Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 11:16 am Post subject: Team defense: Should we be worried?
Small sample size, etc, etc, but I was looking at the team stats on hardballtimes.com
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/teams/
Arizona has by far the worst DER of any team in the NL, at .679; the average is .706. AZ also has the second highest LOB % in the NL, at 80%, the average being 74%
In other words, the Dbacks have sucked so far converting batted balls into outs, and have gotten a bit lucky by managing to strand a higher percentage of baserunners than normal.
Both trends have to be corrected soon, or the Dbacks pitching will start falling apart pretty soon.
What's to blame for the low DER? Methinks it's the pitchers...
If you look at the fielding stats at the bottom, AZ's fielding (i.e., the defense contribution) is +4, of which the outfield is +3 and the infield +1. The pitching component is -12, however. What that tells me is that the pitching is giving up a lot of hits that cannot be fielded, period. For one, the LD% is 23%, the highest in NL (average is 19%), and the percentage of fly balls that stay on the infield is 9%, less than the league average of 11%. The saving grace has been the league average HR/G of 0.8
Regardless, the DER needs to get up to the .70% range or the pitching will start giving up a lot more runs... and it won't be pretty
DER (Link)
Defense Efficiency Ratio. The percent of times a batted ball is turned into an out by the teams’ fielders, not including home runs. The exact formula we use is (BFP-H-K-BB-HBP-Errors)/(BFP-HR-K-BB-HBP). This is similar to BABIP, but from the defensive team's perspective. Please note that errors include only errors on batted balls.
Continuing with the topic of why defense (and DER) matters, here's from the latest excellent Studes column on THT
Ten Things I Didn’t Know Last Week
Quote:
The Mets are fielding like crazy.
The Dodgers have a better record, but the Mets are the behemoth of the NL, so far, with a run differential of 34 (67 runs scored and 33 runs allowed). Funny thing about that runs allowed figure, however, is that all those runs have been prevented on the field. Take a look at the graph: the Mets have the best Defense Efficiency Record in the league by far, and the worst Fielding Independent Pitching (the result of strikeouts, walks and home runs). That's just crazy.
How have they done it? Well, here are some keys:
* 21% of all the flyballs allowed by the Mets have been infield flies. That's a whopping total (average is 12%) and explains why the Mets' batted balls have been so "fieldable."
* The Mets outfield has been average, but the Mets' infield has been airtight, converting 83% of all ground balls into outs. The major league average is 75%.
* Mets pitchers have left 86% of all men to reach base against them on base; the league average is 73%. That's because opponents are batting only .120 with men in scoring position.
The Mets lead the major leagues in every category I just mentioned.
The Dbacks pitchers have better FIP than the Mets yet significantly worse DER. If only AZ's DER was somewhere around STL's...
It's too small a sample size, but it explains our losses. I kinda view the season in three sections - the first 25%, the middle 50%, and the last 25%. I think it becomes a concern at the 40 game mark.
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