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Goldy had good games last year. I’m not sure how/why yesterday’s game would be a reason to rethink anything. The issue isn’t whether he is capable of having a good game. The issue is what is his season likely to look like compared to last season. One game isn’t predictive.
jj said:
“Here’s the deal about all the ‘Walker can improve’ PR.”
I have been among those suggesting Walker can improve. I try to base my comments on facts, not PR. So here is some real data.
These numbers clearly indicate the 21-year-old, with only a year of OF experience at that point, DID IMPROVE three months in a row in the second half of 2023.
The source of this is a national writer for MLB.com, not a local type. The measure is OAA, outs above average.
Nice to see Arenado and J. Walker each trending back up on defense after some pretty rough stretches earlier in the summer pic.twitter.com/tY3g61o3r8
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) September 11, 2023
jj said:
The only reason Walker wasn’t the worst mlb outfielder for the 2023, is because Schwarber played LF. Schwarber plays 1B now, so I’ve read.
Again, it depends on the metric of choice. You didn’t share yours. Mine is the SABR Defensive Index, a mix of multiple measures that is used for 25% of the Gold Glove Award scoring. So it is credible.
In the 2023 SDI, Walker was the fourth worst OF in the NL after Schwarber, Jurickson Profar and Nick Castellanos, all three of whom are well into their 30s. This is a measure of the entire season. Walker didn’t have enough games played to register in the interim SDIs published during the season, so I cannot measure progress.
So, with the data available to me, I definitely agree that Walker needs to improve. He agrees, the Cardinals agree. And he seems to be on that path.
I don’t understand those who believe he should be moved because they either don’t think he can improve at all or cannot do it fast enough. What is behind these assertions?
I don’t profess to know his defensive ceiling or how fast he will get there. But I do know he won’t get better if he doesn’t play there. And the current roster has NO ONE who should be playing in RF instead.
Given all this, I don’t understand the reason for the grumbling and lack of patience.
Goldy had good games last year. I’m not sure how/why yesterday’s game would be a reason to rethink anything. The issue isn’t whether he is capable of having a good game. The issue is what is his season likely to look like compared to last season. One game isn’t predictive.
Yes I am well aware of that. It was just one game. My statement was just a reaction to the large amount of criticism he has received lately since we have several other hitters, including Arenado, who haven’t been much better if at all.
He collected 25 HR’s and 80 RBI’s and, in my view, is still the best hitter on this team. He’d have pushed close to 100 runs across HP last season if he’d have been used correctly in the 3 slot. It seemed like all 25 of his HR’s were of the solo variety. This season should see Goldschmidt, Arenado, Gorman and Contreras at 3-4-5-6.
Don’t know what the site focus has to do with a fact-based discussion of a player. If the data offered in response to your comments is off base, please correct it. If you see it differently, explain why.
These numbers clearly indicate the 21-year-old, with only a year of OF experience at that point, DID IMPROVE three months in a row in the second half of 2023.
Brian, in September of last year, less than a week after that was posted, Walker went on to have a game where he was credited with a two base error that scored two runs. He followed that up with a game where he committed another error, and another play where the ball bounced 10 feet in front of him and wound up 40 feet behind him. The batter wound up on third with a stand-up triple. Two games, two errors, five extra bases and at least three extra runs.
Do you want to know how to see OAA is flawed with the bias typical of baseball defensive stats?
If you look at the Shortstop position for 2023, Bobby Witt, Jr was credited with 14 OAA, making him the 4th best defensive shortstop by that metric. But when you sort by success rate, his 69% is tied for dead last with Enrique Hernandez, who had -13 OAA.
This is what happens when baseball people who don’t understand statistics create statistics. And this is what happens when people who don’t understand statistics regurgitate this nonsense.
Please refrain from using OAA as a valid stat and instead focus on success rates.
Totally agree about statistics when it comes to fielding. Nowadays anyway. In the olden days when a play was expected to be made if it touched the fielders mitt, it was a little better. Still had those plays where no mitt was laid upon it but should have been which weren’t labeled as errors but should have been. But then you start bringing subjectivity into it so I understood. That said subjectivity is now a part of it farc as if a ball is hit too hard or some other nonsense.
LACF, I respect your point of view. But Statcast OAA is featured on both Savant and Fangraphs. Some respected folks are using it. I am sure like any stats, there are supporters and detractors and situations where certain stats are more or less telling than others. It is a challenge to sort through and personally, I cannot defend one over another.
But as I did note, the SABR Defensive Index has been used for Gold Glove scoring for over a decade. So like it or not, it is very important. OAA is not one of the five SDI measures, however, but then neither is “success rate”.
Please direct me to where I can read more about why “success rate” is superior to OAA. Also – and this is the most important matter – what does “success rate” indicate about Walker?
Thanks.
SABR and OAA both rely on Statcast Data.
This is from the SABR website:
The SABR Defensive Index draws on and aggregates two types of existing defensive metrics: those derived from batted ball location-based data and those collected from play-by-play accounts, including data from MLBAM’s Statcast, Sports Info Solutions, and STATS Perform.
And this is the document I found by clicking through from Baseball Savant to MLB.com’s article introducing Statcast to the in-depth discussion of how they create probabilities:
The success rates are the probabilities before being adjusted to the official scorer’s inherent bias as we see with Bobby Witt, Jr.
Walker has a very strong arm. He just needs more work in picking up the ball and running better routes. He is very athletic and I think Willie McGee will eventually make a decent enough OF out of him. DH and 1B are occupied so it is either RF or ride the bench. Which makes more sense?
Here are the ingredients that go into the SDI sausage.
What fielding metrics make up the SDI?
The SDI is built from two types of defensive metrics — those that come from batted ball location-based data, and those which originate from the play-by-play records of games. We gave more weight (70%) to the batted ball location-based metrics, which evaluate the degree to which a fielder makes plays in specific zones on the diamond. The player’s performance is measured in comparison to his peers. The play-by-play based metrics (30% of the SDI) are important in that they approach defensive measurement from an alternative vantage point — a more generalized approach that estimates the number of batted balls hit into a fielder’s area.
Within the batted ball location-based category, we’ve included 3 measures — Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) from John Dewan’s company, Baseball Info Solutions; Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), authored by noted sabermetrician Mitchel Lichtman; and Runs Effectively Defended (RED) from Chris Dial. The play-by-play based metrics include two measures: Defensive Regression Analysis (DRA) from Michael Humphreys and Total Zone Rating (TZ).
The way I understand it with OAA the measure is actual success rate in relation to estimated success rate. Each play is given an estimated success rate measured by distance and time. There are categories of plays based on probability of making the play.
So the difference is how often a player turns a low probability play into an out. in the example given, Bobby Witt Jr turned plays with a 67% estimated success rate at a rate of 69%, which is a 2% success rate added. Hernandez turned plays with a 74% estimated success rate at a rate of 69%, which is a negative success rate added.
It all depends on the difficulty of the plays that were turned into outs. You can’t just look at success rate alone in a vacuum. If you look at the Statcast leaderboard, you can see that the players with the most OAA are the ones with the highest success rate added.
I have heard OAA critisized as relying on a factor which is not arrived at objectively, and so is a garbage in, garbage out stat. I don’t know one way or the other. There used to be cigar chompers to tell you if a guy has brick hands or two left feet.
Well I don’t know enough to get into the weeds on the mechanics of it all. That is for the people who know the stat better than I do.
I think it all boils down to how many runs you prevented making the most difficult plays to make based on how far you had to run to get to the ball and how much time it took you to do it and make the out.
I don’t know either Marilyn, and unless they change baseball to whoever gets the most OAA wins, I’m not going to lose sleep worrying about it.
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