JBJ: Elite Defender With Some Pop
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Like other in the thread, I continue to marvel
at Bradley’s fielding prowess. He seems to be one of the best center fielders I’ve ever seen.
Yet, I gather Toronto fans say the same thing about Pillar, TB about Keirmeier, Texas about DeShields, etc.
I wonder to what extent those of us, especially middle aged and older, are biased by the experience of having every Red Sox CF before him in our lifespans except Fred Lynn and Darren Lewis be so ordinary or worse. JBj is certainly fantastic, but when your reference point is Tony Armas or Darren Bragg, it’s no wonder he looks like one of the best in history.
at Bradley’s fielding prowess. He seems to be one of the best center fielders I’ve ever seen.
Yet, I gather Toronto fans say the same thing about Pillar, TB about Keirmeier, Texas about DeShields, etc.
I wonder to what extent those of us, especially middle aged and older, are biased by the experience of having every Red Sox CF before him in our lifespans except Fred Lynn and Darren Lewis be so ordinary or worse. JBj is certainly fantastic, but when your reference point is Tony Armas or Darren Bragg, it’s no wonder he looks like one of the best in history.
Crisp had that one great year in 2007, but outside of that he was pretty meh. Ellsbury had a few good years too, but was too inconsistent/injured.
I wonder if Statcast just measures distance from starting point and time to get there. That catch was incredible because of where it was hit and how he catches it while avoiding killing himself running into the wall. If the wall is 20 feet back it is still a great catch but not as impressive as the catch today.
This. One of the things I've come to appreciate about Jackie is his combination of fearlessness and tactical acumen in approaching plays like that. Perhaps even more than his fabulous reads or his great arm, it's his skill as a finisher that continues to wow me. A fair number of outfielders get within catching distance of that ball. A lot fewer catch it cleanly, and fewer still catch it cleanly without ending up on the DL.
I don’t know his defensive metrics, advanced or basics, but my memory says that my namesake was pretty good for a pretty long time.
Agreed. When Mookie started in the outfield, he had a few collisions with walls that made me really scared for him. Whenever Jackie hits a wall, he knows he's going to and has his body prepared so he can do it without hurting himself.
One thing I remember about Crisp is that his jumps were not very good, to the point that he sometimes even broke in the wrong direction entirely, but had the speed to make up the distance. Some of his best catches would have probably been routine for Jackie, who takes more direct routes than any OF I’ve seen.
This is probably correct about Crisp. But check this out, which Williams_482 posted in the JDM defense thread.
This jibes with what my eyes tell me, which is that his routes can look a little squirrelly at times, but he makes up for it with a combination of insanely quick/accurate reads and great finishes.This is probably correct about Crisp. But check this out, which Williams_482 posted in the JDM defense thread.
When there are runners on base who may tag up, JBJ runs an arcing route to get his feet and momentum set up properly for a strong throw toward the infield, on routine flyballs.
JBJ is Fred Lynn with a better arm and an innate ability not to kill himself running into walls.
The play today illustrated the latter.
The play today illustrated the latter.
One of the things that really distinguishes JBj is his arm. He gets outs with that howitzer and prevents extra bases with the beat rightfielders.
While Crisp and Ellsbury in their primes were great flychasers their arms were horrendous. Crisp played LF with Cleveland because his arm was so bad, and Ellsbury was only marginally better because he had a very quick release.
Looking at the video, JBJ was shaded to right. This increased his difficulty on a fly to deep left center dramatically. While it was a great play, I think a normally positioned center fielder would have had a much easier play. The 42% reflects that. Also, the average CF in the major leagues is really good. Even what we think of as butchers in center field have to be terrific to not get pulled off the position. I think the 42% also reflects that.
The metaphor that comes to mind is that 1% of the population can dunk a basketball. On the other hand, 99% of NBA players can dunk. That's why it is fun to watch.
Elite athletes playing center field is the same kind of thing for me.
I wonder if the percentages take handedness into account. To me that is part of it here. A lefty thrower can make that catch easier but a righty has to reach across his body. He is 5-6 farther from making that catch than if the ball had been to the right field gap.
Kiermeir makes those cross body catches to left too. If stat cast were saying that 80 feet to the glove side should be made sometimes by a cf I might buy it. But any system that puts that as a barely above average catch even without the proximity of the wall seems suspect.
Kiermeir makes those cross body catches to left too. If stat cast were saying that 80 feet to the glove side should be made sometimes by a cf I might buy it. But any system that puts that as a barely above average catch even without the proximity of the wall seems suspect.
That assumes, in a mathematical sense, a notion of "normally positioned" that would make the term meaningless for assessing an optimal fielding alignment. As such, if that's what happened, than the algorithm which generated the number is irrelevant for assessing either individual performance or team fielding.
I mean, that's quite possibly what happened. But if it is what happened, that underscores the deficiency of the metric.
I also doubt it reflects the tactical roll which reduced the likelihood of injury substantially.
As for "normally positioned", I realize there is no such thing... Particularly for this group of Red Sox. On the other hand, the % system result (42%!?) that seems so wacky in this instance might have been based off of a straight away center positioning, which would make their estimate much more realistic.
Part of what makes it such a great catch is how far he had to go from right center to make the catch in left center, in addition to the other variables as mentioned.
I wish we could all agree that the play is unquantifiable. Not that we shouldn't try, but how do you weigh the value of that particular out. If there had been two outs, and he didn't make the catch, how much more would it mean than if there had been no outs, which in fact was the case.
How different would Eovaldi's stat line look if that inning started with a double?
Edit: bad sentences, but leaving it. Hope you folks know what I'm getting at.
How different would Eovaldi's stat line look if that inning started with a double?
Edit: bad sentences, but leaving it. Hope you folks know what I'm getting at.
While he has made some great throws he also has made a number of throws that were off the bag or missed the cut-off. And he's not the only Sox outfielder who does that.
Interesting link rev.
I do believe that in our community, there's a segment that discounts things that ain't measured.
For instance; managers have very little to do with outcomes, and clutch does not exist. We deny some of what we see because there is no number attached, and the human element is ignored.
Players are people, just like us, only much better at baseball. Self doubt can afflict anyone and hinder abilities. Teams are a thing. Teammates that like each other are more likely to win, even if it only means that winning makes it easier to like each other. I dare say this team has a 2013 vibe, except they're better.
But you can't measure it, and the tree falls in the forest.
I do believe that in our community, there's a segment that discounts things that ain't measured.
For instance; managers have very little to do with outcomes, and clutch does not exist. We deny some of what we see because there is no number attached, and the human element is ignored.
Players are people, just like us, only much better at baseball. Self doubt can afflict anyone and hinder abilities. Teams are a thing. Teammates that like each other are more likely to win, even if it only means that winning makes it easier to like each other. I dare say this team has a 2013 vibe, except they're better.
But you can't measure it, and the tree falls in the forest.
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Samuelson, Paul*, "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure," The Review of Economics and Statistics (MIT Press), Vol. 36, No. 4. (Nov., 1954), pp. 387-389.
a.k.a The Father of Modern Economics
Translation: If we want to figure out how best to do (optimize) that which we want to achieve, people need to supply to economists the goals we are trying to achieve. Economic analysis cannot tell us what we should be trying to optimize in achievement.
Implications: If we only pursue that which we can measure, we risk discounting the value of that which we are not measuring, which is not scientific.
Caveat: Economic analysis can also point us to other elements of whatever we are studying that may bear further investigation to incorporate into our understanding.
Baseball: Consider, from the Speier piece from the other a couple weeks ago (which is awesome):
Now, taking the reporting as true, the conclusion the people in the story draw is not technically accurate.
JDM MAY have been positioned right in AZ. But that's not a good answer to what happened to JDM's UZR score--not for understanding what happened from the point of view of the statistics and how to evaluate them.
To speak accurately, JDM's UZR went up because he was positioned in ways that caused him to perform better according to UZR ('s measurement system).
Whether or not that means he was also "positioned right" is a different matter; that depends on how accurate UZR is a metric--we've seen plenty of metrics that we know do not effectively describe reality because they are flawed. The goal of a good metric is for the metric, in this case UZR, is to "perform" as a model as closely to reality as possible.
But this is something to be demonstrated, not assumed. JBJ appears to some of us a pretty good case study for probing and analyzing what is wrong with UZR et alia than vice versa.
tl;dr: No metric is going to be better than our knowledge of the game. Paul Samuelson says so and he won the Novel Prize in scienticianry.
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Thanks for the half-assed nonsensical summary. At least his arm can reach the cut-off man.
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I think you're mistaken about this. The whole point of the statcast percentages are that they are relative to the player's starting position, not the field.
So what they're saying is basically: on plays where a player had 4.8 seconds to travel 72 feet back and to their left (or whatever), X% end in outs. That analysis is really helpful, because unlike some of the other zone-based stats, it *doesn't* get screwed up by fielder positioning. But the trade off — if I understand this right — is that it might not know a ton about the locations of walls.
According to statcast, JBJ is in the bottom 25% of MLB CF in terms of sprint speed. I think that pretty much explains it.
This phenomenon is discussed in the Speier piece too, if anyone wants more explanation.
He is mistaken. Statcast takes into consideration where the fielder actually is not where “normal” CF would be.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.mlb.com/217802340-statcast-introduces-catch-probability-for-2017.amp.html
Statcast is based on video/radar measurements, so it would stand to reason that it is measuring player defense using simple physics; a player must achieve X velocity to catch a ball Y feet away approaching in Z seconds, etc. The % likelihoods are based on distributions of defensive success rates. That's always been my impression, at least. Perhaps someone can correct me.
Then I suggest you watch how many times throws by Red Sox outfielders are not on line.
Some comments about Statcast fielding ratings:
There is an article on-line from CBS Sports by R.J. Anderson, dated 06 June 2017 that says "Statcast has lived up to some of its promise, but also has some drawbacks."
Specifically, it referred to Statcast's problems in tracking the more than 10% of those batted balls with 'atypical trajectory'--August 2016; an unannounced league-wide velopcity bump--April 2017; a ballpark bias relating to exit velocity. And finally, there is basically one public source for Statcast data: Baseball Savant.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/how-statcast-has-changed-mlb-and-why-not-everybody-seems-all-that-happy-about-it/
There is also an article from MLB, Mike Petriello, 30 Mar 2018, on Catch Probabilities now accounts for plays near fence, which says:
"First, 'wall balls' are considered to be any ball that was projected to land within eight feet of the wall (outfield walls only, not side walls) and no more than eight feet high on the wall, so as to not penalize players in Boston staring at a double clanging off the Green Monster 25 feet off the ground.
Second, all wall balls are compared only to themselves, rather than to all plays. This has the side effect of removing these plays from the larger non-wall sample."
https://www.mlb.com/news/catch-probability-updated-to-account-for-walls/c-269814542
The result of considering wall balls separately can reduce Statcasts' Catch Probability by 40-50% and as I read the "First" paragraph, it would say that Benintendi's catch of a foul ball when he ended up leaving the field was just a good catch, not an outstanding one.
Under MLB's glossary for Statcast/Catch Probability, it says as of May 2017, Catch Probability began accounting for fielding direction with players going back on the ball receiving an adjustment according to the degree of difficulty. Going back is defined as 180° +/- 30° from home plate to his position. Is 180° considered more diffficult than 150°/210°? Is the fielder's handedness taken into consideration? What about non-symmetrical fields like Fenway? There are a lot of questions to ask and apparently just a few people who can answer them. If Statcast data were made publc like PITCHf/x, I'd put a lot more faith in its rating of fielders.
There is an article on-line from CBS Sports by R.J. Anderson, dated 06 June 2017 that says "Statcast has lived up to some of its promise, but also has some drawbacks."
Specifically, it referred to Statcast's problems in tracking the more than 10% of those batted balls with 'atypical trajectory'--August 2016; an unannounced league-wide velopcity bump--April 2017; a ballpark bias relating to exit velocity. And finally, there is basically one public source for Statcast data: Baseball Savant.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/how-statcast-has-changed-mlb-and-why-not-everybody-seems-all-that-happy-about-it/
There is also an article from MLB, Mike Petriello, 30 Mar 2018, on Catch Probabilities now accounts for plays near fence, which says:
"First, 'wall balls' are considered to be any ball that was projected to land within eight feet of the wall (outfield walls only, not side walls) and no more than eight feet high on the wall, so as to not penalize players in Boston staring at a double clanging off the Green Monster 25 feet off the ground.
Second, all wall balls are compared only to themselves, rather than to all plays. This has the side effect of removing these plays from the larger non-wall sample."
https://www.mlb.com/news/catch-probability-updated-to-account-for-walls/c-269814542
The result of considering wall balls separately can reduce Statcasts' Catch Probability by 40-50% and as I read the "First" paragraph, it would say that Benintendi's catch of a foul ball when he ended up leaving the field was just a good catch, not an outstanding one.
Under MLB's glossary for Statcast/Catch Probability, it says as of May 2017, Catch Probability began accounting for fielding direction with players going back on the ball receiving an adjustment according to the degree of difficulty. Going back is defined as 180° +/- 30° from home plate to his position. Is 180° considered more diffficult than 150°/210°? Is the fielder's handedness taken into consideration? What about non-symmetrical fields like Fenway? There are a lot of questions to ask and apparently just a few people who can answer them. If Statcast data were made publc like PITCHf/x, I'd put a lot more faith in its rating of fielders.
Did Speier mean to say that 42% seems too high, I doubt he believes that being that close to the wall makes it easier?
It is really interesting to try and quantify the defensive side of the game, but is the positioning of the cut-off man taken into account?
There have been quite a few different infield configurations this season and I wonder if not having a set, healthy group playing the infield makes a difference and plays a factor in trying to calculate this aspect of the game.
Do you really think the Sox are worse at this than anyone else? I certainly don't have any data but I don't see them as being any kind of outlier regarding throws from the outfield.
Is there anything that actually rates the throws? I'm just going by what I see in Red Sox games and I think a lot of their throws are off-line/miss the cut-off/made needlessly to the wrong base (i.e., lets a trailing runner advance when there is no chance to get the leading runner.
But that's close to saying, "I've seen the Red Sox lose a whole bunch of games this year." Losing sucks and missing the cutoff man sucks, but they aren't competing against a Tom Emanski tape. They're competing against other 2018 teams.
I wonder if that play was considered a "wall ball". Jackie caught it ~12 feet away from the wall. Did they project that it would have landed within 8 feet?
Yes, but you're assuming that it's reasonable to expect that to never happen, or to happen much less often than the Sox OFs do it. And that may not be reasonable. Making throws of that distance with the necessary accuracy is presumably quite a difficult thing, and even people who are really good at it don't do it every time. Whether the Sox OFs do it more often or less often than normal is a thing worth investigating, but just saying "a lot of their throws are off line" is kind of meaningless, because "a lot" only tells us something if it reflects a comparison to their peers. Otherwise, it's like saying "Chris Sale throws a lot of walks." (Which he does: a whole 33 of them so far this year!)
EDIT: Or, what joe dokes said more succinctly.