Breaking a Wand

The firestorm over Rob Dibble's comments on Strasburg's injury scare has simply underlined for me the fact that I can no longer be a fan of the Nationals' franchise so long as they employ Mr Dibble. This isn't the first time my support for the Expos/Nationals has been strained by off-field events, but I don't need to tell Washington fans that it's quite an awkward time when the team you love changes cities.

Federal Baseball published part of a response by Mr Dibble to the alarm expressed by bloggers at his remarks. In it, Mr Dibble appears intelligent, articulate and well-informed. If only he could avoid 'simpleton speak' more frequently, I might have been able to take this latest example with more equanimity.

I've been having difficulty following baseball this season, one even more disrupted by work/personal life, than the last one. So perhaps I am overreacting on account of a more general ennui. Removing myself from the Nationals' blogosphere will not do it any damage at all. Regardless, if I write here about baseball, it won't be about the Nationals.

Nationals' Fielding Review #2

Being five hours ahead of North America is making it difficult for me to keep up with the games, although that's partly because I have to help with homework and read bedtime stories, as well as going up to the University of London during the day.

Anyway, here is some fielding data. I've replaced the in-season cumulative UZR with Chris Dial's Defensive Runs Saved. You can find an explanation of what he's up to here. UZR/150 is the current UZR extrapolated to 150 games. RZR is Revised Zone Rating, which is like a fielding average but counts balls hit into a zone, rather than those the fielder actually reached.

Player              DRS   Change  UZR/150  Change  RZR   Change   MLBaverage
Zimmerman (3B)       4    +2      24.7     +3.0   .755    +.008       .704
Desmond (SS)         3    -2      14.8     +0.2   .833    -.034       .811
Gonzalez (3b)        3    -1      44.0     -1.9   .882    +.007       .704
Maxwell (RF)         2     -      21.6     -6.1   .857    +.018       .885
Harris (RF)          0     -      13.3     -0.7   .852    +.044       .885
Kennedy (2b)         0     -     - 4.8    -12.2   .800    -.039       .819
Guzmán (SS)          1    +1       8.9     +1.8   .750    -.017       .811
Willingham (LF)     -2     -       5.8     +4.9   .880    +.021       .871
Guzmán (2B)          3    +3     - 2.6     +0.5   .839    +.022       .819
Dunn (1B)           -2    +1     - 2.7     +2.4   .776    -.006       .772
Bernadina (RF)       1    +1     -11.3     +3.0   .915    +.015       .885
Morgan (CF)          0    -1     -11.8     +0.3   .883    +.009       .916
minimum 73 innings

Harper commented after the last fielding review on how we need more like three years' data to get a sense of a player's talent as a fielder. This is true, but one of my old-fashioned sabermetric principles is that we should be more interested, as fans, in what happened rather than what we can expect to happen. Over three years, Dunn might turn out to be the worst first-baseman in the league. However, for the moment he's been doing better than I thought we had any right to expect. I'll keep singing praises for his effort and dedication so long as he keeps that up — and even if he starts having difficulties, because he's clearly trying his best. Jolly good show!

Nationals Fielding Review #1

Sorry about the hiatus. I have been working hard and crossing oceans, despite volcanic ash, and then adjusting to new time zones and new routines. Worse, this post is something of a holding action, as I'm off again on Sunday. Hopefully I'll be back on regular posting starting after 6 June.

In the mean time, I'll try to post one or two tidbits, starting with a review of the Nationals' fielding so far, using the same measures as last season — Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and Revised Zone Rating (RZR).

Zone Rating involves a person deciding whether a ball was in a notional fielding zone, then noting whether or not someone caught it. UZR converts this data and turns it into a +/- rating in relation to average, showing the number of rns. RZR converts this data into a percentage, while make an accounting distinction between Balls In Zone (which should be caught) and Balls Out of Zone (which are to be regarded as bonuses). There's been a bit of a stink about UZR recently, which included its creator, MGL, behaving most unconscionably towards a critic, Baseball Prospectus' Colin Wyers. I'd link to it but the crucial contributions have been edited out. However, the point is that UZR shouldn't be taken necessarily as the 'Gold Standard' in fielding metrics. For my part, I've always preferred humble RZR between the three, but Colin has had a go at that, too.

The table shows UZR, the anticipated UZR per 150 games, RZR and the NL average RZR for that player's position. I would have liked to have included Chris Dial's defensive runs calculation, but I haven't asked him to send me the data. Maybe next time. In the future, the Change column will show the change from last time.

Player              UZR   Change  UZR/150  Change  RZR   Change   MLBaverage
Zimmerman (3B)      4.1     -      21.7       -   .742     -       .698
Desmond (SS)        3.8     -      14.6       -   .867     -       .800
Gonzalez (3b)       2.7     -      45.9       -   .875     -       .815
Maxwell (RF)        1.4     -      27.7       -   .833     -       .898
Harris (RF)         1.1     -      14.0       -   .818     -       .898
Kennedy (2b)        1.1     -       7.4       -   .839     -       .803
Guzmán (SS)         0.5     -       7.1       -   .767     -       .800
Willingham (LF)     0.4     -       0.9       -   .859     -       .865
Guzmán (2B)        -0.8     -     - 3.1       -   .817     -       .803
Dunn (1B)          -1.4     -     - 5.1       -   .782     -       .782
Bernadina (RF)     -1.7     -     -14.3       -   .897     -       .898
Morgan (CF)        -4.3     -     -12.1       -   .874     -       .916
minimum 61 innings

The interesting thing, for me, is how well Dunn is doing at first base. I was quite the sceptic last season, but he's proved me wrong. Complimenti, Adam. He'd be my favourite National if it wasn't for a long-standing appreciation of mine for Pudge. The next interesting thing is Morgan's decline. What's going on? Third, is how the outfield generally is poor. All hail the infield though, as Guzmán has done just as well making the shift to second base as Dunn has to first.

End-of-Term Catch Up: Why I hate Brian O'Nora

Well, first there was this game, which the play-by-play doesn't note that Brian O'Nora blew the call on the Luis Rivas home run. It was a foul ball.

Then, just recently, he gave the Dodgers' the edge on calling strikes out of zone, as this wonderful graph from Brooks Baseball shows. (Click on it to make it bigger.)

Plus, he called Pudge out at home.

He hates the franchise, so I hate him.

End-of-term Catch Up: Teach Your Kids to Throw Left-Handed

The end of the academic term is M-U-R-D-E-R on the baseball commentary.

Measuring the Corps of Relievers, after 14 April 2010. (Yes, you remember - Philadelphia 14 — 7 Washington. And Bergmann got the Black Spot.)

Matt Capps      .352
Tyler Clippard  .188
Brian Bruney   -.056
Jesse English  -.074
Tyler Walker   -.123
Miguel Batista -.259
Jason Bergmann -.485
Sean Burnett   -.509

Those numbers are the cumulative amounts of win probability added or deducted during all the individual relievers' stints between Opening Day and 14 April. Really, Burnett, loser of half a game all by himself, was the man doing the least. (Plus he was more evenly bad, while Bergmann loaded all his bad into one outing.)

But Burnett's left-handed.

So boys and girls, remember — baseball is more forgiving of left-handed pitchers.

What a difference a year makes?

From 1-10 to 6-5. .500 baseball. Huzzah!

Not to rain on everyone's parade, but this year's start puts last year's in perspective:

          Runs Scored     Runs Allowed
2009         54              75
2010         53              66

The difference in runs allowed would actually only add up to about half a win.

QMAX is a system from the old Big Bad Baseball Annuals of adding some 'granularity' to the Quality Start, showing that some Quality Starts are better than others. 2009:
2010:

Click on the images to make them bigger. The blue area marks the 'Success Square' outings, where the combination of hits allowed and walks surrendered is good enough to mean you should win half the time. The red zone shows the 'Hit Hard' starts, games one is unlikely to win. There's not a whole lot of difference between this year and last: one fewer hit hard and an elite quality start, and that was Livo!'s of yesterday. That one also probably skewed our runs allowed statistic.

The 2009 edition of the Nationals underperformed badly. The 2010 one has overperformed slightly. You could put it down to Mr Rizzo's choice of 'winners' versus Bowden's 'lollygaggers'. You could put it down to a firmer hand on the tiller than last season, when Mr Acta seemed to be on borrowed time from the autumn, and MLB wouldn't let Mr Rizzo shed the 'interim' tag. You could put it down to luck. I know which one I think. How about you?

Dodgy Data?

Colin Wyers' has written an interesting article at BaseballProspectus.com about differences in baseball batted-ball data depending on who is assembling it. Since I never regarded batted-ball data as being anything better than an approximation of longitude while at sea without a chronometer, I'm not undergoing quite the crisis of faith that Wyers is. Nonetheless, it is worth bearing in mind when reading about sabermetrics based on batted-ball data.