Anatomy of a Player: Placido Polanco

Given the slow amount of news that trickles out at this time of the baseball season for non-playoff teams, I figured that it'd be the best time to take a break from toying around in Excel and posting about the Tigers. But, I'm back now and here to continue my Anatomy of a Player series (which can be found in the right side bar).

Below the jump, you'll find graphs on the value that Placido Polanco has brought to the table since his first full season in Detroit, 2006. . .

Before we begin, I will say that I've changed my methods a bit. I realized I was double-counting things like league and positional factors in my Anatomy of a Player post on Miguel Cabrera. I've fixed those graphs and made sure I didn't do that in the creation of the data-crunching for Placido Polanco's last four seasons.

The Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) that I'll be presenting are differing from the ones listed on Fangraphs. I believe that's because we may be using different weights, either way, it's not a huge deal.

Offense Versus Position

Up first, we'll take a look at Polly's offensive value to the Detroit Tigers compared to the average 2nd baseman in the American League:

Polanco seems to be on the decline. However, I do think his 2009 was a bit of a fluke. wOBA can be influenced by batting average on balls in play (BABIP) because wOBA is counting singles, doubles, triples, homers, and net-stolen bases. Since Polly only had a .295 BABIP in 2009 -- about 20 points below his career .314 BABIP -- he was a bit unlucky given his skill set. He had a .321 BABIP in 2008 with a line drive percentage (LD%) of 18.7%. He upped that a bit in 2009 to a tick under 20%, but his BABIP fell some 26 points. I attribute this to luck for the most part. Everything else in his batted ball data set doesn't look different across the board. If everything the same, and the BABIP changes, there's really nothing tangible at work here. Polanco just was unlucky.

Now, the other thing to keep in mind is this: In 2009, AL 2nd basemen hit 244 home runs. It was a banner year for the Keystone Corner in terms of power, accumulating 814 extra-base hits. The previous 3 years saw AL 2nd basemen hit 756 (2008), 740 (2007), and 661 (2006). So power at the position has been on a consistent rise since Polanco's come over, and given that Placido isn't a power hitting 2B, his wOBA was going to likely suffer when compared to the position. Guys like Brian Roberts 2009 season (56 doubles and 16 homers), Ian Kinsler (174 extra base hits in the last 3 years), and a rebounding 2009 offensive from Robinson Cano help to skew the numbers. Polanco did have a down year with the bat, and when you couple that with an upswing by the position as a whole, you get a bad offensive comparison between Polly and the AL 2nd basemen.

Where does his offensive value come from?

Polly's not a power hitter or a stolen base artist. So there's two components that go into wOBA that he doesn't excel at. He's a guy who has to hit .315+ to really contribute major runs offensively to his ball club. Below is all the components of the wOBA formula and how much of each one goes in to Polanco's wOBA.

The graph on the left is the singles, doubles, triples, homers, and net stolen bases along with the walks and hit by pitches that make up his  wOBA. Using my formula (again, I believe I'm using different weights than Fangraphs is but I haven't fully researched their weights. I think theirs changes year to year given the run-scoring environment. Mine are more blanketed for the recent era.), Polanco had a wOBA last year of .333. The AL 2B had a wOBA of .361. The graph on the right is percentage each component makes up of Polanco's wOBA. For instance, since 2006, the single has been 18-22% of Polanco's total offensive value. The home run, however, has been 1.5-3% of his offense. Compared to someone like Miguel Cabrera you see the differences. I didn't include the percentage graph into my post on him, but singles make up just 14-17% of his offensive value, but the home run makes up 9-12% of his value.

In other words, Cabrera is getting 4 times the value from the home run than Polanco is.

A caveat of this graph, however, is that it doesn't show negative value well at all. Polanco has been negative in the net stolen base (which is when you subtract the negative value of the caught stealing from the positive value of the successful steals a player has) component last year (just barely).

How much does his glove make up for the bat?

Polanco's obviously a great defender. UZR likes him (5th best at 2nd base the last 3 years) and the fans like him (by the way, have you voted in the Fans Scouting Report? Balloting closes at the end of the World Series, so go vote now! Tigers fans have only submitted 67 ballots). But what makes up his value in the field (all runs below are compared to the position average, since that's what UZR grades against)?

ErrR is Error Runs (or, runs saved off of Errors made. Make few errors, you'll save more runs), RngR is Range Runs (or, runs saved off of the players range. If you get to more baseballs, you save more runs), and DPR is Double Play Runs (or, the runs that have been saved by him through double plays. If you turn more double plays, you save more runs). Polanco's been good at everything, except for that blip in 2008 in double play runs (aberration). He saved 12 runs in the field in 2009. Even with the increased offense of the keystone corner and Polanco's struggles at the dish, he was still just 5 runs below the average AL 2nd baseman in terms of his offense and defense combined. 

What if we tally it all up?

Polanco's been a great trade feather in the cap of General Manager Dave Dombrowski. But, he gets overlooked when compared to guys like Brian Roberts or Ian Kinsler because he doesn't put up the gaudy offensive numbers. He's got a lot of what I continue to call "invisible" value; better known as defense. Here's his total value in a graph:

 

As with his wOBA component graph, I've got two separate graphs here. The graph on the left has Runs on the y-axis. If you look at his 2009 season, he defense is +12 runs. However, you have to subtract 16 for his offense and he's left at -4 runs compared to the average 2nd baseman. If you want to convert that to wins, well I've done it for you. It's the lower graph with the data table. The graph on the right s the percentage offense and defense makes up of his Total Value.

The reason there is not league or position adjustment in the Total Value graph, like you would see if I were graphing out Wins Above Replacement, is because I've already adjusted those into the data to begin with. The wOBA's are compared to the positional average in the league and UZR is already graded against the league average at that position. So both positional and league adjustments are built-in.

Caveats

-I did not use baserunning. So "Total Value" is misleading. This is, however, only because I couldn't get Baseball Prospectus to show me the past data. This isn't going to affect the data a ton; the most elite base runner is adding on somewhere around 10-15 runs per year, so at the extremes (best/worst baserunners) we're looking at 1-1.5 wins. But for the majority, it's less than a win. Polanco in 2009 would add on 0.66 Runs, so it's not major.

-My weights are a bit different for wOBA than Fangraphs. I believe they scale theirs to the scoring environment of the season. The ones I used are more general.

-Any errors that are potentially there are 100% my mistake, though I don't think there are any.

-I am open to all suggestions to improve my graphs to clarify or highlight something that isn't easily understood. Shoot all emails my way. My email is in the sidebar to the right.