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September 13, 2012

In A Pickle

Defense in the 2012 Pennant Races

by Jason Wojciechowski

I'd like to tell you an introductory anecdote or post a GIF (soft-g) or something to ease you in to what we're about to engage in, but I don't think my chops are up to snuff, so why don't we just dive in?

There's a neat thing we provide in our stat reports on this website. It's called Team Defensive Efficiency and it has two key stats: defensive efficiency (DE), a very basic measure attributable to Bill James that simply says what percentage of balls in play a defense converts into outs, and Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (PADE), a metric designed almost a decade ago (gosh I'm old) by James Click, who these days graces the Rays' front office roster, serving as their Director of Baseball Research and Development. PADE, as the name implies, adjusts for each team's park's effect on their defensive performance and spits out a number that represents a percentage above or below average at turning balls in play into outs.¹

You could click over to the stat report, but I'm afraid if you do that, you'll never come back here, so I'll reproduce an excerpt. Here's a table of baseball teams showing their defensive efficiencies and their PADEs, as grabbed on Wednesday night (i.e. the stats are updated through Tuesday's games), sorted by DE :

TEAM

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Related Content: Defense, Oakland A's, Detroit Tigers

13 comments have been left for this article.

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Josh A

(64260)

A very enjoyable read. Probably would have been a bit better with an introductory GIF (hard-g), though.

Sep 13, 2012 07:30 AM

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rating: 4

Jason Wojciechowski

BP staff

(1272)

Addendum: thanks to Colin Wyers for his PADE assistance.

Yes, that's a pun, but it's also true. He helped me with PADE.

Sep 13, 2012 08:11 AM

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lesmash

(58313)

Nicely done, Jason. I, for one, needed the step-by-step explanations, so thanks for that. If there's something I am going to take away from this article, it is that many baseball teams continue to ignore defense - or at least they undervalue it - and they do so to their own detriment.

On a separate note, I wonder how long it will be until we see a team adopt a completely unusual defensive approach. I know some teams (the Rays!) love to play shifts, but I'm thinking about a team that plays 5 infielders against certain hitters and 4 outfielders against others. And they do so every night, depending on the match-ups and scouting reports. I would think, if nothing else, it might drive opposing hitters a little crazy . . . and that's a plus right there.

Sep 13, 2012 09:31 AM

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rating: 2

amazin_mess

(9525)

Holy mackerel.

Sep 13, 2012 09:38 AM

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rating: 0

jjgreen33

(8301)

This is the best BP piece in a very long time. Terrific, illuminating work.

Sep 13, 2012 09:52 AM

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rating: 5

Jason Wojciechowski

BP staff

(1272)

Thanks!

Sep 13, 2012 11:16 AM

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John Carter

(22689)

I think the Cabrera move to third was a success. It was Delmon Young's lack of willingness to DH and resulting horrible output from that spot that was a failure. Injuries to Broesch and Dirks didn't help either, nor did Ryan Raburn's horrible season. Proof will be that Detroit continues with it after Victor Martinez returns.

Sep 13, 2012 12:11 PM

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rating: -1

Jason Wojciechowski

BP staff

(1272)

I'm a little unclear on the Delmon Young part of this -- he's DH'd almost 100 times this year.

Sep 13, 2012 16:05 PM

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jfranco77

(64578)

Outstanding article.

FWIW, FanGraphs has the Rockies hitters (adding up everyone over 100 PA) at -40.3 fielding runs. Only Todd Helton and DJ Lemahieu are positive fielders, and Fowler, Pacheco, Rutledge, and Chris Nelson are all about -8 or worse.

Objectively, I can see why they'd be bad. Rutledge really isn't a shortstop. Pacheco isn't really a 3B, and I'm not sure he's really a 1B either. I wouldn't have expected CarGo to be below average, or Fowler to show up at -10.7. Cuddyer is -1 run which is fine.

Sep 14, 2012 07:50 AM

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rating: 0

nickkappel

(68405)

Can we use Team Defensive Efficiency to explain why bad pitchers (on a team w/high TDE) who pitch to contact have good numbers, and vice versa?

Sep 14, 2012 09:55 AM

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rating: 0

eliyahu

(11036)

I've already +1'ed above, but that's not enough. This was an excellent article. One of the most memorable I've read here.

Sep 14, 2012 10:10 AM

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rating: 0

sandyk

(2369)

I enjoyed this article, but I think that one needs to be careful in measurements like this one. In particular, I wonder about the PADE figures. As Colin Wyers (I think) has reminded us, the error bars are very important in these statistical calculations. I am a bit suspicious of the methodology that creates PADE; the errors there could be substantial.

On the other hand, I thank you very much for putting those DE and PADE numbers into a context that makes sense. I had often wondered if those small differences in DE really amounted to significant differences in terms of runs and wins; thank you for doing the calculation for me!

Sep 14, 2012 11:32 AM

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rating: 1

Jason Wojciechowski

BP staff

(1272)

I agree 100% that knowing about the error/uncertainty around the figures is important, and it's something I should have mentioned in the article. Thank you for raising that.

I don't actually have a substantive response at the moment, though. Maybe it's something I can follow up on later.

Your second paragraph is what I was hoping people would take from this -- not so much "hey Detroit has lost 50 runs!" as "how much difference is it actually making on the field when a team is 1% above average at catching balls?" Whether a team actually IS 1% above average is the harder part.

Sep 14, 2012 11:36 AM

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<< Previous Article

Value Picks: Starting ... (09/13)

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In A Pickle: How the G... (09/06)

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In A Pickle: Introduci... (09/20)

Next Article >>

Overthinking It: Chick... (09/13)

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