Once again, Gutierrez has above-average speed as does ANY CF in the Major Leagues. Much more important than the marginal differences in speed are the fact that Gutierrez is EXTREMELY skilled in the field. This was covered extensively in the other thread, and you never counter-pointed the specific points (tracking the ball, jumps, routes, knowing where the ball falls so you can go full speed, etc.).
What seperates Ichiro from Joel Guzman? From OUR perspective there is no difference. BOTH would absoultely SCHOOL us in a pickup game. Guzman might even be MORE impressive than Ichiro in a pickup game considering his immense power. All these big leaguers are TREMENDOUSLY talented, but heck so are the AAers and AAAers.
'Physically' Guzman puts Ichiro to shame at the plate. Guzman has BETTER bat speed MUCH better power, and yet hes minor league fodder while Ichiro is one of the best players in the game. Why is that? Physically Bucky Jacobsen is probably STRONGER than Albert Pujols. Who is the better hitter?
If speed is all there is in the outfield and batspeed and power were all there is at the plate then baseball would be really easy to figure out. All these 5 toolers would be turning into immediate superstars at the big league level. Instead the top highschool picks in the draft routinely don't pan out.
Do you NEED speed in CF at the big league level? Yes, of course and Gut has that. The question is what makes you 'Great'?
One amigo has a quick snapshot below in which, at first glance, he doesn't see much correlation between track speed and the UZR table.
Which is fine as far as it goes. :- ) I'm sure you could ID the problems, as well as I could, with referring to that as a controlled study.
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=== Inkblot Tests ===
Not wishing to be snippy :- ) I would almost call this the defining test of whether we've let our slide rules blot out the sun on us. If you don't think that running fast is important in a baseball outfield, you have never worn cleats, end of story.
It's like saying it's not important to be tall in basketball. I have no doubt whatsoever that a math guy could design little mini-studies that demonstrate height does not correlate with scoring average in the NBA. And I have no doubt that such mini-studies would fail to perceive the many invisible ways that the game self-adjusts around the very thing that we're failing to measure.
Steve Nash is great. Dwight Howard might be better than Yao Ming. But get on the YMCA court one time, against a 6"5" brother who is LOOONNNNNGGGGG, and you will immediately understand why the entire game revolves around length.
I don't mean this arrogantly. I mean it literally. If my daughter, who doesn't play basketball, tells me she has a brilliant proof that height doesn't matter in basketball? I don't bother to debate her. I smile and say, that's nice, honey.
We sabermetricians are very smart 90% of the time and totally absurd about 10% of the time ;- ) and that 10% is why baseball scouts are slow to accept us.
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Catching balls in a baseball game starts and ends with footspeed. It is true that the entire pool of players is edited to include only fast players, and therefore things like jump and angles matter. But if you start thinking that footspeed doesn't matter even in CENTER field, you're too high up in the third deck. :- )
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=== Short-Term and Long-Term Defensive Metrics ===
Positioning?! That's important in any ONE year. But it self-corrects over time. It's why Raul Ibanez looked terrible last year, but looks fine this year. Saberdudes were sure that Raul himself was terrible. Raul tried to tell us that positioning played a big part.
Great outfield defenders -- those who change the game for different teams, in different parks, for different managers -- are those who combine unusual speed with great technique.
Positioning -- and context -- camoflages inherent ability, only in the short term. Right now I think Gutierrez' context is camoflaging the fact that he's inherently a "65" defender as opposed to an "80" defender.
I could be wrong: we will know in 5 years.
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=== Math Club Dept. ===
That speed is the most important factor in OF play -- that is a given for anybody who's ever played. If you want one purely math-club way to perceive that fact, just do this:
(1) Take all of the best all-time CF'ers.
(2) Do not use your own personal defensive metric, and do not use one that was invented last year.
(3) Use large, simple, inescapable metrics, like who won 12 gold gloves, who did Earl Weaver say was great, who had CAREER range factors that drop your jaw.
(4) ID this pool of awesome CF defenders.
(5) Notice that their great defense is reflected in their baseball speed scores. (We don't say the correlation is 1.0. We say it is REFLECTED.)
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Just as an example, the following defenders were all conceded by EVERYbody to be great defenders:
Willie Mays
Mickey Mantle when he had good knees
Andruw Jones
Cesar Cedeno
Garry Maddox
Paul Blair
Cesar Geronimo
Devon White
Kenny Lofton
Mike Cameron* (maybe)
Ichiro (as right fielder)
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Though Dale Murphy won multiple Gold Gloves, you will find scouts arguing about how good his glove was. I am talking about CF's about whom NO scout every denied his greatness. Those are listed above. This list includes outfielders UNIVERSALLY acclaimed as game-changing defenders.
These outfielders were great not for one year, but great for ten years. You will NOT find "no correlation" between their baseball speed scores and their dominating OF gloves.
Every single one of the above players could steal bases, and plenty of them. As a group, their triples are higher, their GIDP's lower, their SB%'s higher, and their R/OBP higher than the general population of center fielders.
Show me an outfielder who was historically great, and I will show you an unusually fast man.*
*You might be able to quibble, such as with Roberto Clemente compared to other RF's, but if you are open to argument, the above list should alert you to the principle here.
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=== Either Way, I'm OK Dept. ===
Franklin Gutierrez is unquestionably a plus center fielder. If everybody in the world except me wants to consider him a glove-of-the-decade, hey, be my guest. :- )
Everybody in Seattle thinks Gutierrez is an "80" defender. I think he's a "65" defender. We'll know, later on, who was right. Maybe it's you.
I've got nothing against Mike Cameron II, even RH in Safeco, if that's what Goot is going to be. Just don't ask me if I think he deserves MVP votes, 'cause I wouldn't have given them to Cammy, either.
But both are players that you can win a pennant with.
Cheers,
Dr D
Comments
From the Seattle Times:
"He's so smooth," Batista said of Gutierrez. "You see him chasing those balls and you never think he's going that far, but he is. We in the bullpen see how shallow he plays and how he still has time to run back and jump over the wall and have a chance to bring the ball back in.
"A guy like [bullpen coach] John Wetteland, who's been around so long, he'll look at him make plays and he'll just turn around to us and say, 'Man, that boy is good.' "
I'll go with this pitchers on this one. Batista refers to him as a combination of Vernon Wells and Devon White and I think that's about right. I'll take that in CF for the next four years or so.
I think for you its all about raw speed or power lol. And these are shortcomings in your way of thinking...
As we have discussed about aging Jr. you always bring up the power or bat speeed. You just neglect other important things like sweetspot of the bat.
Here you bring the speed in OF defense.
Yes its nice to have speed.
But there are far more important things for defense in outfield.
And you even don't need a envelope to calculate it...
Here some very raw data:
Top speed runners in MLB are 6.1 sec for 60m.
A not so speedy MLB runner would be about 3m or 10 feet behind, he will make 60m in 6.4sec.
So lets assume about 3 feet per 0.1sec when OF is at top speed.
Now how is the reaction time of a OF who can judge well like Ichito or Guts.
At contact to bat (time=0.0sec) he will see the swing and the ball rise.
At time=0.2 he will here the sound of the bat. (with sound and the ball rising he estimate where it lands.) maybe 0.2 reaction time and he will have the first step at 0.4sec.
Thtats how Ichiro or Guts react.
Ibanez had good feel where the ball lands but his reaction time was a bit slower. may be 0.3sec or 0.4sec.
So his first step to the right direction was 0.5 or 0.6sec.
How was the NYY OF?
He react after 0.5sec but to the wrong direction.
To go to the right direction he need extra 0.5sec.
So 1sec reaction time to right direction.
On the other hand the liner or fliner land in OF after 3 to 4 sec.
So the reaction time and getting the best route is far more important than speed.
Its just envelope calculation but hope everybody understands.
That's the real point of all this.
How MANY factors are there into being a superstar CF - and how large each factor is relative to the rest. Do I deny raw speed is a factor? No. It is certainly *A* factor. The question is, among the dozen different factors that go into making a hall of fame defender, what chunk of the pie does it get?
Speed, Jump, Route, Effort, Smarts, hands, eyesight, leaping ability, extension, health, general athleticism, arm ... (that's all I could come up with in 60 seconds).
If we arbitrarily put a 8.25 value on each trait, and rank each on a scale of 1 to 10, then the difference between a speed 8 and a speed 10 CF is what a two percent difference in results? Heck, I didn't even list positioning, (unless that's included in smarts), or concentration. That's the problem. We do NOT know what all the factors are - much less how much weight each one carries.
I know the NFL puts a premium on speed for WRs. But, I've watched enough football to know that many clubs, (perhaps the bulk of the NFL) severely UNDERRATES *hands*. Just like patience, they pretend that they can teach "hands" to a guy who is fast. Yet, every other year it seems some speed-burner comes in who can't catch a bus. It is only AFTER you have remarkable hands that remarkable speed becomes really important. That slow white guy Steve Largeant was best of all time for awhile. But "hands" is really hard to measure. Speed is really easy to measure.
But, my biggest problem with speed assessment is that triples are a part of the equation. This is just six ways of dumb, because the PRIMARY aspect of triples isn't speed - it's being left-handed. In 2008, the AL, despite lefty hitters getting 9,000 fewer ABs, lefties hit 62 MORE triples. Is the triple value in the speed score adjusted by how many hits to RF were hit? No. Which is why it is utterly and completely useless, (actually worse than useless - it is inherently disruptive to accurate measurement).
And, of course, stealing bases isn't solely about speed. It's about reading pitchers. Barry Bonds, on horrid knees, long after his speed was gone, was still able to steal 7 bases a season without ever getting caught. I wonder what Barry's speed score at age 39 was - when he had 3 triples and 6-SBs, (only caught once). Well, the right-handed Guttierez only gets 2 triples a season, and only stole 9 times with 3 caught. I guess that means Gut is slower than Bonds at 39. (Okay, I'm over-the-top with the sarcasm today). But, AT BEST, speed scores are "suggestive". They aren't even remotely close to definitive. So, I by and large ignore them.
I see what Doc is saying that Gutz isn't particularly fast, but something about him was sticking out in my mind. I think it's what Batista is talking about. It's not unusual to see a guy with good speed who loses a tick because he's trying to get a look at the ball while running and it ties him up a bit. Guti not only runs to a spot, he also runs full speed while tracking the ball extremely well.
There's no doubt Guti is one of the smoothest outfielders I've ever seen...granted I've only been watching baseball since 1992. :) But I think there's more to Guti than instincts and smooth motion. He's very consistent in his approach to the ball...there is no wasted motion at all...every little thing he does well maximizes what speed he has...his glove hand is always on the correct side of his body to catch the tough gappers, his pre-play positioning seems to bias correctly more often than not, his reactions are lightning quick, and although his top speed is not overly amazing, I think Gutierrez accelerates to top speed faster than normal.
Doc, you can't use peoples subjective opinions to prove that speed is the most important trait because it's quite possible that people are biased in favor of speed! You need to use something objective, and UZR is the best we have right now. It doesn't care how a player makes an out or how good he looks doing it, only whether he got to the ball or not so there shouldn't be any bias toward a particular style of player. However, you can't just glance at three months worth of data and come to any kind of conclusion like Matt has done. You need to use multiple years and a more rigorous mathematical process. MGL has in fact already done that and found speed to be very important, although I can't remember to what degree. I suggest you both look at his research before making a determination one way or another.
As an aside, I have to point out how bizarre it is that Dr. D is using the consensus view of fielders to prove that... the consensus view of Gutierrez is wrong. If you think that EVERYBODY thought Andruw Jones was a great fielder and this is proof that experenced baseball men have an insight into how the game is played that needs to be respected, how is that a counter to what EVERYBODY (in and out of baseball) thinks about Franklin? You're arguing against the world while claiming the world is on your side. If Gutierrez wins a Gold Glove, does that prove that he is a top fielder or is it just another sign that everyone else is overrating him?
If I wanted a rigorous tool, I'd have broken out the PCA all-time leaderboard in defensive excellence. And I wasn't drawing any immediate conclusions from my quick glance either as both you and Doc have implied. I was throwing a piece of data out there to give Doc something else to think about.
++ Doc, you can't use peoples subjective opinions to prove that speed is the most important trait because it's quite possible that people are biased in favor of speed! ++
In the abstract, that statement is logical.
In practical terms, if you think Earl Weaver's and Walter Alston's opinions are USELESS, you've abstracted the game too much IMHO.
This is one of the key reasons that Bill James retained his sound judgment where other sabermetricians often got silly (such as with PAP) -- James retained a certain respect for what the grandmasters of the game thought. (Not that you don't.)
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And it's not like Cesar Geronimo, Willie Mays and Devon White don't see their fielding excellence reflected in statistics.
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I understand 101% your theoretical objection to using subjective measures on defense, but don't share your concerns in this particular case.
... if you're going to appoint yourself the professor grading the posts at Mariner Central and SSI, Dr. Naka.
Frankly, your self-superiority is beginning to wear thin.
++ I think for you its all about raw speed or power lol. And these are shortcomings in your way of thinking... ++
And yet the very post to which you reply, addresses positioning, jump and angles. Further, I have discussed these factors in significant detail over the last week or two.
No it ISN'T about raw speed or power for me. If it is about anything, it is about talent and leverage. Ichiro's hitting technique has nothing to do with raw power, and I've written 10,000's of words on the golf/baseball leverage principles he uses.
In pitching, there's nobody in the Mariners' blog-o-sphere who spends as much time on aiki CG and centrifugality. David Aardsma is raw power without leverage, and I crusade against him.
If you insist on assuming the role of evaluator for everyone else, including the blog authors, please at least read the students' papers first. Arrogance and ignorance are an unfortunate combination.
++ Its just envelope calculation but hope everybody understands. ++
We'll try, Dr. Naka. As you know, not many of us speaking with you have the brainpower necessary to understand 6th-grade algebra.
May I ask a question? What is the highest level at which you competed in organized baseball?
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I share your cultural bias toward intelligence and precise technique. Does anybody write about Ichiro- and Lincecum-type leverage than I do?
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But on your part, you seem oddly naive about the reverse: you seem oblivious to the fact that if your competitor is bigger and stronger than you, then (other things being equal) he has a big advantage in a sporting event.
That's why I wonder. Is it possible that you were never an athlete, and this is the source of your naivete about the value of physical power and speed in a sports event?
++ Once again, Gutierrez has above-average speed as does ANY CF in the Major Leagues. Much more important than the marginal differences in speed are the fact that Gutierrez is EXTREMELY skilled in the field. This was covered extensively in the other thread, and you never counter-pointed the specific points (tracking the ball, jumps, routes, knowing where the ball falls so you can go full speed, etc.).++
For example, on the contention that Gutierrez gets a great jump, my 'counter' was:
(1) Every ML center fielder gets an outstanding jump on the ball.
(2) In a 100-meter race, the difference in 'jump' is a matter of inches.
(3) Most fans can't discern a good jump and a bad one, anyway. Who, for example, gets a weaker jump in the AL? I'll wager that few of us could answer that.
When somebody claims a "great jump" for Gutierrez, ask them who they think gets a poorer jump. Even the TV guys. You think they could tell you? Then what is their basis for claiming this "great jump"?
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IMHO it is the differences in *jump and angle* that are extremely subtle when you compare Hunter, Granderson, Upton, Gutierrez, Hamilton, etc. It is the difference in *footspeed* that is NOT subtle. It would show up as 3-5 feet in a 30-yard dash. That 3+ foot advantage is reflected in their ability to steal a base successfully.
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I've covered all of these points in detail, but I'm body-surfing a Tsunami of love towards Gutierrez. :- )
I'm glad that M's fans have a fave player. That's cool. I'm not going to spend the rest of the summer telling people not to be excited about their boy. ;- )
Cheers,
Jeff
The players on the field rave.
Gutierrez *is* pretty to watch out there, and he is very good. We've said that many times.
The claim is that he's great. I think that's a Safeco illusion, and that the ballplayers are also subject to the optical illusion.
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Once again: Gutierrez will give you highlights out there in CF. So will a lot of guys.
is a point I agree 100% with.
Gutierrez remains in stride when adjusting to the ball. Not everybody does that. It's one reason that his mediocre footspeed functions as above-average footspeed.
Color me confused, because you're not typically confrontational with other posters like that. I don't think Dr. Naka intended to be "self-superior" with that post...I didn't get anything like that kind of tone from him.
On the subject of your comments on outfield defense, although you have attempted to address things like reaction time and route running as components to outfield defense, I don't think you've done our points justice on that front. You said, with brutal confidence, that all major league center fielders get good jumps on the ball...that if you watch them all play, you won't find them getting bad breaks on fly balls very often. We countered with many examples of players we've seen getting bad jumps and taking bad routes and it very visibly costing their teams runs. Lastings Milledge, Melky Cabrera, Johnny Damon, Gabe Kapler, etc.
No one here is arguing that speed is unimportant...I'm quite certain it is...if you look at the top 25 defensive center fielders of all time, they were, almost entirely, track stars. Almost, but not quite all of them. By PCA, the greatest center fielders of all time:
Tris Speaker (well above average speed)
Max Carey (blazing speed)
Richie Ashburn (above average speed)
Andruw Jones (not all that fast)
Curt Flood (not all that fast, career SB% of 54%)
Willie Mays (blazingly fast early on, average speed second half of career)
Paul Blair (above average speed)
Tommy Leach (above average speed)
Willie Davis (blazing speed)
Brett Butler (above average speed, not good on the bases)
Lloyd Waner (above average, but unspectacular speed)
Dom DiMaggio (average speed for a CF)
Devon White (well above average speed)
Sam West (well above average speed)
Jim Piersall (average speed)
Vada Pinson (well above average speed)
Ty Cobb (blazing speed)
Chet Lemon (slugger...not very fast at all by CF standards)
Cy Seymour (Very fast)
Curt Welch (blazingly fast)
Marquis Grissom (blazingly fast)
Lance Johnson (blazingly fast)
Joe DiMaggio (above average speed)
Steve Brodie (above average speed)
Roy Thomas (above average speed)
Obviously, most of the guys on the list are very fast. However, the presence of a handful of the slugger-types and the not-all-that-skilled-baserunner types proves to me that it's at least possible to be a great defensive center fielder without being a track star.
If it's been done before...it can be done again...and my eyes tell me that Gutierrez is doing it. It may well be that slower center fielders age more rapidly on defense than track stars (IOW, how long Guti can be a great fielder may be less than we imagine...as soon as he loses a step, the edge he gets doing everything else right may vanish), but this battle you're waging with the rest of the baseball world on Gutierrez' defensive capabilities in 2009 strikes me as illogical if for no other reason than the studies I've done on the vast historical landscape of the game. I can find five or six great defensive CFers in my top 25 who were not particularly fast...that means speed is very important but not the be-all-end-all...not the ONLY route to defensive greatness.
I am also disappointed in your taking the "have you ever played competitive ball" cheap-out route. I don't think you need to have played center field to understand how center field is played, and you're not normally the type to be dismissive in debate like that.
How fantabulously great did you amigos think Mike Cameron was, when he played here?
The young Cameron was jumps, angles, smoothness -- PLUS exceptional speed. If Gutierrez is great, what was Cameron, alien-class or where did you put him, exactly?
me running out of patience with a rather long series of MC/SSI supercilious posts from one guy who comments on my material a lot more energetically than he reads it.
You're right about one thing: I'm not typically confrontational. ;- ) Being slow to anger is not the same thing as being incapable of it.
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I do agree that it's possible to be a great CF without having great speed. For example, if a player had Joe DiMaggio-class reactions to the ball -- a knack for reading the batted trajectory from the very pitch itself -- then he might form an exception. I don't think Joe D himself had *blazing* speed.
I'm not ruling out the POSSIBILITY that Gutierrez is a super-dee-dooper great fielder. It's just that I'm skeptical.
I know for a fact that Gutierrez is not fast, and I know almost for a fact that Safeco makes CF's look good *as Cameron said that it does,* and those things make me suspect that Gutierrez is a bit of an illusion.
But it is VERY possible that I've got some kind of weird blind spot, which is serving as a constant source of amusement for you guys. :- )
The folks posting to this blog aren't your average baseball fans...I don't mean to sound elitist, but we watch the game with a much more critical eye than even the announcers. We watch more games than just Mariner games. We study EVERYTHING.
And I've given you a list of at least 5 different center fielders who I think get bad jumps on the ball and it costs them a dozen or more big-impact plays a year (Melky Cabrera, Lastings Milledge, Gabe Kapler, Jeremy Reed - and I commented on him last year when the Mariners' announcers were all lovey-dovey about his defense, and Vernon Wells...TERRIBLE jumps all). So no, it's not true that we can't find you guys who get worse jumps...and I find it rather telling that every last blinkin' one of the guys on my list also rates very poorly by the defensive metrics.
I also don't think you're right about the difference in jump being inches...I think it's more like several feet at a minimum, and for guys who don't read the ball well and take first moves in the wrong direction frequently, it's going to be much worse.
As for Cameron...during his peak, which did occur as a Mariner, he was not quite as good defensively as Gutierrez...he was faster than Gutz, but did not accelerate as quickly and smoothly and was not quite as good at route-running and glove-hand positioning as Gutierrez. The two are comparble but I'll take Gutierrez over Cameron.
+++ I am also disappointed in your taking the "have you ever played competitive ball" cheap-out route. I don't think you need to have played center field to understand how center field is played, and you're not normally the type to be dismissive in debate like that. ++
There comes a time when it is good for a sabermetrician to acknowledge that his lack of on-field experience can leave him with blind spots.
First thing when James was made VP of the Sox, a 'net rat asked him what he was going to do about Nomar's declining K/BB rate and James said acidly, "I'm not going to Boston to tell Nomar Garciaparra how to hit."
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I am not trying to be contemptuous of non-athletes (though Dr. Naka himself seems to be combining ignorance with arrogance). But there are certain things that on-field play make perfectly obvious, and then we're wasting our time arguing about them.
This is one of those times. When guys who haven't played, start wondering whether it's important to be fast to be an outfielder, we're having kind of a silly discussion. It's like asking whether it *really truly* matters to be tall in basketball. Let's talk about something interesting, shall we? :- )
[TIC] Some math guy somewhere, I'm quite sure, came up with a mini-study proving that there is no correlation with pitch velocity and FIP ;- ) and said, "Hey! I just discovered it doesn't matter how hard you throw in baseball!" The guys in cleats look around at each other quizzically and go, "Huh?"
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I don't mean it pejoratively. I mean it literally. We shouldn't be arguing about whether speed is very important in outfield defense (and most of us aren't).
It's *possible* that Gutierrez is great.
His very mediocre footspeed has me *skeptical* that he's great in CF. We are talking about a guy who gets thrown out by three steps on a grounder deep in the SS hole.
But I won't be shocked at all if I turn out to be wrong, and Gutierrez is one of those rare birds who is so massively gifted in all other technical areas that his lack of footspeed is irrelevant.
And I generally agree with you that being fast is very important to being a good outfielder. I think speed is factor #1 to look at. I don't think, however, that a lack of blazing speed dooms a player and prevents them from being great if they do every single other thing you can possibly do extremely well, which GUtierrez appears to do.
My lack of playing time in the game at a competitive level means I'm not qualified to fix Yuniesky Betancourt's batting or tell Felix Hernandez how to throw...but I do believe I am still qualified to carefully analyze and learn something about the relative importance of the various skills a player may bring to the table to be good at his job. I'm sure I have much to learn from people who have played the game...absolutely sure of it...but I still bristle at people saying "have you ever played baseball competitively?" as an out in a debate, whether they intend it that way or not, because it feels like a dismissal of the potential value of conversing with me.
Be that as it may, I think we have all said what we can say on the subject of Gutierrez' defense. No one is going to convince anyone else at this point.
I'm not saying that the opinions of baseball insiders shouldn't be respected. I am merely stating the obvious, that everyone has biases and in this case the issue we are talking about is very likely to be a strong bias. How you take that to mean that I think the opinion of someone like Earl Weaver is useless is beyond me.
On the other hand, how does an objective stat like UZR have any bias towards a particular style of player? If there isn't one, then my point stands.
And again, I have to point out that you are trying to have it both ways. You are taking a contrarian position on Gutierrez yet using the consensus view on other ball players to argue your point. So if Gut wins a Gold Glove, an award voted on by the managers, does that break your case or not?
So must have missed that one. Thanks for the correction.
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If a jump can be 'several feet at minimum,' and 'much worse' in some cases, why don't I ever see a 100-meters in which one guy is behind by 5 yards at the 10-yard mark? Or an NFL wide receiver who can run by a corner at will? Between pro athletes in any OTHER sport, the difference in 'explosiveness' is inches, not feet.
The track guys are selected for jump out of the blocks, but of course, so are ML center fielders.
Didn't mean to overstate your own resistance to subjective evaluations of great CF's (though that happened to be the main point of your post).
There *is* a bit of inconsistency on my part, in that I'm grabbing the best 10-or-so CF's from baseball opinion, but not buying 100% in to the ballplayers' admiration of Gutierrez. It's just that I think that the 10-years-period evaluation of Willie Mays is somewhat more sound than this summer's admiration of Gutierrez in a park that favors him.
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UZR is objective, but not completely reliable, as illustrated by its 'evaluation' of Raul Ibanez in 2009 vs in 2007-08. UZR had Raul as -10 to -20 runs a year here, and now it has him as costing the Phils absolutely no runs at all.
UZR frequently contradicts other objective metrics and frequently contradicts itself.
I hope I don't have to repeat that I think UZR is (one) valuable piece of information in any evaluation of a defender. ... I do suspect that UZR is going to look good for CF's in Safeco in general, however.
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I continue to be impressed by the fact that EVERYbody, other than me, thinks that Franklin Gutierrez is a tremendous defender. That's not something you want to take lightly. :- )
A track runner has only one thing to think about. Bang-go. A major league center fielder can't just go forward at the bang. He has to go in some direction based on where he thinks the ball will go. Which means that while a track runner has a start time of 0.1 or 0.15 seconds, a major league center fielder's start time varies as much as +/- half a second relative to the average...not all CFers are gifted enough to see the pitch, see the swing, and be off before the sound of the crack even reaches them. Gutierrez is in motion before the camera even switches. Cabrera is frequently stuck in his tracks even as the ball lifts over the infield.
And do you ever see a track star take off with the sound of the gun and misjudge the direction of the track, accidentally running backwards instead of forward with the other runners? How many seconds do you suppose he'd lose to the other track stars if he took two steps the wrong way before turning and following his competitors?
I don't know why you think I am (Dr. Naka himself seems to be combining ignorance with arrogance).
But what you feel about me has nothing to do with the debate. So I will leave it, It is not a important thing.
Where in your reply do you prove that raw speed is more important to get to tjhe ball than reaction time or route in outfield?
And I really think that there is lack in thinking in measurable units like seconds and feet or meter. No reply on that.
I played recreational baseball when young. Enough to know that reaction time or route is very important.
(There are many types of people. Some people get angry when other point out there weakness. I hope you are not that type.)
Track doesn't hold any insights into this matter. The track star knows exactly where he needs to go when the gun sounds but the baseball player has absolutely know idea where to go when the ball is first struck. The reactions we are talking about are not the burst-out-of-the-blocks kind, but rather deal with the issue of determing the velocity and trajectory of the batted ball. That part is very difficult and certainly varies widely between players.
One reason you have difficulty believing this is because you think that all major league centerfielders the best of the best defensively and are essentially the same in which case speed is going to be the overriding factor. This is not the case. Major leaguers, with the possible exception of catchers, are selected primarily for their offense, not their glove. I showed in another thread the speed scores for numerous full time CFs which demonstrated there is a huge variance among them in that regard. Some were in the 60 to 70 percentile range (or even lower); that is they were just a bit above average for a big leaguer. Now if speed is the most important skill for an outfielder and there is a giant gap between the fastest and slowest full time center fielders, then doesn't it follow that there are even larger variations in other important traits? Doesn't that mean that there are some regulars who get genuinely bad jumps and take poor routes? Look at arm strength. Throwing hard is definitely an asset for outfielders, but aren't there lots of them whole have noodle arms? You wouldn't argue that there is essentially no difference between Ichiro's arm and Randy Winn's, so why would you say that about a player's instincts?
In your original post, you came up with a list of top fielders based on peoples subjective evaluations of them. My response was not to diminish the value of subjective opinions or argue that objective analysis is more accurate than the subjective variety. My point was that if you are going to come up with a list of supposedly top fielders and from that list extrapolate what traits are key based on their similiarities, you have to use an objective means to create that list or else your list could be unfairly skewed towards a certain style of player. Since I can't think of how UZR would be biased toward any type of player, I don't see how you can object to using it to make your list.
Picked out the top 25 defensive center fielders of all time by PCA and looked at what that group had in common...and indeed it's clear that speed is common among most of those greats. That's not surprising. What's also clear, though, are that there are several guys on the list of all-time defensive greats at the position who were not all that skilled on the basepaths (had hidden speed) or who were not built for speed (slugger types like Andruw Jones).
My arguement was not one of precision but of bias. While I'm skeptical of any defensive metric in terms of determining someones value, for these purposes any decent one will work so long as it isn't skewed for or against a particular type of player. Yours fits the bill.
By the way, here is the study by MGL I was talking about.
That you speek with seconds.
Which means that while a track runner has a start time of 0.1 or 0.15 seconds, a major league center fielder's start time varies as much as +/- half a second relative to the average...not all CFers are gifted enough to see the pitch, see the swing, and be off before the sound of the crack even reaches them.
So true. And if the CF had a wrong first step it costs him another half or 1 sec.
And that when the ball reach ground in ca 3 to 4 sec.
All the players you listed may have been legitimately great fielders and all of them may have possessed elite speed. However, it's possible that there were other great fielders who got overlooked during thier time simply because they didn't have flashy top end speed. Using your methodology there is no way for us to know if that is the case or not.
I am a bit trepidatious to wade into the Dr v Dr heavy weight bout going on, since for the most part I have been an impartial observer, but with Matt lending his view of the conversation I feel like I should also give mine. I have to say that I completely agree with DrD in regards to Dr. Naka's tone. For the most part I try to read Dr. Naka's posts with as much grace as possible because I know there is a language barrier there and I have great respect for him because he has shown himself to be very smart and insightful. However I have noticed over the past couple weeks that Dr. Naka has been getting increasingly aggressive and very, for lack of a better term, snotty. It is starting to remind me of being a freshman in college again when the Proffs and the GA's felt they needed to "weed the herd" and so they talked down to and bullied all of the merely very smart people out of the room. And while I stuck it through it also made me want to NOT be that way once I was in a position to be a Lab instructor, etc. And in fact the 2 years that I was a lab instructor were the two years that saw the MOST physics students in the history of our school, and incidentally the highest grades too (and it was NOT because I was a soft grader ;) ). I have always believed that the best learning, debate, discourse, etc. is always done under only the upmost of respect and kindness for each other (golden rule and all that jazz). Anyways, to get back on point, one of the key essentials to good debate is thoughtfulness on each side. Meaning that as each side gives their view the other side politely and genuinely listens and contemplates what the other side is saying, not just to come up with refutations, but to make sure they are still on the right side. I think that both of the good doc's could stand to do this a little bit more (and not just with each other, but in general), but especially Dr. Naka lately. It seems like lately he has been making a point, someone will thoughtfully respond to the point and then he will make the same point, but only louder and with more condescension, and then when no one responds (because it is clear that Dr. Naka doesn’t really want to debate, he just wants people to agree with him) he declares himself the winner and everyone else cowardly for not responding.
Oh and BTW I DO agree with Dr. Naka’s position above, I am just not thrilled with the delivery.
Of course no one made me arbiter of goodwill or appropriate discourse, just thought I would throw my 2 cents out there FWIW (approximately nothing:) )
P.S. Doc, I have been having to us the nickname OOBF instead of the usual OBF because when I registered for this site I never got an email with my password, I don't know if I mispelled my email or what, but now it won't let me post under OBF, but I can not login as OBF either. Do you have an way to fix that? Thanks.
For a typical fly ball to the outfield, the average hang time is 4 seconds from contact. If we make contact t = 0 and start calculating the typical reaciton times, it's probably going to look like this for an MLB average CF:
t = 0, ball is struck
t = 0.1, CFer's mind processes that the ball has been struck and is in the air heading for the outfield
t = 0.5, CFer determines the likely general direction of the ball and begins to run, making adjustments to his path as he gather further information and zeroes in on a spot
t = 1.5, CFer has hit full stride and chosen a location to catch the ball
7 = 3.5, CFer makes last second adjustments to the landing spot, usually by looking over his shoulder and finding the ball again as it begins dropping
t = 4.0, CFer either catches or does not catch the ball.
For Gutierrez it's more like:
t = 0, ball is struck and Gutierrez is leaning in the direction he thinks it will go if it's struck
t = 0.1, he observes that the ball has indeed been struck and is in the air, he breaks into a run
t = 0.3, he's picked a spot to decisively run to and turns away from the ball to get there
t = 0.75, he's at top speed and looking only at the spot he wants to reach
t = 2.5, he nears his spot, only now is he checking to see how close he is, the ball is reaching apex and takes one look to make sure his instincts were right...if an adjustment needs to be made it's made here
t = 4.0, he makes the catch if it's humanly possible, his glove hand always on the correct side of the spot to make the catch less difficult, his eyes on the ball because he has time to look for it by the time he reaches his spot...most CFers are desperately trying to reach the right spot and only have a split second to look for the ball if that...mostly they're just reaching up with the glove and hoping the ball finds it...see Gutierrez uses his instincts to get to a point where the catch is easy...other outfielders use their instincts to make a very difficult catch (they have to kind of feel for the ball, which is why you see so many speedy CFers dropping line drives...do you have any idea how hard it is to just know where the ball is relative to your glove and get the glove up in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time?)
...but I do happen to think that an objective system like PCA, while certainly not perfect, is better suited for this kind of question than looking around at the opinions of fellow players from each era. ANd the reason I think this is that I've seen gold glove voting...it's screwed up...there are career achievement biases...players get a reputation based on a season or two of top performance and then they win gold gloves 7 or 8 years in a row sometimes when there's no rela truth behind it.
...and I think the players that stick out in Doc's mind as top historical center fielders prove my point. He's missing SO MANY great fielders...you don't get a real appreciation for the game's history unless you look at the WHOLE HISTORY and see all of the players...that's what the numbers do for us.
My tone is constantly misread aroud the Mariner blog-o-sphere...I can honestly say I *never* enter a debate hoping to embarrass the other side or expecting every single other person to agee with me or thinking myself above reproach. But because I tend to use strong wording more than I should, the entire blogosphere thinks I'm some kind of nut suffering from extreme hubris and delusions of grandeur. Dr. Naka has had a tendency not to listen too well to the other side in debate, but I don't think he intends ill will and I don't think this particular post of his that Dr. D was so angry about had extreme tone with it...I think that you folks are seeing tone because there was tone in previous posts at MC so you're more likely to find it from now on...I know because this has happened to me.
I agree with you. Dr. D is probably a little sensitive to Dr. Naka's tone because of the previous and recent exchanges at MC. And my post wasn't to call you out for supporting Dr. Naka, both views are very sensible and reasonable, I was just giving my honest opinion :) Yeah I generally take anything and everything said on the internets with about 4 or 5 metric tons of salt. Not being in the same room with someone, hearing their inflections, seeing their facial expressions, viewing their gestures tend to really bend the reality of discourse. I still very much enjoy surfing the web and even getting into a hot debate or two, but I definitely don't dwell too much on people’s tones either.
FWIW, I have always enjoyed talking/debating with you, Matt. I think mostly people just like to get your goat, because you can sometimes be easily provoked and can get a little emotional (as we all can). As a matter of fact over the years (amazing that I can say that about relationships with people I have never met and couldn't pick out of a lineup, isn;t the internet amazing) I think you have really improved in showing restraint and trying to be the bigger man, and relaxing and re explaining things without getting heated, so kudos on that.
...I get myself in trouble these days mostly debating with people who use as much rhetoric as I do...LOL The equally stubborn, bull-headed types tend to run into my never-back-down debating spirit...
Well that and people who are intentionally provoking me with nonsense they know I won't be able to back away from...LOL I always run afoul of internet trolls even when I know they're obviously trolling...I just can't stand for injustice or intolerance or illogic,
Exactly my point too. (What I wanted to say and post earlier.)
Its the liner or fliner with 3 or 4 sec hang time which challenge the OF and not the flyes with 5sec or more hang time.
It is not how fast you can run in 5 sec...
I really don't know why DrD cannot understand it.
BTW NHK has better camera angle than MLB TV.
At MLB TV pan the camera to hitted ball and than to OF. So in most times you cannot see the reaction.
At NHK camera shows sometimes batter, pitcher and CF in one frame so you can see the reaction time of the CF.
I was curious about how much the Ms park might be skewing defensive results - especially CF. Thanks to Fangraphs, it is possible to see the UZR/150 for a TEAM - (goes back to 2002). I'm going to list the league leading team in UZR/150 (for CF) - and then list Seattle's UZR/150 in CF also, (including the Ms rank).
2002 - Angels (16.9) -- Ms (7.0) 3rd
2003 - Angels (17.5) - Ms (12.1) 2nd
2004 - Rangers (14.9) - Ms (7.2) 5th
2005 - Royals (18.3) - Ms (1.7) 8th
2006 - Indians (12.6) - Ms (-2.2) 10th
2007 - BoSox (14.7) - Ms (5.8) 5th
2008 - Orioles (14.1) - Ms (2.9) 5th
2009 - Mariners (20.6) - Ms (20.6) 1st
Here's the thing. EVEN given a park edge for the Ms, the current UZR/150 number is better than any league leading UZR/150 number since 2002. Moreover, it is MASSIVELY superior to any number for any Mariner team during this period, (which includes a couple of Cameron seasons).
As an analyst, I understand that results and ability don't march 1 to 1 in all cases. But, the numbers being generated in 2009 support numerically the concept that F-Gut is producing better results than Erstad in his prime. But, equally important to understand is that (as they say with stock prices), past performance is no guarantee of future production. After a fantastic 2008 season, the Orioles CF numbers in 2009? (-13.8).
Give F-gut another season producing double-digit UZR numbers and THEN one can begin concluding that there is genuine (possibly long-term) value here. At the moment, however, the data pool is too small to be drawing long-term conclusions from. It is certainly nice to know that he is not "simply" doing well. The fact that the current metrics are placing him WELL ahead of the field certainly is suggestive that there is more than park effect going on here. After all, in 2006, the park was not enough to prevent a negative URZ/150 result.