More Jarrod Washburn

UPDATE, 6:33 PM: In replying to the comments, here's Washburn's Hit Tracker Online card. True home run distances of the 10 HR's allowed (one wasn't measured and it was in Anaheim) are as follows, starting with the most recent:

355
409
392
354
360
439
441
447
382
450

And of those, only the 441 foot bomb from Cuddyer, 360 foot bomb from Mike Sweeney, and the 354 foot shot from Kenji Johjima were labled "JE" which is "Just Enough's." You can't add the Carlos Pena homer in there (355-feet) because that was roped right down the right-field line.

As far as the "short porch" (in comparison to Safeco), it is true because Safeco kills right-handed hitters. That said, he's had only 4 homers allowed to left field, and of those, only the Sweeney and Johjima homers were classified as "lucky" or "just enough." Cuddyer's was barely out to dead centerfield.

His average true distance and speed off the bat is 402.9 feet -- 403 -- and 103.71 MPH. Does anyone know the average true distance and SOB in the major leagues this year?

In prepping for an article to write for Beyond the Boxscore (and is moving very slowly at the moment), I've compiled the UZR totals from Fangraphs for both infield and outfield defense for each team.

Some clues Washburn would regress in Detroit:

Seattle infield defense: +9 runs above average

Detroit infield defense: +17 runs above average

Seattle outfield defense: +56 runs above average

Detroit outfield defense: +18 runs above average

Detroit's defense has been upper echelon this year, but the outfield defense doesn't compare to the M's. Heck, Franklin Guttierrez has been worth 20.9 runs this year in the outfield by his lonesome. Yes, one player has saved more runs above the average defender for the position than all of Detroit's outfield defenders combined.

Add in that Safeco Field favors left-handed hitters and kills right-handed power bats (or right-handed bats in general) while Detroit suppresses both a bit (not as much as Safeco), and the BABIP factor and Washburn was screaming regression to the mean in a big time way. Unfortunately, we gave up a back-end starter under club control until 2014 for him.

Fans Scouting Report

Tom Tango's been running his Fans Scouting Report for the last few years and he's got the balloting open again. Hopefully every blogger links to it, as it's a great wait to supplement the UZR defensive data that's cited daily around the blogosphere.

Before you vote, please keep this in mind:

Try to judge 'average' not as an average player at that position, but an average player at any position. If you think that Willie Bloomquist has an average arm, then mark him as average, regardless if you've seen him play 2B, SS, 3B, LF, or CF.

DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!
DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!
DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!

Go vote on the Tigers (or whatever team you watch the most) now!

The Hardball Times Fielding: 3rd base

In my third part of the series of turning defensive data from The Hardball Times into a runs value moves over to the Hot Corner.

First, team leaders:

Team	3B
LAA	19
MIN	18
WAS	17
OAK	14
SEA	13
DET	13
TOR	13
LAN	6
MIL	4
ATL	3
COL	2
HOU	2
NYN	1
TB	0
SF	-1
PIT	-2
ARI	-2
STL	-3
KC	-6
CHN	-6
SD	-6
FLA	-7
CIN	-7
BAL	-9
CLE	-9
PHI	-10
TEX	-12
NYA	-13
CHA	-16
BOS	-17

Chone Figgins has really been a stud for the Angels this year. Detroit comes in at 6th and you know that's a big thanks to the pickin' and grinnin' of Brandon Inge.

Individual top/bottom 5:

Last	First	Tm	Runs
Figgins	Chone	LAA	18
Zimmerman	Ryan W	WAS	17
Crede	Joe	MIN	16
Hannahan	Jack	OAK	15
Inge	Brandon	DET	13

Peralta	Jhonny	CLE	-10
Fields	Josh	CHA	-11
Feliz	Pedro	PHI	-12
Young	Michael	TEX	-14
Lowell	Mike	BOS	-15

Oh, look. That old Tigers killer, Joe Crede up there. Still as good as ever with the mitt. Think Kenny Williams is hating life after giving up Crede to free agency so he could give Josh Fields the chance to shine? Fields is at -0.6 WAR this year, while Joe Crede's posted 2.1 WAR already. Maybe the attendance issues for the White Sox could be solved with, you know, better players? Worth noting that the Mariners recently picked up Jack Hannahan to replace Adrian Beltre who is out until Mid-August with a right shoulder injury. Hannahan's a former Detroit Tiger farm hand who was dealt to Oakland for Jason Perry. Perry is a minor leaguer who was a 6th round draft pick by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2002. He was then dealt to Oakland to complete an earlier trade between the two clubs. We then released him March 28th, 2008.

So, to recap: we gave up a Jack Hannahan who's defense has made him a total 3 WAR player over the course of the last 3 seasons for a guy we ended up releasing. Yikes. Obviously it's not a big deal with Gerald Laird gunning down every potential baserunner in sight so Brandon Inge can gobble everything up at 3rd, but these are the types of shrewd moves that the Billy Beane's of the world make that the Dave Dombrowski's of the world don't.

Oh, and apparently moving Jhonny Peralta off the shortstop position didn't really do anything for the Indians via this metric. Then again, Brandon Inge was also a negative fielder at 3rd in his first season there. Peralta, though, isn't as athletic as Inge.

The Hardball Times Fielding: 2nd base

In part two of turning the Hardball Times defensive data into runs series, I'm looking at 2nd base. First, the team totals at the keystone corner:

Team	2B
TOR	20
MIL	16
TB	10
LAA	8
ARI	8
TEX	7
NYA	6
BAL	5
CIN	5
PHI	3
WAS	2
BOS	1
LAN	1
SF	1
DET	0
HOU	-2
COL	-2
CHN	-3
NYN	-4
STL	-5
PIT	-6
OAK	-6
SEA	-6
KC	-7
CHA	-7
SD	-7
ATL	-8
FLA	-8
CLE	-9
MIN	-14

Here's one disagreement that the THT numbers have with UZR. Fangraphs has the Milwaukee Brewers as the best fielding team at 2nd base, while the THT numbers puts them 2nd. UZR puts the Brewers at 8.8 runs which rounds up to 9. Here, I've got them at 16 runs. The big difference is with teams like Toronto who I've got at being +20 runs at 2nd, while UZR has them at just +4.3.

Top/Bottom 5 in 2009:

Last	First	Tm	Runs
Hill	Aaron W	TOR	18
Zobrist	Ben T	TB	9
Weeks	Rickie	MIL	9
Kendrick	Howie	LAA	9
Phillips	Brandon	CIN	8

Getz	Chris	CHA	-6
Lopez	Jose C	SEA	-6
Uggla	Dan C	FLA	-8
Schumaker	Skip M	STL	-10
Kennedy	Adam	OAK	-10

Here's the individual UZR leaderboard, sorted by total UZR. The THT numbers aren't as big of a fan of Placido Polanco as UZR is -- -1 runs defensively in my system and +6.8 in UZR.

As always with fielding, big caveats are sample sizes. A full seasons worth of defensive data is roughly 2-3 months of offensive data's worth. So, it takes a long, long time to stabilize. Also UZR, is much more advanced then my method, but I find it interesting to compare and contrast the two.

Defense From The Hardball Times For 1st Base

Last year, Myron Logan (former author of Friar Forecast and current author of Another Padres Blog) penned this article at Baseball Analysts about turning Revised Zone Rating into a defensive runs saved number. After I read it, I contacted him and he had sent me his spreadsheet and I used it as well to calculate defensive data from 2008.

Now, Fangraphs publishes UZR data, so why bother? Well, because it's very simple to do this with just a little Excel know-how and I find defensive data very interesting because of the year-to-year fluctuations and how it is so far from the preciseness of offensive data.

Well, I've updated the numbers through July 10th, 2009. First, lets look at all teams. The following is sorted by total runs saved defensively:

Team	Total
PIT	62
DET	42
SEA	39
TB	38
SF	33
ARI	33
ATL	21
LAA	19
HOU	16
COL	16
MIL	8
TEX	7
STL	6
TOR	6
OAK	6
CHN	-1
WAS	-2
MIN	-2
CIN	-5
NYN	-8
NYA	-9
LAN	-11
PHI	-13
FLA	-16
BAL	-17
KC	-18
CLE	-21
SD	-25
BOS	-25
CHA	-29

For reference, the top/bottom five teams last year were:

STL	60
ATL	59
HOU	59
PHI	59
NYN	46

TEX	-34
BAL	-60
NYA	-81
MIN	-90
KC	-96

So, defense can make quite the difference in a team contending or merely being mediocre. For instance, if the Royals were on a Texas Rangers level of defense -- about -30 runs defensively -- they could've added nearly 3-4 wins to their total by just being a better defensive ball club.

Detroit's done this. In 2008, by this metric, the Tigers were -33 runs defensively. This year, however, they're already at +42 runs. That's a difference of 75 runs -- or 7-8 wins worth.

I plan on making this a series (taking a cue from Myron over at Another Padres Blog), and looking at each position's top and bottom five fielders, plus the Tigers players.

The first position I'll look at is First Base. Here's how all the teams in the league have done thus far at first base defensively:

Team	1B
STL	12
ATL	12
CLE	10
CHA	9
BOS	8
PIT	8
SF	7
KC	4
LAA	4
DET	3
NYN	2
CHN	1
TOR	1
NYA	0
HOU	0
SEA	0
MIN	-1
PHI	-1
ARI	-2
SD	-2
WAS	-3
FLA	-4
BAL	-5
TB	-5
LAN	-5
CIN	-9
TEX	-10
MIL	-11
OAK	-11
COL	-12

You've got to like Detroit being in the top third in the league. Here's the individual leaders:

Last	First	Tm	11
Pujols	Albert	STL	10
Konerko	Paul	CHA	9
Kotchman	Casey	ATL	7
Youkilis	Kevin E	BOS	7

Davis	Chris	TEX	-7
Giambi	Jason	OAK	-7
Hernandez	Ramon	CIN	-10
Helton	Todd	COL	-11
Fielder	Prince	MIL	-11

Albert Pujols is pretty good at baseball. But, we saw the Tigers are a positive fielding team at 1st base. Miguel Cabrera comes in at +2 runs defensively. Jeff Larish is +1 and Ryan Raburn is average at 0 runs.

One quick note: If you see any funky math where some things should add up to a certain number, but they don't (more specifically, in the team totals) it's because I'm rounding to the nearest whole number. Tom Tango's made some comments that make sense to me about how to present defensive data: it's such an inexact science when compared to offensive data, that just rounding to the nearest whole number makes it less precise then rounding to one or two decimal places. For instance, Albert Pujols is actually at 11.35 runs defensively, but we just put him at 11 runs saved defensively.