Stick with Mikey at SS for 2009 and see what you’ve got after next year. Callaspo has played well enough to plug him in at 2B and the 9-hole.

We must land a FA shortstop like Rafael Furcal!!!

…are we going to wonder what suddenly went wrong with his defensive skills, or will we re-evaluate the defensive metrics?

I was looking at the GIF version of the plus minus leaders and trailers for the year that I found somewhere but now can’t relocate (and I can’t upload from my computer, in any case, I think that might be a violation of fair use)… All year we heard that Gordon was -20 in the field and all that… But the list of “trailers” I have stops at Cantu at -11 plays… It’s interesting, because while I had been assuming Gordon came out as a below-average (but closer to average than replacement level) 3B, if he’s -10 plays, that’s -8 runs, and I have him about that much above average offense + position… well, anyway

In other words, does anyone know where Dewan’s has Gordon for the whole of 2008? For that matter, can we get a list of the Royals, or at least he major players we care about?

2-for-4 with a double in his first puerto rico winter league game. then 0-for-1 with a walk before being taken out of the game.

if he’s injured……………………………well let’s just pray that’s not the case.

In this post, Sean “Chone the Rally Monkey of Anaheim” Smith talks about using his TotalZone metric to look at some minor league defensive from 2007 for some guys who were in the majors this year, including Aviles. Check out what he found:

The correlation between Major League 2008 and Minor League 2007 was .54, which is higher than I expected, and higher than I would have expected between two major league seasons when the sample of chances (153 average) is so small. That may be a fluke, maybe I pick 20 players who fit the same criteria next year and get .07 or even a negative number. [Dan] Fox did publish ratings for 2005 to 2007, so I could look at 3 years to see if the correlation holds up.

If it does, super cool, we can project fielding for minor league infielders as well as we can for major leaguers. Interestingly, the players had slightly better fielding ratings in the majors than they did in the minors – as a group they were +5 per 500 chances in the bigs and +2 in the minors.

So Aviles may actually have been decent defensively in the minors last year, from what we can tell (it would be cool if Dewan and mgl started getting data for at least the high minors). That he seems to have done better in the majors might (big “might” here) explain why the scouts panned his defense as terrible in the minors, then grudgingly admitted it was “average or above average” in the majors after the stats reports came out that showed him doing well (or it may just have been different scouts).

It’s just developmental at this stage, but it interesting, nonetheless.

At Baseball Musings today.

KC CFs as a team were above only the Cardinals (YES! In your face MORANS.)

Of the “qualified” CFs (min. 1000 balls in play, I think), DDJ sadly comes out last, at ~ -13 plays, or about minus 10-11 runs. Keep in mind that he didn’t play that much CF this year, relatively speaking, so the sample size is smaller than usual. Last year he was almost even at about -1 plays. Keep in mind, again, that various metrics say different things depending on their source data (BIS or STATS) and methodology. For example, while PMR had DDJ at -1 plays (actually .98, so pretty much even) 2007, in 2007 UZR had him tied with Coco Crisp at +13 runs, and UZR generally liked DDJ in previous years (don’t know about this year).

Still, it’s worth tracking. Defense is one of the earliest skills that declines, generally speaking, so it wouldn’t be surprising if DDJ was losing a step. Too bad there isn’t much data on Mitch, but the other internal options don’t look so great: Gathright is at about -5 plays, and of course, can’t hit.

LANGERHANS NOW

Time for bed. Well, it’s not surprise at this point — Gordon came in at minus 13 plays (about minus 10-11 runs), which is a bit worse than Dewan’s had him. Pinto makes a comment that Gordon doesn’t look like he’s long for the position (and PMR had hjm at minus 3 plays last year, although that’s still within the “average” range), but that seems like jumping to conclusions, given the sample size. Oh well, bad year in the field for Alex. He had a good one last year. Hopefully it was just a slump/combination of tough plays. It will be interesting to see what UZR comes up with.