FanPost

Denard Span > Alex Gordon

Some random thoughts regarding our beloved Royals, as I sit here 34,000 feet above the Grand Canyon on my way to L.A. for work:

 

The Twins lovefest that was the Royals' radio broadcast made me absolutely nauseated today. I'm sure many of you heard it and it's probably been discussed on the game thread, but Bob and Frank were going on and on and on about the Twins' "system" and how wonderful it is. The problem with that is, several of the players aren't from the Twins' system. (Delmon Young, Carlos Gomez, Adam Everett, and that's just the hitters; let's see, fat ass Dennys Reyes didn't come up in the Twins organization, did he? Oh, that's right; he spent a couple of years with one of the worst teams in the major leagues-the Royals!) Is it possible that the Twins are good because they do a good job of identifying talent in ways that other teams don't?

 

As far as this magical "fundamental" approach that they have, what happened to it this weekend? Not only do they make numerous defensive miscues in today's game, but they left the bases loaded several times this weekend, got one runner picked off, and another thrown out at home on a busted contact play. I mean, if you play the game "the right way", you are always going to find a way to get runners in scoring position home, right? Gil Meche doesn't play the game as "right" as the Twins, so therefore they should repeatedly mash line drives over and over until they tire of it, right?

 

I've heard a time or two that pitchers need to throw strikes. It appears from listening to Bob, Frank, and Denny that Scott Baker knows this, too - but Gil Meche doesn't. I wish I'd have known this earlier, I would have continued my pitching career. You mean to tell me, if I throw this pitch over the plate, I'm a good pitcher?

 

A brief show of hands - who thinks that Denard Span is 40% (36.63% better, just to be statistically accurate) better as a hitter than Alex Gordon? I do, because OPS+ says so. I was at the game Friday night, and every time a Twins batter came up, I looked at the scoreboard, see the batters' OPS, and think to myself, "Man, that guy's got a better OPS than Alex Gordon. How is that? The guy's got 2 home runs and his OPS is better than Alex Gordon's." This phenomenon repeated itself several times throughout the night, or at least until my boys started acting like jackasses and I had to take them home.

 

So, I went to baseball reference and looked it up. Sure enough, our hero has an OPS+ of 101, while Denard Span's is 138. Better yet, by way of comparison, Nick Punto (NICK PUNTO, just let that sink in for a second) has an OPS of .721 and an OPS+ of 95. Does anyone on this site believe that Denard Span is almost 1 1/2 times the hitter that Alex Gordon is? I don't, and I've been rather critical of Gordon on this site. Does anyone believe that Nick Punto and Alex Gordon are roughly equivalent hitters?

 

The problem with using OPS (or worse, OPS+) as THE tool to evaluate hitters is that the component stats overlap, making it highly susceptible to players that have a high batting average (or a lucky BABIP). Hits are counted both in batting average and slugging percentage, meaning they're double-counted when using OPS. I'm sure I'm not covering any new ground here, but I think it's enlightening to point out in this case.

 

So, looking at Span's line, his batting average is .320 (the result of a .373 BABIP), an OBP of .405 that is largely BABIP driven, and a slugging percentage of .467. How is his slugging percentage so high? Well, if you hit a single every time you're up to bat, your OPS will be 2.000. An OPS of 1.000 is great, but a player can have just a slugging % that high by doing nothing but being an empty singles hitter.

 

My point with all this? Obviously, you can't identify and develop talent by seeing that they've got "the good face", or "grit" or they "play the game the right way", like our broadcast friends beat us over the head with today. Conversely, neither can one get out their slide rule and calculate the regression to the mean of the third-order Johnson Factor and predict what a team or player is going to do.

 

At some point, you've got to look at what's going on on the field, all the while analyzing the stats in order to make an evaluation.

 

What do my eyes tell me?

 

  • The Twins play well most of the time, play very poorly on occasion (just like most teams) and beat us two out of three because they are a better, more talented team overall.
  • Scott Baker throws a lot of strikes because he's a talented pitcher. Same thing with Francisco Liriano (or Zack Greinke, or Joakim Soria, for that matter). Usually, guys don't throw strikes because THEY'RE NOT THAT GOOD. They know that if they throw the ball over the plate, it's going to get tattooed. So, please spare me about some secret, magical formula that the Twins have figured out. It's simple - they have good, talented pitchers who also pitch to contact. You can do that when people consistently can't put good wood on your pitches.
  • Alex Gordon is way, way, way better than Denard Span.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.