Comments on: Position Adjustment Wrap Up http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/position-adjustment-wrap-up/ Daily baseball statistical analysis and commentary Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:26:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Sky http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/position-adjustment-wrap-up/#comment-57449 Sky Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:44:36 +0000 http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/?p=1902#comment-57449 Good stuff, Dave. I especially like the park factors analogy. Safeco tends to decrease scoring overall, although different players are affected differently. When trying to identify ability, you'd want to use L/R adjustments. But when identifying past value, you only care about the overall run production, because creating runs is all we care about. With position adjustments, people get hung up on who can actually move between positions at the rate the adjustments indicate. But that's not the important point. We only care about the difference in value of the positions. Good stuff, Dave.

I especially like the park factors analogy. Safeco tends to decrease scoring overall, although different players are affected differently. When trying to identify ability, you’d want to use L/R adjustments. But when identifying past value, you only care about the overall run production, because creating runs is all we care about.

With position adjustments, people get hung up on who can actually move between positions at the rate the adjustments indicate. But that’s not the important point. We only care about the difference in value of the positions.

]]> By: mymrbig http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/position-adjustment-wrap-up/#comment-57438 mymrbig Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:12:20 +0000 http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/?p=1902#comment-57438 This point may have been made in the past threads (who's comments I did not read since they were quite extensive), but I think this discussion has failed to even mention the most important factor in the infield/outfield discussion. Some guys are just never comfortable with having a groundball hit at them over 100 mph. Doesn't matter what kind of reactions or speed or first-step quickness or hands a guy has if he just never gets comfortable with grounders and bad hops (or throwing while moving in a direction away from your target, which infielders do much more than outfielders). The same can be said of reading the ball off the bat in the outfield and taking good routes. Some guys can do it and some guys can't. I think there are a lot of unquantifiable defensive skills and while I realize this series of articles have focussed on generalizations and the quantifiable, I think there should have been at least a tip-of-the-hat to some of the unquantifiable skills that exist. How else can you explain a guy like Matt Diaz? All negative scouting reports on his defense going through the minors, yet his career UZR/150 over 1768 innings is +8.1 runs. Either the numbers lie or, despite his lack of athletisism, he takes better routes and gets better jumps than people give him credit for. Same can be said for Luke Scott (+8.5 UZR/150 over 2352.2 innings). No idea why these guys are good defenders, but apparently they are. This point may have been made in the past threads (who’s comments I did not read since they were quite extensive), but I think this discussion has failed to even mention the most important factor in the infield/outfield discussion. Some guys are just never comfortable with having a groundball hit at them over 100 mph. Doesn’t matter what kind of reactions or speed or first-step quickness or hands a guy has if he just never gets comfortable with grounders and bad hops (or throwing while moving in a direction away from your target, which infielders do much more than outfielders).

The same can be said of reading the ball off the bat in the outfield and taking good routes. Some guys can do it and some guys can’t. I think there are a lot of unquantifiable defensive skills and while I realize this series of articles have focussed on generalizations and the quantifiable, I think there should have been at least a tip-of-the-hat to some of the unquantifiable skills that exist.

How else can you explain a guy like Matt Diaz? All negative scouting reports on his defense going through the minors, yet his career UZR/150 over 1768 innings is +8.1 runs. Either the numbers lie or, despite his lack of athletisism, he takes better routes and gets better jumps than people give him credit for. Same can be said for Luke Scott (+8.5 UZR/150 over 2352.2 innings). No idea why these guys are good defenders, but apparently they are.

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