Royals Review, a Kansas City Royals community

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).

Commenting on R. J. Anderson's response to Dayton Moore's comments on Betancourt and defensive metrics, Tango agrees:: "I do NOT believe in UZR trends. I DO believe in Fans’ Scouting Report trends. Without the Fans’, you look at the +2, +1, -1, -13, and see that someone who was a bit lucky his first three years, and very unlucky last year. With the Fans, that -13 is scary looking." If Tango is so smart, he'd be working for a baseball team! What's that?

Well we've all seen the statistics and the highlights about how the Royals are one of the better defensive teams this year, but this kinda hammers home the point that not only is this team doing well, but that it really is a team effort. Our Beloved Boys in Blue are currently second in Web gem appearences with 8, and no single player with more than 3. Compared to some teams like Detroit(Inge has all 7 of theirs) or the mets(6 of 7 belong to David Wright) this shows it really is a team effort.

FanGraphs will be updating UZR every Sunday. Since we now definitely have enough of sample to get at each player's defensive skill, we can project that over a full year using UZR/150. DDJ: +12.9 Billy Butler: +62.0 Alex Gordon: +13.6 Mike Jacobs: +5.9 Alberto Callaspo: +11.9 Mark Teahen (RF): -0.3 Coco Crisp: -7.1 Mark Teahen (2B): -27.6 Mike Aviles: -18.1 Jose Guillen: -92.0 Willie Bloomquist: -148.4

So Rally/CHONE/Sean Smith, who earlier did defensive projections that went over so well here at Royals Review, has added defensive projections to his player pages. These are different than the earlier ones. The earlier sets (still available, I think) are based on a combination of STATS and BIS data. Those on the player pages are based of TotalZone, including those from the minors. I’m sure people will have plenty to complain about with these, too, (and there are some significant differences from UZR or plus/minus, as you’ll see), but it’s definitely worth checking out unless you think it’s going to bias your awesome scouting eye which can see things that these nerds can’t imagine. Here are some Royals stats in runs/150 games. OF= corner, CF = Center Alex Gordon +2 (3B) Billy Butler -3 at 1B, -21 in OF Kila -1 at 1B Shealy 0 (average) at 1B Ross Gload -5 at 1B Callaspo 0 (average) at 2B TPJ +1 Jose Guillen -2 in OF (hey, not bad. Now if he could only hit...) Mark Teahen -2 in OF, -15 3B DDJ +5 CF, +11 Corner OF CoCo Crisp, +6 CF Shane Costa, +4 OF MITCH +8 OF, +1 CF Willie Bloomquist -3 2B, -2 3B, -1 SS, +5 OF, -2 CF (the Spork, indeed. Good thing he’s a "doubles hitter.") Tug Huglett +1 2B, +3 3B, +4 OF, -4 CF (like Bloomquist, except witha better bat, defense. But he’s not a "winner.") Mike Jacobs -7 at 1B Mike Aviles -4 at SS, +3 2B, -2 3B (Let's not raise expectations too high, the minor league numbers apparently agreed with the scouts) Please insert all qualifications re: defensive stats: e.g., sample size, projections, minor league numbers, TotalZone, etc. Feel free to read more about TotalZone, too.

No, it's not a version of UZR or plus/minus, but it's something. It's a version of Sean "CHONE" Smith's TotalZone, so I believe that, like TotalZone for the majors, it uses RetroSheet )or RetroSheet-style) data to reconstruct, as best as possible (with heavy regression, etc.) hit location. Very interesting stuff. Smith has an interesting piece on historical fielding numbers (reconstructed from Retrosheet) in this year's THT annual. The usual caveats about defensive metrics (particularly ones that don't have hit location available) and player development apply, of course. Keep in mind the small sample sizes, that players are usually away from their defensive peak (and in many cases, are learning new positions), and so on. So this in no way should be taken to "overrule" scouting reports. Still, this is a cool thing, and TotalZone is generally considered to be right there with the best of its kind (with Dan Fox's no-longer available Simple Fielding Runs, Pizza Cutter's OPA!, etc.). h/t to R. J. Anderson and Beyond the Box Score Also cool that they have home/road splits, which I don't see elsewhere. Interesting numbers: Mike Aviles (linked page above): At SS: 2005 -4 2006 0 2007 +2 2008 +3 at 2B: 2005 -4 2006 +8 2007 +4 2008 +6 Billy Butler at 1b: 2007 +1 2008 -2 at LF 2005 -18 (total) 2006 -9 at RF 2006 -35 MITCH at CF: 2005 -3 2006 -14 2007 +10 2008 +13 Joe Dickerson 2005 -23 at CF, 0 at RF 2006 -2 at CF 2007 -1 at CF, -8 at LF 2008 +1 at RF D-Rob 2006 -3 at CF, +1 at RF 2007 +1 at LF, 0 at RF, -14 at CF 2008 +5 at CF Jeff Bianchi: 2005 +10 at SS 2006 +1 at SS 2007 -1 at 2B, +5 at SS 2008 +9 at 2B< -2 at SS Huber (LF only) 2006 -11 2007 +7 2008 +1 Kila: 2005 +2 2006 +4 2007 +5 2008 -3