Is Justin Verlander an Ace?

With the Detroit Tigers out of the playoff chase (and just trying to hang on to 4th place in the Central), I've seen it bandied about that Justin Verlander is the 'ace of the staff' and deserves a fair share of the blame for the starting pitching being terrible. That as the 'ace' he's supposed to go deep in games with numerous quality starts -- something that hasn't happened much.

This has dug at me since I've never considered Justin Verlander an 'ace' in the grand scheme of things. Is he the Tigers ace? Yes. Does that mean that he's an ace in terms of the entire league? Not necessarily. If Magglio Ordonez was suddenly thrust into the leadoff spot of the batting order, that would make him the Tigers leadoff hitter, but he wouldn't be a leadoff hitter, if that makes sense.

So, I looked towards this article from Project Prospect, a site that evaluates prospects in baseball largely through a statstical lense. Brett Sullivan, who penned the article, wanted to make a clean, simple method of evaluating pitching prospects. I liked the ease of use and just how well the less statistically-savvy baseball fanatics can understand it. It's got a lot of pluses.

However, I've got somethings that I don't like. Mainly, the fact that strikeouts and groundball percentage are weighted the same. The formula he used is: (Strikeout Percentage + Groundball Percentage – Walk Percentage) where strikeout percentage is just simply strikeouts (K) divided by total batters faced (TBF). You do this with walks (BB) as well. This gives you what he dubbed a "Raw Dominance Factor" as his statistic is completed with an age-relative-to-level since he was using it to judge pitching prospects. I thought this would be a decent method to turn to to evaluate major league pitchers in my quest to see how Justin Verlander stacks up against various 'aces' in the league.

I've changed the forumla from above, just a bit. I weighted groundball percentage to 0.72 of strikeouts. Then, I headed on over to the Hardball Times website to look at their pitching statistics to get the top 100 pitchers, ranked by strikeouts, for each of the last 4½ years (2004 through 2008). Basically what I did was import that data into excel, pick out the strikeouts, walks, total batters faced and then I got each of their ground ball percentages off of the THT player pages. I used this to round out my dominance factor by using each year individually. For instance, I looked up the top 100 pitchers in terms of strikeouts in 2004 and got a dominance factor for all of those pitchers. Then I did the same for 2005, then again for 2006 and so on and so forth until I got through August 28th, 2008.

What I came up with was this:

ACE	56.52
VERY GOOD	49.56
AVERAGE	42.6
BELOW-AVERAGE	35.63
POOR	28.67

But, I've done this because I want to see how Justin Verlander stacks up against his competition. To do this, we must establish a baseline against which we can measure Verlander. My data says that since 2004 through all games played through August 27th, the average pitcher in the top 100 in strikeouts will strikeout 18.1% of batters faced, walk 7.5% of batters faced, and get a ground ball from 44.5% of batters faced.

The fomula using the average numbers would look like this:

(18.1+(44.5*0.72))-7.5 = 42.6.

Now we've established a baseline to which we can compare Justin Verlander, so let's start doing that. We'll start with this year as he's been bad this year, but how bad?

In 2008, he's striking out 18.7% of hitters, walking 9.4%, and getting 41.3% of them to hit ground balls. That leads to a Dominance Factor of just 39.04. Using our classification from earlier, that puts Verlander's 08 season firmly in between the "below-average" and "average" Dominance Factor.

What about his other 2 full seasons? Well, let's look at them:

2007: 21.1% K rate, 7.7% BB rate, 46.4% GB rate; Dominance Factor of 46.8.

2006: 16.0% K rate, 7.7% BB rate, 41.7% GB rate; Dominance Factor of 38.27.

So, he's had one barely above-average season, and two that are inbetween the below-average and average deviations. Is that the definition of 'ace'? That wouldn't exactly be what I'd write if I had to pen a proper definition. To me, that seems to be pretty average.

His Dominance Factor from 2006 through August 27th, 2008, collectively, stands at 41.61. Over that time period he is striking out 18.7% of hitters, walking 8.27% and getting ground balls at a 43.29% rate. Remember those averages we looked at earlier? The ones that said the average pitcher in this study struck out 18.1%, walked 7.5% and got ground balls from 44.5% of hitters? We could probably just call that "Justin Verlander" and be entirely accurate.

Is this method the end all, be all of analyzing pitchers? Absolutely not. It's got it's flaws but is just meant to be a relatively clean, simple formula/method that uses the three things that I look at first when evaluating a pitcher: his abilities to miss bats, not walk guys, and get ground balls -- the three things that he controls the most when on the mound.

So, is Justin Verlander an 'ace'? No. He is not. Just Verlander's production shows that he's a fireballing, rocket-armed average -- or maybe a bit below-average -- pitcher.

Examining the Tigers Defense Take III

In my previous two posts, I've looked at the Tigers infield defense and outfield defense. Now, it's time to put those numbers in to perspective.

We've learned that the Tigers currently (as of August 9th) are at a very poor -18.93 runs defensively. But this number doesn't tell us much other than they are 19 runs below-average. How many other teams are below average defensively? How many are below the Tigers? How many above? Well, I'm here to quell all of those questions.

Currently, this Tigers defense ranks 23rd out of the 30 MLB ball clubs. The only teams below Detroit are: Pittsburgh (-25.3 runs), Florida (-31.4), Baltimore (-33.4), Texas (-39.9), New York Yankees (-56.9), Minnesota (-77.4) and Kansas City (-77.5). The Twins completely insane season continues to defy odds. Not only are their runs totals way over-performing their club hitting vitals, this metric has them giving away what is close to 8 games due to terrible defense. They get praised for "picking it" and "playing the right way" with all of their bunt attempts and pure team speed, but they seem to be missing Jason Bartlett at the Shortstop position where he's currently rated as the 8th best defensive shortstop down in Tampa Bay. He was included in the deal that brought Delmon Young to Minnesota (Matt Garza also went to Tampa) who is currently -14 runs in left field, tied for the worst left fielder defensively in the game right now.

As for the Tigers, their best defender is Placido Polanco and his 11.4 runs defensively which is 4th among all 2nd basemen behind only Chase Utley (PHI; 29.6), Mark Ellis (OAK; 21.2), and Adam Kennedy (STL; 16.5). The low mark for Detroit has been Magglio Ordonez who is rated as being better than only 6 fielders in the entire game of baseball ahead of only Melvin Mora (BAL, 3B; -17.5), Edwin Encarnacion (CIN, 3B; -17.9), Nate McLouth (PIT, CF; -20.1), Vernon Wells (TOR, CF; -22.9) and Bobby Abreu (NYY, RF; -26.7).

We've shed light that the Royals are the worst fielding team in the game, but who is the best? Well, it's a wonder how the Cardinals have some how stayed in relative contention while having what is on paper a terrible starting rotation which has somehow been good; maybe that's due in part to their defense. The Cards rank first at 50.43 runs defensively. That's 5 wins they've gotten this year, based solely from their defense. Here are all teams and their total runs defensively this year:

STL	50.53
ATL	48.73
CHN	47.8
OAK	45.29
MIL	35.06
LAN	34.84
HOU	31.64
PHI	30.14
SD	25.1
NYN	20.82
TOR	18.16
TB	17.98
LAA	10.69
SF	1.075
COL	0.979
SEA	0.527
CLE	-5.21
CHA	-7.61
BOS	-8.24
WAS	-9.85
ARI	-12.3
CIN	-16.6
DET	-18.9
PIT	-25.3
FLA	-31.4
BAL	-33.4
TEX	-39.9
NYA	-56.9
MIN	-77.4
KC	-77.5

Big, big hat tip to Justin Inaz and him developing this method last year, as well as, Myron Logan for doing this and being so open with people downloading his spreadsheet. Of course, big thanks goes out to one of my favorite sites on the internet, The Hardball Times, for purchasing the defensive info that makes up this metric and Baseball Info Solutions for tracking it and selling it. I plan to use this method in late October to do some player evaluations on who the Tigers should plug their potential holes at in their roster for the 2009 season much like I did for the Tigers shortstop and left field vacancies last October.

Examining the Tigers Outfield Defense(kind of) to Date

My previous post looks at the Tigers infield defense. If you haven't read that, please do. I'll wait. It'll help you understand how these numbers are tabulated. Done? All right then. Let's continue this look into the Tigers defense by focusing on the outfield. Without further adieu, the Tigers outfield defense as of August 9th, 2008:

Left Field

Clete Thomas: 3.15 runs, 139 innings
Ryan Raburn: 2.16 runs, 74 innings
Gary Sheffield: 0.76 runs, 47 innings
Brent Clevlen: -0.5 runs, 39 innings
Carlos Guillen: -0.55 runs, 17 innings
Jacque Jones: -0.57 runs, 172 innings
Marcus Thames: -1.07, 345 innings
Matt Joyce: -1.58 runs, 199 innings

Left Field total: 1.8 runs.

Right Field

Marcus Thames: 1.03 runs, 24 innings
Matt Joyce: 0.33 runs, 129 innings
Clete Thomas: -0.87 runs, 22 innings
Brent Clevlen: -1.06 runs, 9 innings
Ryan Raburn: -2.91 runs, 64 innings
Magglio Ordonez: -17.4 runs, 790 innings

Right Field total: -20.94 runs.

Centerfield

Brandon Inge: 2.59 runs, 85 innings
Curtis Granderson: 2.22 runs, 791 innings
Ryan Raburn: 1.37 runs, 29 innings
Brent Clevlen: 0.12 runs, 21 innings
Clete Thomas: -0.86 runs, 112 innings

Centerfield Total: 5.44 runs.

The Tigers outfield defense has come in at an underwhelming -13.7 runs defensively.

Players who played multiple outfield positions (and infield positions in the case of Thames and Raburn) come in at:

Ryan Raburn: 0.07 runs
Marcus Thames: -0.01 runs
Clete Thomas: 1.42 runs
Brent Clevlen: -1.44 runs
Matt Joyce: -1.25 runs

Summing the infield and outfield defense together, the Tigers total defense sits currently at -18.93 runs, or just about 2 losses are results of poor defense. In the outfield, the main culprit is Magglio Ordonez. This system rates him about twice as worst getting to balls out of his defensive zone (-13.3 plays) as he is at fielding the balls in his zone (-7.3 plays). So, he appears to be having trouble fielding balls he gets to, as well as even getting to balls that other right fielders do get ot. Out of all the right fielders in baseball, this system ranks Magglio 2nd worst, ahead of only the Yankees Bobby Abreu.

How does this rank versus the rest of the majors league teams? Well, I'm glad you asked. That will be my next blog post.

Examining the Tigers Infield Defense To Date

Last year, Justin Inaz used the public defensive data available at The Hardball Times into a defensive metric that produces a runs value for each defender. Well, Myron Logan, author of Friar Forecast, a blog on the San Diego Padres, used Justin Inaz's method and produced a spreadsheet of defensive rankings by position, players, teams, etc etc. He wrote a little ditty up for the Baseball Analysts and I downloaded the spreadsheet. Instead of me giving an intro, I'll just be lazy and use the intro that Myron used for his article in how these numbers are calculated:

The Methodology

The Hardball Times provides us with some great information to evaluate fielding performance. On their fielding stats page, they report, for each and every player, the number of balls hit into the player’s zone, the number of plays made on balls in their zone, and the number of plays made on balls hit outside of their zone. With these three numbers in hand, we can get a pretty solid grasp of a player’s fielding performance. But, before we get to that, we’ve got a few definitions to get out of the way:

BIZ (balls in zone) – This is the number of balls hit into a player’s zone. A zone (or zones) is defined as the area on the field where at least 50% of balls are turned into outs, at the position in question.

Plays – This category is simply plays made on balls in zone.

OOZ (out of zone plays) – This is the number of plays a fielder makes on balls hit outside of his zone.

Now, how do we go about turning three numbers into a decent fielding metric? Well, let’s take a look at Mariners’ shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, as an example. He’s had 244 balls hit into his zone, and of those 244 chances, he’s turned 200 of them into outs. The average shortstop turns about 83% of balls in zone into outs, so we would expect the average SS to make about 203 plays, if they had 244 chances. Betancourt is about -3 compared to average.

How do we handle out of zone performance? Betancourt’s made just 17 out of zone plays so far in 2008. The average shortstop makes about .13 out of zone plays per in zone chance*, so we’d expect the average SS to have about 32 out of zone plays, given Yuni’s in zone chances. This puts Betancourt at -15 on OOZ balls and about -18 plays overall.

*One major assumption is being taken here. That is that the number of in zone chances a player gets also reflects the number of out of zone chances he’ll have. Since we don’t know exactly how many OOZ chances anyone actually has, we have to estimate this number somehow. Some people believe innings or total balls in play or something else would be a better proxy, but I’m using in zone chances here.

We now have Betancourt at -18 plays, but we’re not quite done yet. It’s a lot easier to work in terms of runs because that’s generally how we measure things in baseball, so we have to make one final conversion. Using the numbers derived from Chris Dial, we can turn plays into runs, simply by multiplying plays by .753 for shortstops (it varies by position as saving a play in, say, the outfield, is, on average, more valuable than saving a play in the infield). Betancourt now ends up at about -13 runs, or the second-worst MLB shortstop, ahead of only Bobby Crosby (-14.6).

That is essentially what you do, with every player, at every position (of course, Excel makes that a little bit easier, or at least it’s supposed to, if you know what you’re doing).

Well, hopefully you followed along because over the next three posts, I'm going to be breaking down the Tigers infield and outfield defense, as well as how they rank among all MLB teams this year. Buckle in, and let's start.

First Base

This year, the Tigers have used Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Guillen, Jeff Larish, and Marcus Thames at first base. Here's how they've rated defensively, in terms of runs:

Miguel Cabrera: -2.71 runs, 827 innings
Carlos Guillen: 2.82 runs, 162 innings
Jeff Larish: 0.86 runs, 12 innings
Marcus Thames: 0.03 runs, 37 innings

First base total: +1 run.

Second Base

This year, the Tigers have used four different second baseman. Here's how they all rank:

Placido Polanco: 11.4 runs, 889 innings
Ryan Raburn: 0.45 runs, 73 innings
Michael Hollimon: 0.14 runs, 8 innings
Ramon Santiago: -3.79 runs, 68 innings

Second base total: 8.2 runs.

Third Base

Brandon Inge: 1.97 runs, 192 innings
Carlos Guillen: 1.08 runs, 669 innings
Jeff Larish: 0.12 runs, 5 innings
Ramon Santiago: -0.57 runs, 10 innings
Ryan Raburn: -1.0 runs, 44 innings
Miguel Cabrera: -6.53 runs, 116 innings

Third base total: -4.93 runs.

Shortstop

Michael Hollimon: 1.05 runs, 44 innings
Ramon Santiago: -4.99 runs, 118 innings
Edgar Renteria: -5.56 runs, 876 innings

Shortstop total: -9.5 runs.

The Tigers infield defense this year has a combined worth of -5.23 runs. It's known that 10 runs equals roughly 1 win. Therefore, the Tigers defense has 'directly' cost the team about 1/2 of a W this year. Main culprits can't be identified until we tallying up the total for infielders playing multiple positions, so lets do that:

Michael Hollimon: 1.19 runs
Jeff Larish: 0.98 runs
Ryan Raburn: -0.55 runs
Ramon Santiago: -9.35 runs

So, with this knowledge, the much malinged Edgar Renteria has cost the Tigers 5.56 runs defensively. Even if you round that up to 6 runs, he's costing the Tigers just about six-tenths of a win defensively. He's basically been what he's been the past few years: an average or slightly below-average defender at the shortstop position. The much bigger culprite appears to be Ramon Santiago who is just a shade under an entire win in the bad while donning the leather. Often praised for his great glove in being a "Pacman Jr.," this method does not favor him highly at all. Michael Hollimon is about where I would think he'd be, although, he's probably better suited for second base, but it's up for debate. Jeff Larish is a first baseman by trade and as such appears to be pretty average.

Now, is this method ideal? No. There isn't a defensive metric that is concrete in it's exactness, nor is it without holes. There's such few statistics to quantify defense and, therefore, is largely subjective. That said, I prefer to use UZR, however it's not fully available to the public as the creator, MGL, works for the St. Louis Cardinals. After that, I like to look at the Probabilistic Model of Range. It's completely free via David Pinto and Baseball Musings, however, it's only updated every November-ish as that is how long it takes David to purchase the data, analyze it, and get it posted for the prior season. Chris Dial apparently has a defensive metric he plans to update, for free and for the public, everyday. Outside of that, there really aren't many (or any) in-season, updated, advanced defensive metrics in terms of runs. John Dewan, founder of Baseball Info Solutions which supplies The Hardball Times with it's data (for a cost), has a +/- system that he unveils in the Fielding Bible annually. Tom Tango has a fan scouting survey that he asks fans to fill out which is something I always enjoy and anticipate both partaking in and perusing the results. This one isn't ideal and takes an assumption or two into the equation which makes it not 100% accurate. However, using the publicly available data at our disposal, it's probably the best we can do at this juncture.

My next post will be looking at the Tigers outfield defense.