Lookout Landing

That's always made sense to me,

and I’ve always struggled to understand how people think that a smaller OF will make it more acceptable to play an inferior fielder than a superior one. Think about it like this: Say you’ve got an outfield of 3 Gutierrez’s and another one of 3 Ibanez’s. Imagine the Gutierrez’s have a perfectly circular range around them of, say, 50 feet, and the Ibanez’s have a perfectly circular range of 25 feet around them. Envision those circles in an unreasonably huge OF, say 600 feet to the wall at all places. There’s alot of empty space for both groups of OF, and while the Gutierrez’s are covering more of it than the Ibanez’s, it’s still only a small percentage of the total field and there’s lots of places a ball can be hit where simply no one is going to get to it.

Now envision gradually bringing the wall in, maybe 25 feet at a time, and shifting in the fielders appropriately as well. Gradually the Gutierrez’s range circles get closer and closer together and less “automatic hit” space exists. The same happens for the Ibanez’s but at a slower clip. Eventually there reaches a point where the Gutierrez circles begin to overlap as they can get to nearly everything hit into the OF and there are only a few places where it can be hit that they won’t get to it. Using the hypothetical 50 foot radiuses, this would be something like a 200 foot OF wall – where they could stand in one spot and have their circles reach both the OF wall and the IF dirt, and overlap each other where they meet. You’d have to hit the ball either in the far corners or against the wall midway between two of the Gutierrez’s to get it past them – in short, they can basically get to everything at this point, and it’s going to be near impossible to get OF hits on them. At the same time, the 25 foot radius Ibanez’s are leaving a tone of open room, and hits are still falling in.

Now yes, it does beging to become advantagous to play the better hitting Ibanez’s if you continue to bring the wall in to 150 feet. Then while the Gutierrez’s wouldn’t be letting ANY hits happen at all, the Ibanez’s would be giving up only a handful themselves, in the same spots as the 200 foot OF Gutierrez’s, and somewhere around here is where it becomes ok to play the inferior fielder.

Now this was all highly unscientific, the numbers were extremely arbitrary, and the whole situation somewhat absurd, but if you understood it as I meant for it to have been understood, then the takeaway message is that you can’t “hide” bad defenders in small parks until the park gets so small that the bad defender’s range starts to overlap with his neighbor and he can still reach the OF wall and sideline. And the typical 20-30 foot fluctuations in OF wall size among MLB parks very likely aren’t enough to make that happen.

Terminator X - March 25, 2009 reply

Ichiro has been +10.4 career in RF according to UZR, including a +7.6 mark in CF/RF combined last year.

Gutierrez has been +29.8 UZR over his career, including +21.7, and +35 over 150 games in RF. Assume he gets 15 runs worse switching to CF this year, he’s close to +20, and Ichiro is close to +10. If they completely change their historical defensive performances though, you may be right.

Interestingly, Ichiro was 5.4 (10.7/150 games) in CF last year compared to +2.2 and +3.3/150 in RF.

BrettJMiller - March 25, 2009 reply

To the best of my knowledge

there is no evidence that this is actually true.

Jeff Sullivan - March 26, 2009 reply

Gutierrez has been playing next to Sizemore

Bearskin Rugburn - March 26, 2009 reply

I think fangraphs has made it too easy to look up hard defensive numbers.

Not that they are to blame, but for all your warnings about how approximate these figures are it is just too easy to look them up, quick-figure a three year average and quote is as a solid figure.

PMR has Gutierrez at about +13 and +26/150G as a right fielder in 07 and 08, respectively. That should give you a +5-15 CF if I’m not mistaken and I’ll take it any day though it’s not as tantalizing as cutting 20 runs off the projected RA column.

Bearskin Rugburn - March 26, 2009 reply

I went aggressive with Gutierrez because I didn't want to seem ultra aggressive with Chavez by calling him > +20

which, I dunno, he might just be. But yeah, 50 is the maximum upside. How about this: 40 runs, and the Oakland park effect, rather than 50 and Seattle.

Jeff Sullivan - March 26, 2009 reply

Was Andruw Jones really as good as his UZR numbers?

I took a look at his fangraphs stats, and they’re just mind-blowing. I can’t believe them. He averaged 23 UZR over 6 years, with a high of 30 UZR in one year. The only other centerfielders from 2002-2008 to even crack the 20s ONCE were Coco Crisp, Darin Erstad, and Corey Patterson. Is Andruw Jones just that out of this world, or are there explainations why the fielding stats are so skewed for him?

Decatur - March 26, 2009 reply

Is that necessarily true, though?

I’m asking because I don’t know, not to be snarky – but this statement

the high strikeout total will reduce the number of balls in play, and thus diminish the value of the defense.

doesn’t ring true to me – the defense still has the same value even if it’s not in use, does it not?

pdb - March 26, 2009 reply

Those are two different situations

In the latter situation, the pitching staff allows fewer balls in play, which reduces the impact of the defense. But in the former, you have no such condition. It’s just a ballpark with deep fences.

Jeff Sullivan - March 26, 2009 reply