Diamondbacks Bullpen

[foulpole]

One often overlooked and maybe under measured aspect of the game is team speed/baserunning skills. Since it doesn't appear as though we will lead the league in HRs in '07 we may need to play some "small ball." With our solid rotation we may be involved in many low scoring games and this could make the difference between a win and a loss.

Who keeps us out of/breaks up double plays, can score from 1st on hits to the OF, goes from 1st to third on a hit to LF, can steal a few bases, won't run us out of innings, will take the extra base on fielding miscues and those sort of things?

With the current roster I'm using the most likely starting 8 listed in order of baserunning skills. I'm not completely sold on my list and am looking for everyones input on this topic. I'm not sure how this could be structured into a poll or if it's even possible.

1)Byrnes
2)O-Dawg
3)Young
4)Drew
5)Tracy
6)Q
7)Snyder
8)Jackson

Chime in...

[McCray]

young needs to be at the top of the list. i'd rank byrnes lower, too. he just doesn't seem fast to me, not at all. he seems like he has a very good eye for when he can make a steal, and he knows when to run and when to stay put, but he ain't fast. i'd probaby rank them like this:

young
drew
hudson
byrnes
tracy
snyder
jackson

yeah, i know, quentin's not on the list. it's 5am, i haven't slept in days, and i honestly can't remember a specific instance of him running. ever. so since i've got no clue, i didn't rank him.
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Hank, you're dead to me.

[Dangerfield]

You've left Alberto off the list.
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My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it

[shoewizard]

Well, FP was listing starters, but yeah, Callaspo will offer alot of speed offthe bench.

Quentin is not known for his speed of course, but he's faster than Tracy.
He legged out 3 triples, in under 200 at bats, (compared to ZERO for Chad)

Young is the fastest guy on the team, but Byrnes is an accomplished base stealer with a high rate of success. He will run himself into a few outs here and there being agressive though.

We'll have to see if Youngs speed translates into good baserunning in the majors,. He had 108 steals and 35 caught in his minor league career, which is a 75.5 success rate. It will probably take him some time to learn the pitchers moves. And this team is not likely to attempt alot of steals, due to philosophy. So I don't think he will go often enough to be a 30-30 guy just yet.

[Dangerfield]

No offense to Gonz, his stats speak for themselves, but now that we don't have to worry about him being in the middle of the line-up anymore, this line-up is as stacked as any that's been here.


My take and I stand by it, is CJ going to win a batting title, CQ, SD, and CT are all going to win Silver Sluggers. There will be plenty of running as well.
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My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it

[levski]

[McCray]

"no honey, i just said i liked that movie she was in -- i didn't say she was prettier than you..."

sorry if it came off like i was underrating quentin. he didn't have that many ABs, and i coudn't remember any specific instance where he rocked my dangly bits with his speed. it's more a reflection on my memory than on quentin, who i'm sure is quite fast and devilishly handsome, along with just being quite the strapping young lad.
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Hank, you're dead to me.

[foulpole]

Ok, let's try a different system. We'll grade speed and base running instincts/sauve with letter grades A through E. This is not only base stealing but all aspects of base running. Speed rating first then the instincts/sauve grade second.

Byrnes B/A
O-Dawg B/B
Young A/D
Drew B/B
Q B/C
Tracy C/B
Snyder C/B
Jackson E/E

Post your list and include any bench guys that you want too.

[matt]

It's quite obvious what you are doing here. This is just another thread set up to talk shit about CJ.

[foulpole]

[McCray]

you're looking at one piece of data (base stealing performance) and trying to extrapolate two logical reasonings from it: speed + instincts.

for instance, you have jackson at an E/E. in terms of speed, yeah, i give him the E. he's slow as... well... me. and i smoke 2-3 packs a day and get winded going up stairs. but are his instincts really that bad? i don't think so, not even close. but the key point here is that both of us are talking out of our asses about his instincts. he never runs backwards, he rarely falls over, and he doesn't try to occupy the same base as someone else. he's slow, but i think you're failing him twice for being slow. his instincts -- how the hell can we even know that? maybe jackson's head can analyze a ball's hop perfectly, and he knows when to stop at 2nd or push for 3rd, but because he just doesn't have the speed to make it to 3rd, we don't see the results. if his instincts are good, and his speed is slow, he's going to stay at the easy base, not push it and run into an out.

does that make sense?

and then there's another issue: we just haven't seen much of these kids yet. take young, for example. you give him an A for speed, but a D for smarts. and byrnes, your loverboy ( ), gets a B for speed and an A for smarts.

so let's compare the two.

chris young, minor league SB stats:

(SB) (CS) (Lvl)

7 8 (rookie)
21 7 (rookie)
31 9 (A)
32 6 (AA)
17 5 (AAA)

totals:

108 35 (minors)

108/143 = 76% success rate.

not much to write home about, eh? let's look at golden retriever boy.

(SB) (CS) (Lvl)

28 8 (high a)
6 3 (aa)
21 11 (aa)
12 5 (aaa)

67 27 (minor league totals)

67/94 = 71% success

so young has a better track record than byrnes for the periods in which they are comparable, the minor league time. i can't really compare major league time because young has only attempted 3 steals.

but i'd say it looks pretty promising for young. his speed is like a bazillion times better than surfer boy, and he has had more success in the minors too.

i guess what i'm saying is that these kids are unknown quantities. we know they're good, but we aren't certain how good or in which specific ways. but if i had to bet on one of them outperforming the other in terms of SB% over the next couple years, or really even next year, i'd pick chris young. in a heartbeat.
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Hank, you're dead to me.

[foulpole]

[McCray]

fp, i think the approach you're using is faulty. you're evaluating their speed twice. let's say for a second there's a hypothetical baseball player named john smith.

john smith is very, very, very slow. he gets on base at a good clip, but once he's there, he's dead weight. so, how does smith go about improvin his team's odds at winning once he's on base?

by being realistic about his skills and abilities. by not running into outs. but taking a slow and steady approach at baserunning and moving station to station. anything more and he's an out, a lost baserunner, and the end of a rally.

perhaps, just perhaps, CJ is a very good baserunner, even though he is tremendously slow. perhaps he realizes that as a flaw, and because of it, he moves slowly but safely from one base to another so as to avoid running into outs, killing a lead runner, ending a rally, etc.

if you're slow you're slow. no getting around that. but jackson doesn't kill us on the basepaths, not at all, not even a bit. he's slow but he realizes it. IMHO, that earns him a higher grade than E for his smarts. that's a good baserunning instict: realizing his own limitations and faults and preventing them from hurting his team.

now, rather than asking who's fast, who's slow, who's smart, and who's dumb, perhaps the better approach is to first see whether or not SBs will help this team next year.

i for one think many people are underrating our offense. i think they're going to really impress a lot of people. these kids get on base, hit for moderate power, and there really isn't an easy out in the lineup. but these kids are very young, and haven't seen a lot of major league pitcher's motions. nor have they seen a lot of major league catcher's arms. so, is aggressive baserunning really the best approach for this team next year? or is station to station ball a better idea?
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Hank, you're dead to me.

[shoewizard]

THis is bullshit.

I got to the part in FP's post about Chris Young getting a D on instincts and stopped reading. What the fuck is that based on?

Total bullshit.

Not worth reading another word in this thread.

[stu]

It is an interesting theory that a player can be slow that he is doing his team a favor by crawling from base to base. However, I think when most people think of good baserunners spped is part of the equation. Most recognize that someone can be a good baserunner without great speed by getting jumps knowing when to run, but I don't think one can a good baserunner simply by only taking one base at a time to avoid being thrown out.

FWIW, here are the poor man's super lights that include baserunning

http://www.baseballanalysis.com/PoorMan112706

CJ is -8
Hudson 11
Tracy 3
Byrnes 10
Gonzo 12
Green -3

Gonzo seems a little high, but he is one of those guys who knows what he is doing so I am willing to give some credence to this. This is about how I would rate them.

Of the kids, I like them all as baserunner. They all have good speed. Drew I think has great instincts.

I am also impressed by what little I have seen of CQ. He is a Stanford product so he must be smart right. Oops, said the same thing about Kata because he was from Vanderbilt so school smarts does not equal baseball smarts, but CQ looks like he knows what he is doing.

Young has great spped, but I think he is still a work in progress from the little I saw.

[foulpole]

Good post stu, I'll check your link.

[McCray]

i'm not disputing that fast is better than slow. what i'm disputing is the idea that bad speed and bad instincts on the bases go hand in hand, specifically in the case for the cojaculator, who, i feel it should be noted, has never had a CS in his entire major league career thus far. this past season he got on base at a .368 clip, and not once did he erase himself as a runner by attempting to steal. rather, he understood his realistic abilities as a baseball player, and instead kept the runner on base for the rest of the batting order.

eric byrnes, on the other hand, got on base at a .313 rate, and erased himself as a baserunner 3 times, so as shoewizard calculated in another thread, his real obp is .307.

just looking at obp, CJ is far more valuable as he represents a runner 37% of the time to byrnes' 31%.

and in terms of total bases, adding in the CS and the extra bases, shoewizard calculated EB's ops as .823 (.307+.516 after the single plus steals become doubles). that is his offensive contribution, and includes the baserunning to the best extent i personally know how to do with stats.

CJ's .368 obp stays right at .368 since he has no CS. and his real 2006 slg is .441, but with his one successful SB attempt, it goes to .445.

so, jackson has an adjusted ops of 813, and byrnes has one of .823.

the difference in their baserunning appears to 10 points of ops. that's it.

now, eric byrnes is going to be 31, and is coming off a career year. he's far from a sure bet to match that ops again, in short.

conor jackson is going to be 25. he's on his way up, and has just finished his first year. his power and obp both figure to improve in the future. plus, he's 5M or so cheaper.

IMHO, the impact byrnes brings to the running game is rather negligible compared to CJ, and CJ is much more likely to improve his game, while byrnes is more likely to decline.

in short, i think you're vastly overestimating the impact of byrnes's running vs jackson's. and i think jackson will be far far more valuable to this team offensively, both next year and in the future, compared to byrnes.

in this case, i'd pick the slow guy.
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Hank, you're dead to me.

[stu]

mac, just on steals, it si 24 OPS points. Bynres adds 34 to slugging (had to look up his slugging since it wasn't in your post) by his steals subtract 6 for the cs for a net of 28.

Jackson gets plus 4 his steal which leaves a net of 24 ops point in EB's favor.

Of course, there is much more to baserunning than just stealing bases. Advancing on hits is probably just as or more inmportant. This is where the linear weights come in (which I assume includes cs and sb's as well). The raw data is taken from Bill James' 2007 handbook so I'm going to give them more credence than I would normally. Plus JB keeps this book at his side (I'd prefer Earl's book, but this is a good choice too). This number shows a 18 run different between CJ and EB. That is almost two wins. A good sized difference.

I think your Jacksonians are making as big a mistake on this one as you did on the National Bank.

[shoewizard]

Would anyone consider Slwts as good at capturing CJ's defense as his baserunning?

[stu]

I know you trying to be like lev , but to be serious (and it is a fair question). No.

From the link:

Before we get into the data, a few notes on some of the data. There are a number of defensive systems available – I chose Chone Smiths for a couple of reasons. 1) It is zone based. At the end of the day any system that is based on primary defensive data will be virtually useless as it is nearly impossible to estimate player’s opportunities from that data. Imagine trying to calculate batting average without, having a reasonable idea if a player had 600 At-Bats or 475 At-Bats. While Zone data isn’t nearly perfect, and has a considerable amount of noise it is still the best that we have. 2) It incorporates outfield park factors, which play a large part in determining specific player values. A major flaw in zone data is that it measures the distance of flyballs from home plate rather from outfield wall, so you can see players get charged with opportunities when balls are not actually playable (think Green Monster) this can create large distortions from reality. 3) It is regressed – while the idea of this project is to measure how many runs a player contributed relative to an average player during last season (2006), I believe that there is so much noise surrounding defensive statistics it is appropriate to be as conservative as possible so that you get the best estimate of how many runs a player contributed last year. While I have no doubt that I using a regressed projection rather than last years specific stat will mean that we get less players exactly right, I believe your sample as a whole get more players approximately right. Also outfielders don’t have an arm rating either. Again that should be enhanced at some point in the future. On to Base Running, BIS provides data on bases gained. I converted bases to runs assuming each base was worth 0.30 runs, which is based off traditional linear weight values, but perhaps may be a little high. I will dive deeper into the base running numbers as time permits.

Emphais added.

The defensive numbers are projections based on zone rating whihc as we have discussed and the author acknowledges are far from perfect.

The baserunning OTOH is a pretty simple numerical calculation based on times advanced. The sb's and cs calculations I think are pretty well accepted. Obvioulsy at lot of noise, but much less than defense.

The big thing for me is that other than Gonzo (and a good system should have some surprises), these numbers are about what I would say based on observations. Even Gonzo is not a shocker.

I would like to see if the baserunning numbers for individuals jump around like the defnsive numbers do, maikng many players a crummy fielder one year and the greatest the next.

as a back at you, Overbay looks awfully average on that list.

[McCray]

stu, you've got me intrigued. i'll read the weights info, but i've read a few descriptions of them before and i've never understood a word of it. i can't even balance my own checkbook.
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Hank, you're dead to me.

[shoewizard]

Matt Rauseo wrote:

[levski]

[foulpole]

[TSWINDERS]

I have to disagree with your D for Young. He might have missed a sign or two in Phoenix but I can not remember it occurring at all in Tucson. I personally liked how he would be talking with the coach over at 1st. Then he would size up the pitcher getting a bigger lead each time finally taking off and there was little to no chance of him being caught. Most of the time he was coming out of his slide when the throw finally arrived. CY was given more chances as the season wore on and really got to showcase his base running skills. I also remember several times where took the extra base on balls that were bloops, tweeners and ones that were lackadaisically played by the OF. I would say a B for his base running
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