cool to get a glimpse into the thought processes of a major league pitcher:

  Grud worked the count to 3-1, laying off the first change at 1-1, and a FB down and away ended up middle in for a hard single to left. Had Teahan down quick and left a split up for another single 1-2 (I think). First pitch slider to Sweeney didn’t slide, bad miss. Next slider was better and he stayed on it and hit it hard to right to load the bases. Gordon worked a 7 pitch AB, and chased a good split down for out #2. A lengthy AB from Shealy, saw me go to the split 3-2 which he took for ball 4 to walk in a run. I can’t remember if I ever done that? Made a lot of mistakes inside this one AB and it ended up costing us.Overthrowing some balls when I had a chance to end the AB earlier and missing spots too badly to even get him to offer.

• It's easy to get frustrated with pitchers now and then when they're struggling on the mound, but what I love about this post is that it shows how aware they are of what's happening--and how frustrated they can get too.
• I wanted to applaud the Cincinnati Reds for trying to make Opening Day "Green" by purchasing carbon offsets. Of course, what would have been really amazing is if they purchased enough offsets to account for the 42,000+ fans that drove down to the ballpark for the game. But it's still impressive and a great symbolic demonstration of what we need to do with our planet moving forward.
• Looks like both DirectTV and the cable companies will allow be showing MLB Extra Innings this year. I have to say, on first blush, this looks like an amazing bit of negotiating by MLB. I don't subscribe to Extra Innings myself, but making these games available to more people is always a great thing for the sport.

Photo credit: AP/Al Behrman, on 4/2/07

A slurry of links...

I wanted to take a moment and clear out some of the articles that I've been saving in bloglines for linkage. So, in quick fashion, along with a few comments:

• There have been two recent posts that follow (chronologically) my little study on ZR:
• Sean Smith does a conversion of ZR into a +/- system (similar to what I did, though I'm a bit fuzzy on some of his methodology), and then tries--with some success--to reconcile the ZR data with retrosheet PBP data.
  
• Tangotiger estimates replacement-level fielding. Interesting results (numbers are plays +/- by starters vs. bench players over 162 games):

1B: -0.7
2B: -2.1
SS: +4.1
3B: +11.1
LF: -3.4
CF: 0.0
RF: +3.8

• It's not surprising that 1B and LF starters would be worse fielders than bench players, because those are almost pure offensive positions. I am a bit surprised to see second basemen coming out lower than their replacements--I guess that's how no-hit infielders can make a difference on a team. I was very surprised to see that third basemen are so much better defensively than their bench replacements. Tango suggests that this is due to the fantastic crowd of defensive (not to mention offensive) third basemen playing these days.
• The take-home message is that replacement-level fielding is much more on-par to starter performance than replacement level hitting or pitching. Not surprising, perhaps, but it's nice to see the numbers.
• Update: I forgot to mention JP's look at center fielders over at R&B. He makes the excellent point that out of zone plays might result in more runs saved than in-zone plays, especially for outfielders, as those will tend to be balls in the gap.
  
• Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, is planning to veto the ban on metal bats passed by the city council, claiming that this sort of thing needs to be controlled by leagues themselves. I posted about this before when the bill was passed by the legislature, and it will continue to bear watching. This issue is bound to keep coming up in the future, in NYC and elsewhere.
• Vince Gennaro posted an excerpt from his book on the economics of winning in baseball.
  
• Interesting findings include the discovery that wins in Cincinnati result in fewer dollars earned by the club than wins in almost any other MLB city. It's also interesting to see how the relationship between wins and dollars earned can be non-linear in some cities, but almost flat in others.
  
• One quibble I'll pass on is that my own work on attendance rates has shown that previous season wins are almost, or perhaps even more important than current season win totals in understanding team attendance. As far as I can tell, he only used current-season win totals in his regressions, and that might be missing an important element in predicting attendance rates.
• Update: I received this point in an email from Vince Gennaro this morning in response to my critique--good to know he's already noted this!:

  You raise an important point about last year's wins and this year's wins both affecting the team's attendance. In fact, that's exactly how I defined wins--50% last year + 50% current year--for the purpose of my modeling and analysis. I experimented with different combinations of last yr/current yr wins and it became clear that attendance in the first couple of months of the season has less to do with current performance and much more to do with the advance sales (and season ticket renewals) based on how the team finished the previous year.

• Dan Fox and Neal Williams did a two-part series on quantifying third base coaches. Mark Berry came out not-so-good in terms of his ability to judge when to send runners home, whereas Billy Hatcher was rated as the best third base coach in the entire span of 2000-2006...but then again, there was almost zero year-to-year correlation in coach performance, so those numbers probably don't mean anything. Quantifying the effects of coaches and managers is still a holy grail of statistical evaluation. You just know they have an effect, but it's hard to get past all the noise.
• Former Reds' farmhand Dustin Moseley is the #5 starter for the Anaheim Angels. Good for him, I hope he makes it...even though it would make the Ramon Ortiz trade look even worse than it does now.
• This is from last November but I never linked it: Sal Baxamusa at THT found that the best way to avoid being shut out is not to focus manufacturing runs via small ball--it's to have power in your lineup. Looks like a solid study, even if I can't replicate the methodology (Weibull distribution?!).
  
• Finally, comments of some Reds news:
• Hermanson was released by the Reds. I was surprised by this move, given that papers had nominated him the Reds' closer this year. I hope it's not because I never got around to doing a profile on him. Dustin, I swear, it was on my list! I'm just behind!!
• Denorfia's Tommy John surgery... Poor kid. I picked him to be the Reds' starting center fielder this year, and even though that was unlikely to happen from the get-go, I thought this would be a big year for him. The good news is that position players often recover from this surgery more quickly than pitchers. Bad news is that he's still going to miss the whole season.

That's enough for today, even if I still have a good 100 or so other links saved away for a rainy day. :)

Still to come this week (hopefully): My 2006 Reds Fielding Review (very close to being done), a 2007 Reds Spring Training Review, and the launch of a series of book reviews I intend to do this year. I'll start with The Hardball Times 2007 Annual and The Graphical Player. Both are highly recommended.

Reflections on Opening Day

While I'd recorded it on my XM-Radio and began listening to it on the bus ride home tonight, I was delighted to discover that the game was carried on WGN, and TiVo, in its immense wisdom, recorded it or me. Which meant I got to watch opening day tonight on TV! Some thoughts:

• I really like the new uniforms. I thought I'd miss the black, but I don't. The font is a lot of fun (I'm going to have to snag it for my banner logo), the piping looks clean, and the pure red vented batting helmets--while not something I want to wear around town--seem a bit more "right" than the red & black helmets ever did.
• I love Adam Dunn when he's awesome.
  
• Griffey looks fantastic in right field. I'm excited about this new outfield defense we have now.
  
• Ryan Freel's an animal. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes he just goes ape.
• Harang looked darn good. I was saving this for my upcoming spring training review (I'm behind!), but Harang's BABIP in the spring was 0.433 (very unlucky) and his FIP (predicts ERA from peripherals) was 3.74. His strikeout rate was still a nice 7.7 k/9, his walk rate was a brilliant 0.7 bb/9. His homer rate was a somewhat high 1.40 hr/9, but homers can be somewhat random events--and one less would bring him down to a very average 1.05 hr/9. So don't worry about that 6.66 spring training ERA--not that anyone is anymore after 7 innings with one unearned run allowed.

• Ross was scrapping a bit. I do expect him to decline a bit this year, though I still think he'll be a hitter who is well above replacement level.
  
• How about Saarloos (he of the 3.9 k/9 last season) starting the year with a strikeout? Breakout season? :)
• Encarnacion made a couple of really nice plays. I really hope he can be at least an average defender this year--if he is, our infield defense might actually be above average. :)
• Pretty neat to see the standing ovation for Hamilton. That was an amazing moment and really made me proud to be from Cincinnati. I can only imagine what it must have been like for those of you who were there. I wonder whether someone with his history would have gotten this kind of reception 20 years ago. It seems like there's finally been a realization that drug addiction is a disease in this country.
• Mr. Redlegs is kinda scary in real life. I was more comfortable with him when he was just a cartoon.
• Overall, a heck of a lot more fun than last year's opening day.
  

Photos courtesy of Getty Images/Thomas Whitte, AP/Tom Uhlman, and AP/Al Behrman

Eric Milton Prospect Retrospective

Yesterday, John Sickels posted a prospect retrospective on Eric Milton. I haven't seen it posted elsewhere in RedsLand, so I thought I'd throw it out there with an excerpt:

Milton went 7-11 in '99 but he cut a full run off his ERA and his K/BB ratio improved sharply. He was a mainstay in the Twins rotation 2000 through 2002, until getting injured in '03. His fly ball and gopher ball tendencies became increasingly pronounced, and he's never quite lived up to expectations. . .certainly he hasn't been Viola or Pettitte. In his case, I don't think he suffered particularly in the long run for having skipped Triple-A. I think he's a guy who basically peaked at age 23-25, and my guess is that he'll remain at his current level of effectiveness for the remainder of his career.

Milton's been a guy who has puzzled me since we got him. Somehow, it always feels to me like he's just a bit away from finding his groove. Maybe I just want to keep believing that somehow he'll work out. I still think he could be a good bullpen lefty, a la Kent Mercker. But I'll be surprised if he lasts the whole year in the rotation.