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Sunday, January 30, 2005

PROBABILISTIC RUNS?
David Pinto has published his defensive ratings of shortstops for 2004.

It occurred to me that it might be possible to convert these results into an estimate of how many runs against average each SS prevented.

To do this, I turned to Chris Dial's methodology, in which a run value is assigned to each out a defender makes. For instance, 98.7% of outs made by a SS prevent a single. A single is worth .47 runs. Each out is also just that: an out, which has a value of roughly .28 runs. So, 98.7% of the outs made by a SS prevent .75 runs. (The other 1.3% account for 1.06 runs each, because sometimes those screamers by the SS get through the gap and go to wall for extra bases.)

So, in looking at Pinto's methods, we can easily see how many outs each shortstop made against expected, which is different from average. What I did here was go through and convert those outs to runs. For all the SS's he lists, the mean Runs Against Expectation was -16.22 per 4000 balls in play (roughly the amount a full-time SS would see, maybe a bit lower). So we can compare each individual's outs per 4000 BIP against -16.22 to see how far above average they were in 2004.

For instance, David Eckstein had 3,562 balls in play against him. He made outs on 356 of these when about 400 would have been expected, based on the probabilities observed from 2002 through 2004. Using Dial's methodology, we find that he prevented 268.43 runs where 301.81 would have been expected; so he's -33.37 Runs Against Expected. We convert that to 4,000 BIP to get a number of -37.47. However, as the average SS was -16.22, that makes Eck -21.26 against average, which is pretty bad -- and quite honestly, that surprised me a great deal.

Anyway, here's the above method applied to everyone Pinto has listed for 2004:

Player          Runs Above Average per 4000 BIP

Pokey Reese 26.5559
Adam Everett 23.1330
Cristian Guzman 21.2978
Julio Lugo 18.4622
Rich Aurilia 17.2691
Bobby Crosby 15.7747
Jose C Lopez 14.2525
Jimmy Rollins 13.6555
Alex Gonzalez 13.4198
Neifi Perez 13.0626
Cesar Izturis 11.8924
Chris Woodward 11.1344
Carlos Guillen 10.8787
Chris Gomez 10.7692
Wilson Delgado 3.70296
Orlando Cabrera 3.11573
Khalil Greene 2.47566
Craig Counsell 1.89519
Jose Valentin 1.26903
Jack Wilson -1.09913
Ramon E Martinez -1.65256
Edgar Renteria -3.28747
Derek Jeter -4.39761
Jose Vizcaino -6.43863
Miguel Tejada -8.44408
Royce Clayton -8.98143
Michael Young -9.35026
Kazuo Matsui -9.70417
Deivi Cruz -11.4588
Omar Vizquel -12.7924
Alex Cintron -12.7784
Angel Berroa -14.8513
Alex S Gonzalez -15.6186
Barry Larkin -17.3740
Rafael Furcal -19.6530
David Eckstein -21.2571
Nomar Garciaparra -23.4721
Felipe Lopez -36.9916

Comments:
Awesome analysis.

That's really all I have to say, awesome.
 
Can you post the "raw" numbers for shortstops, as in what they actually did rather than per 4000 BIP?
 
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