The Latest Word on Evaluating Catcher Defense, or Miguel Olivo's Defense Is As Bad As We Thought

Our own devil_fingers spent an inordinate amount of time creating his own methodology to evaluate catcher's defense based on throwing out runners, preventing wild pitches and passed balls, throwing errors, and catching errors. Not surprisingly, the three Royals backstops fared poorly: Pena was -2.9 runs in limited playing time, Buck was -4.8 runs in more playing time, and Olivo was 113th out of 114 at -8.8 runs (thanks Mike Napoli).

over 2 years ago Gopherballs 17 comments 1 recs |

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So basically...

Any of our three catchers playing everyday are about -1 WAR for defense, awesome.

Go Royals!

by BabyBlues on Oct 13, 2009 8:44 PM EDT reply actions

Thanks, but

the methodology is a modified version Justin Inaz’s methodology, which I think he got from somewhere else. I just changed up some of the denominators and stuff.

If I can get around to normalizing PA/INN and stuff, I might be able to get projections out of it, although they wouldn’t be that great, given the WOWY issues (i.e., the effect of individual pitchers).

Still, I was pleasantly surprised that the results held up well enough to what we’d expect, and apparently to John Dewan’s rankings (from what people have mentioned).

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Oct 13, 2009 9:22 PM EDT reply actions

For a bit of a handle on that...

What is Olivo’s numbers when he catches Zack and for when he catches someone who is not Zack?

Go Royals!

by BabyBlues on Oct 13, 2009 9:56 PM EDT up reply actions

I don't think Baseball-Reference has those numbers

from what I can tell. Which is why if i was going to do it “right,” I’d set up a Retrosheet database and try to do a WOWY.

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Oct 13, 2009 9:59 PM EDT up reply actions

Hopefully this offseason I will be able to help you out

I am looking at combining the retrosheet data into decades so it won’t be such a huge file. Remind of this once the data is released.

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Oct 13, 2009 10:48 PM EDT up reply actions

Thanks

however, Retrosheet/WOWY stuff is hard. If it’s downloadable, my only excuse will be stupidity and laziness.

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Oct 14, 2009 11:56 AM EDT up reply actions

You mean stupidity and laziness aren't allowable excuses.

Dammit, I am going to have to think of some new ones.

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Oct 14, 2009 1:00 PM EDT up reply actions

I reinvented the wheel

The first person I’ve seen publish about this general methodology was Rally in an old post at BBTF. I came up with the methodology I used from scratch, but then someone pointed me to Rally’s older stuff just before I published. It was more or less the same thing. A few differences here and there, but it was the same concept. Sort of like what happened this summer with chuckb’s post, as he reinvented the wheel a third time. :)
-j

I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore
Red Reporter
Basement-Dwellers.com
Twitter: @jinazreds

by JinAZ on Oct 13, 2009 10:57 PM EDT up reply actions

"The defensive statistics - I still really don't understand how some of those statistics are evaluated, I really don't. When you watch baseball games every single day, its very apparent who can play defensively and who can't."

seriously, good stuff.

by nwroyal on Oct 13, 2009 11:08 PM EDT reply actions

Aww, only as bad as we thought?

I was hoping for worse. I can’t believe there is a worse catcher than Olivo defensively. And the annoying thing is, I think his passed ball problem is relatively easy to fix mechanically, and he is simply unwilling or unable to do it. Sort of like laying off the breaking ball low and away.

by Soria's Unibrow on Oct 14, 2009 4:04 AM EDT reply actions

So waht you are saying is

that Brayan Pena is, by no small degree, KC’s best defensive option at catcher?

That blows my mind…in a good way.

by bas on Oct 14, 2009 4:44 AM EDT reply actions

No, Actually Olivo is by my math:

Olivo: -2.3 Runs/1000 PAs
Buck: -2.8 R/kPA
Pena: -2.9 R/kPA

We always did feel the same, We just saw it from a different point of view, Tangled up in blue.
-Bob Dylan

by Royal Kingdom on Oct 14, 2009 9:56 AM EDT up reply actions

Without the PB/WP problem

He might actually be neutral.

by AxDxMx on Oct 14, 2009 10:13 AM EDT up reply actions

And if he actually walked at a league average rate

His bat would be extremely valuable ;)

by sterlingice on Oct 14, 2009 1:08 PM EDT up reply actions

see RK's response

but I’d hesitate before using these as straight-up projections, given the qualifications I try to make int he article. WOWY is better for that (and hopefully Brian Cartwright or someone will do what he did last offseason), since it takes the pitcher into account for holding runners, throwing wild, etc. Moreover, we’d need to normalize better for opportunities.

Finally, it’s just one season of data. We’d need at least three and then some regression to the mean.

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Oct 14, 2009 11:59 AM EDT up reply actions

should have said

“these aren’t projections at all, they’d be part of a larger analysis for that”

obviously, they reflect true talent to a certain extent — we know Olivo can’t block a pitch to save his life

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

Can't get enough of me? Check out my Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Oct 14, 2009 11:59 AM EDT up reply actions

Heh - maybe this should make us feel just a teeny bit

more optimistic about Moore – after all, he has said that the catching position is one that he feels needs addressing this offseason.

Or, cynically, maybe this just means that (for once) the scouting side agrees with the stats side regarding Olivo being a horrible defender. Maybe it’s a bit more obvious when a guy is THIS bad; however, that can’t be it, because they still disagree when evaluating Betancourt.

Mr Glass, this is a pro sports team, not a retail store - run it like one!

by loyal2sdad on Oct 14, 2009 10:43 AM EDT reply actions