Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Common baseline for Fielders
Roughly speaking, first basemen convert 75% of the plays they are responsible for into outs.
Roughly speaking, center fielders convert 75% of the plays they are responsible for into outs.
Does this mean the average 1B is equal to the average CF in converting plays into outs? No. Obviously we have a degree of difficulty. If this was Darin Erstad, it would be closer to 85% if he played 1B and 80% if he played CF. What we need is a common baseline. We are NOT talking about “what if Keith Hernandez played CF”. That’s not what we are talking about. We are taking one player, or a small group of players, taking those players, and moving them around the field. We are creating a common baseline. Let’s call this non-existant player Willie Kelly. Willie Kelly is not even an average fielder. He’s a below average fielder. He makes for a terrible shortstop, and acceptable fielder at 1B.
What we do is ask: how many plays would Willie Kelly make at each position.
- The average 1B makes 75% of the plays. Willie Kelly makes 70%
- The average 3B makes 70%, while Willie Kelly makes 60%
- The average 2B makes 65%, while Willie Kelly makes 55%
- The average SS makes 65%, while Willie Kelly makes 53%
- The average CF makes 75%, while Willie Kelly makes 65%
- The average RF makes 67%, while Willie Kelly makes 59%
- The average LF makes 65%, while Willie Kelly makes 59%
Now, don’t hold me to all those numbers. I rounded some here and there, as I’m just going to make a point. And the point is that each fielder has his own context, his own degree of difficulty. And you can’t just look at outs per play. You can’t look at the average for that position. You need a common baseline. You can make the argument that you want a fairly low common baseline, someone like Willie Kelly. Or maybe you want something a bit higher than that. Maybe a better baseline is William Kelliman. Maybe this is what we want:
- The average 1B makes 75% of the plays. William Kelliman makes 73%
- The average 3B makes 70%, while William Kelliman makes 65%
- The average 2B makes 65%, while William Kelliman makes 60%
- The average SS makes 65%, while William Kelliman makes 59%
- The average CF makes 75%, while William Kelliman makes 70%
- The average RF makes 67%, while William Kelliman makes 63%
- The average LF makes 65%, while William Kelliman makes 63%
Still, the point remains: common baseline. And I think this is what Bill James is after in his article. And if so, he’s right. If that’s not what he’s after, that’s fine, because the above is how I approach it. That’s how I evaluate fielding: against a common baseline.
What you CANNOT do is look at the BATTING production for each fielder and use that. Pete Palmer was wrong about very few things. This was one of them. But as Bill noted in his article:
When Pete Palmer first explained this idea to me, in a letter probably in 1976, I thought, “OK, well, that’s clever; we can use that until we figure out some way to determine the ACTUAL defensive value of a shortstop.” The problem is, we never did. As Sabermetrics grew, it just skipped over that problem. Pete had offered a way to work around the absence of knowledge, so people said, “OK, that’s good; let’s go with that.”
Bill is right. It was a useful stand-in, a placeholder until we can figure it out. And Bill actually had a better approach, one based on the Fielding Spectrum. And that is basically the approach I follow, somewhat roughing out those edges. And my approach is basically what the others have refined on their side for WAR. What Bill does is pretty close to what I do. What Fangraphs does is pretty close to what I do. And what Reference does is pretty close to what I do. We have a pretty close agreement. It just hasn’t been really laid down too strongly on paper, if only because there are still some rough edges, notably with catchers.
Anyway, that’s where we are.
UPDATE (for clarification):
We are leaving Keith Hernandez at 1B and comparing him to Willie Kelly.
We are leaving Ozzie Smith at SS and comparing him to Willie Kelly.
We are never, EVER comparing Ozzie and Keith both at SS or both at 1B. That’s what we are NOT doing.
This is no different than “common opponents” comparison of two teams that never face each other. That’s what we are doing here.
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