Add new comment

OK...your best arguig point is the "saving hits saves chances to get a DIPS-event like a HR or a BB" bit. The first part is completely overruled by all modern linear weights analysis. It's true that pitchers only directly get 7 outs, but it's also true that the 20 outs fielders get tend to predominantly be extremely routine and the variation in K rate is about the same as the variation in hit rate.
But to your other point, let's say we go with your point. You can't get a HR without swinging, so we need to look at the number of additional at bats, not the number of additional plate appearances that could be gained by bad defense. Saving 350 plate appearances at a normal walk rate is about 35 walks saved...so mark that down as helping the pitchers to the tune of 12 runs. The typical HR/AB in the modern game is about 1:35, so you're talking about 9 home runs saved (we already lost 35 of our 350 PAs to the walks)...so mark down another 13 runs saved. The typical range of defensive runs allowed in a season is 300 or so. 25 runs shifted to the pitchers amounts to about 8% of the typical variation, so at the outside...in one of the most extreme defensive turnarounds in major league history...we might be talking about crediting the defense with 50% instead of 57 or 58%. BUT...that's the extreme team. The average team will have no such sliding value moving from pitching to fielding. Which means the average team defense still only accounts for 40% of the defensive game. Your point will only serve to increase the variability in the percentage fielders claim from the team defensive marginal runs...in other words...great fielding teams will be worth more and bad fielding teams will be worth less than they are under my current scheme...but the average team will be worth the same.
BTW, this is something that old-PCA doesn't account for, but that new-PCA will. Old PCA was a fine piece of accounting for what actually happened but made no attempt to correct it so that each defensive unit (P, C, IF, OF) was graded as though they were contributing to an average team defense around them. New PCA will. In other words...take the accomplishments of each unit and prorate them to the chances to produce that they would have gotten had they been in an average context.