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Huge snowball fight over the question of whether defense is 15% of a baseball game, or 20% of it ... Notice first of all that if it's 20%, then a player's offensive value is 2.5 times more important than his defensive value. That's before factoring in the questions of how much one defensive player varies from another, or how confident we are about our defensive measurements. If defense is 15% of the game, then a player's bat is 3.3 times more important than his glove. 2.5 or 3.3? Taro, Sandy, and Matt are willing to pig-pile Dr. D on this one... :- )
++ The basic fact is that back in 1920 pitchers fanned about 4 per game — 23 outs to the defense 4 to the pitcher. In the past decade, it’s just under 7-K per game for pitchers — 20 outs to the defense 7 to the pitcher. What is strange about the discussion of the relative importance of pitching versus hitting is that the discussion BEGINS with the contention that pitchers are 2/3 of the equation, (the initial Jamesian guesstimate). ++Again, James’ estimate was that defense was 25% of the game early in the 20th century — that defenders and pitchers shared approximately equal responsibility for run prevention. He believes that it has drifted towards 15-18% of the game now, because of the TTO situation, and because the difference between defenses gets smaller. …………………. To go with Matt’s estimate of the defense being 30% of the game, you’d have to say that in the top half of the inning, the defense was 60% of what was going on, and the pitcher 40%. ……………. In 1905, you’d rather have faced Walter Johnson and an average defense, than the league’s best defense and an average pitcher? Not me :- ) How come the 1925 pitchers show such persistence in their ERA’s? I don’t notice that the variance in pitcher ERA’s was so much difference back then. …………….. You guys really feel OK about facing Johann Santana as long as the defense behind him is weak? :- ) Do you get up on game day and check the DER’s, or check the starting pitchers? ................... Taro says,
Bill James is a legend, but where exactly did he pull this random 15% out from? Intuition is one thing, but you can’t assume something like that.Explained above. The upper bound is going to be 25% even if you believe that the defense matters every bit as much as the pitcher. But James used his Win Shares research, on which he worked hard for 4 years, to come up with the current balance that he sets between pitching and glovework. He freely concedes the estimate could be off. Taro:
Recent research seems to suggest more of a 50-30-20 split (20% being defense). Under that split, arond 30% or so of a position player’s value is in his defense. Its not as important as offense, buts its pretty important and needsto be a big part of the ? when acquiring a position player.If only 60% of the challenge when facing the Angels is Lackey and Escobar and Weaver and K-Rod, and 40% is the gloves they have out there, I'll be a monkey's uncle. Do any of you amigos really believe that? :- ) Here comes CC Sabathia tonight, but what really bothers me is that Franklin Gutierrez is in center.... I'm being tongue-in-cheek. If the math is strong on it, I'm open to the idea that defense could be 40% of the top half of the inning, even in a superhigh-TTO environment and even though both teams have very competent fielders everywhere. Sandy says:
World Series Participant DERs in recent years: (overall DER - not by league) 1st and 10th in DER 2nd and 6th in DER 3rd and 7th in DER 2nd and 4th in DERA cool stat. I'd like to see an overall correlation between DER and W%, and to see this correlation COMPARED to (say) staff K/BB ratio (or BPV). But it's a cool stat. ............. You guys think 20% of the game; I think 15% of the game. It's possible that you're right. But in neither case am I going to try to win a pennant with nine Paul Blairs. :- ) Cheers, Dr D
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