After Troy’s article on Ellsbury’s impending shift to left field, some feedback from our readers had some questions about some of the reasons for Ellsbury’s decline in defense this year. Peter Gammons brought up a small story about how Rickey Henderson felt his basestealing affected his performance in centerfield.. yet no where else.
Since it’s the holiday season, I figured why not answer one of our commentor’s question: Is their any data showing that excellent base stealers predictably decline defensively?
Now, collecting this data is not the easiest study I’ve tried. Defensive statistics and qualification per position can sometimes be tough to obtain. Outfielders tend to shift positions more frequently, even over a small sample of years. Defense analysis is something I intend to look into more this year, but to start, here’s a simple look at the past two years of “primary” centerfielders.
2009 Centerfielders
| Name | Team | G | AB | SB | CS | AVG | UZR/150 |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | Red Sox | 153 | 624 | 70 | 12 | 0.301 | -18.3 |
| Michael Bourn | Astros | 157 | 606 | 61 | 12 | 0.285 | 8.7 |
| Nyjer Morgan | - – - | 120 | 469 | 42 | 17 | 0.307 | 40.5 |
| B.J. Upton | Rays | 144 | 560 | 42 | 14 | 0.241 | 11.8 |
| Matt Kemp | Dodgers | 159 | 606 | 34 | 8 | 0.297 | 3.1 |
| Scott Podsednik | White Sox | 132 | 537 | 30 | 13 | 0.304 | 1.7 |
| Dexter Fowler | Rockies | 135 | 433 | 27 | 10 | 0.266 | -20.3 |
| Shane Victorino | Phillies | 156 | 620 | 25 | 8 | 0.292 | -4.2 |
| Alex Rios | - – - | 149 | 582 | 24 | 5 | 0.247 | -3.7 |
| Denard Span | Twins | 145 | 578 | 23 | 10 | 0.311 | -7.4 |
| Curtis Granderson | Tigers | 160 | 631 | 20 | 6 | 0.249 | 1.6 |
| Nate McLouth | - – - | 129 | 507 | 19 | 6 | 0.256 | 8.2 |
| Torii Hunter | Angels | 119 | 451 | 18 | 4 | 0.299 | -2.1 |
| Vernon Wells | Blue Jays | 158 | 630 | 17 | 4 | 0.26 | -18.7 |
| Franklin Gutierrez | Mariners | 153 | 565 | 16 | 5 | 0.283 | 27.1 |
| Grady Sizemore | Indians | 106 | 436 | 13 | 8 | 0.248 | -4 |
| Adam Jones | Orioles | 119 | 473 | 10 | 4 | 0.277 | -4.1 |
| Melky Cabrera | Yankees | 154 | 485 | 10 | 2 | 0.274 | 2.3 |
| Marlon Byrd | Rangers | 146 | 547 | 8 | 4 | 0.283 | -9.5 |
| Mike Cameron | Brewers | 149 | 544 | 7 | 3 | 0.25 | 10.3 |
| Kosuke Fukudome | Cubs | 146 | 499 | 6 | 10 | 0.259 | -18.1 |
| Aaron Rowand | Giants | 144 | 499 | 4 | 1 | 0.261 | 1.5 |
| Colby Rasmus | Cardinals | 147 | 474 | 3 | 1 | 0.251 | 3.4 |
The first thing I wanted to do is see if there’s any correlation between the amount of steals a player racks up and his UZR/150. There’s effectively none in this 2009 sample. A 0.01 factor shows that the amount of steals by a player has no real connection to the player’s defense.
Now, in my opinion, a speedster should always have an edge in outfield defense. It would make sense that a fast player has a huge advantage in his effective range over a player that runs like Kevin Millar.
Well, that’s only one year. So I pulled up the 2008 Centerfielders and saw if anything else was present there.
| Name | Team | G | AB | SB | CS | AVG | UZR/150 |
| Willy Taveras | Rockies | 133 | 479 | 68 | 7 | 0.251 | -3 |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | Red Sox | 145 | 554 | 50 | 11 | 0.28 | 6.9 |
| B.J. Upton | Rays | 145 | 531 | 44 | 16 | 0.273 | 11.1 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | Mariners | 162 | 686 | 43 | 4 | 0.31 | 14.6 |
| Michael Bourn | Astros | 138 | 467 | 41 | 10 | 0.229 | 2 |
| Grady Sizemore | Indians | 157 | 634 | 38 | 5 | 0.268 | 0.9 |
| Shane Victorino | Phillies | 146 | 570 | 36 | 11 | 0.293 | 7.8 |
| Matt Kemp | Dodgers | 155 | 606 | 35 | 11 | 0.29 | 2 |
| Carlos Gomez | Twins | 153 | 577 | 33 | 11 | 0.258 | 16.1 |
| Alex Rios | Blue Jays | 155 | 635 | 32 | 8 | 0.291 | 23.8 |
| Carlos Beltran | Mets | 161 | 606 | 25 | 3 | 0.284 | 8.8 |
| Lastings Milledge | Nationals | 138 | 523 | 24 | 9 | 0.268 | -20.1 |
| Nate McLouth | Pirates | 152 | 597 | 23 | 3 | 0.276 | -14.3 |
| Torii Hunter | Angels | 146 | 551 | 19 | 5 | 0.278 | -13 |
| Mike Cameron | Brewers | 120 | 444 | 17 | 5 | 0.243 | 15.6 |
| Chris Young | Diamondbacks | 160 | 625 | 14 | 5 | 0.248 | 0.6 |
| Curtis Granderson | Tigers | 141 | 553 | 12 | 4 | 0.28 | -9.4 |
| David DeJesus | Royals | 135 | 518 | 11 | 8 | 0.307 | -23.5 |
| Adam Jones | Orioles | 132 | 477 | 10 | 3 | 0.27 | 11.5 |
| Josh Hamilton | Rangers | 156 | 624 | 9 | 1 | 0.304 | -17.7 |
| Skip Schumaker | Cardinals | 153 | 540 | 8 | 2 | 0.302 | -13.5 |
| Aaron Rowand | Giants | 152 | 549 | 2 | 4 | 0.271 | -6.1 |
This season, the correlation of stolen bases versus UZR/150 was much higher, 0.410. My guess lies in each end of the spectrum. Five players all with poor steals totals (minus Adam Jones) all with abysmal UZR/150s. While Milledge and McLouth ruined the positive values in the upper half of the list, we started to see at least some players with very high steal totals turn in above average UZR/150 ratings.
Still, however, it looks as though as a player’s steals increase, his possible UZR/150 rating also increases. I used the 2009 data again and plotted a trendline over all the data.
2009 Stolen Bases v. UZR/150 for Centerfielders
While not highly significant, the trend does have a positive slope.
Now, I don’t think this is anything ground breaking. Like I said earlier, it’s only natural to assume that given two equal players, the faster player should be able to cover more ground. I found Gammons’ claim very odd, personally. We’d have to find some centerfielders more similar to Henderson, and check their steals vs UZR/150 over their entire career and see how things shake out. Does their defense suffer as their steals increase?
This, however, is a good first step. The next time I revisit this, we’ll look at a few older centerfielders with long careers, like Torii Hunter, Mike Cameron, and others, and see how their steals totals have affected their defense over the years.
As a quick preview, here’s Carlos Beltran’s steal totals and UZR/150 ratings since 2002 (when UZR/150 was collected) to present:
2002: 35 / 9.2
2003: 41 / 10.6
2004: 42 / 3.6
2005: 17 / -6.9
2006: 18 / 5.7
2007: 23 / 0.9
2008: 25 / 8.8
2009: 11 / -8.5
Beltran’s two negative UZR/150 values were during his first year as a Met, and his injury riddled 2009.
I’m still standing by my claim that these two things are pretty much unrelated, and that players like Rickey and Ellsbury are better defenders outside of centerfield simply because they are easier defensive positions to play. However, the more layers on this onion I can peel back, the better. If anything, maybe we can end up finding something else to shed a little more light on how to analyze defense.
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I think you need to Emily Litella this column. Gammons was talking about how the combination of base-stealing and centerfield is tough on your *offense*. A fast sprinter who's tired can still run pretty fast. But a hitter whose strength is in his legs is going to have his power sapped a little if he's both playing cf and stealing 70 bases.
We already saw that the move to LF did not significantly improve Rickey's offense, so we already showed their was no effect in this case of decreasing offense either. Gammons quote was just another explanation from a player trying to give an explanation for what was happening on the field that they don't understand.
This was similar to the claim from Ellsbury this year that pitchers were not letting him get walks because they were throwing him to many pitches in the zone. Yet again when we look at the numbers his 50.5% pitches in the zone ranks 30th in the entire league.
Troy, I don't understand. If Ellsbury ranked 30th in the league in pitches in the strike zone, doesn't that prove his point (that pitchers are throwing strikes to avoid walking him)?
Sorry should have been more clear. In 2008 his 53.0% would have ranked near the top 5 of the league so in 2009 his number of pitches in the zone actually dropped.
While they were still attacking the zone against him he was seeing more pitches out of the zone than he had previously. This only resulted in a small uptick in BB% to 7.3% in 2009.
wouldn't the high % of strikes also be an indicator that pitchers aren't afraid of ellsbury doing damage with the bat and feel they can 'attack' him b/c he's not a very good hitter?
Well, what I responding to was this comment by user "Dante":
"I dont know if he's right about stealing bases taking its toll on CFs, but I'd imagine it would be more of a cumulative thing that happens over years of wear and tear..
Id like to see how the defense of base-stealing CFs develops in years 1-4 of MLB full time service "
I also found Gammons/Henderson's comments odd, but I think you are on the wrong track. He quoted Henderson talking about trauma to the legs and hands from sliding or diving into second base. Center fielders have more territory to cover and reach full speed running more often than left fielders, especially in Fenway. So they have more opportunities to throw their bodies around, diving for balls or crashing into walls. Again, this is especially true at Fenway, where left field is a tall monolith which is easy to judge by the track, while the walls in center jut every which way, with different heights and no clear way to judge distance once your feet leave the grass. I do hope the Sox move Ellsbury to left, although I'll miss his athleticism. But I can see Gammons point about preserving his body, especially since Ellsbury plays defense with such abandon.
You also are using a poor metric to determine defense. Sure it is probably about the only one available, but it is subjective and the swings from year to year don't make sense. A player doesn't lose all his skill in one year. Not only that the wear and tear is over years not season to season. Showing two seasons is not statistically significant doesn't mean anything. The tread may go where you want it to, but it isn't going to mean anything because the anomalies in the numbers you used alone negate any real value in that short sample.
You probably should look at league average field coverage per fielder (how much ground does each fielder typically cover), and then look at percentage of balls fielded within their coverage area. This would show which fielder is getting the highest amount of work in the field. Also you would want to see how much overlap in coverage is there and this would show how many times a player had to jump toward the ball to backup the other fielder. The center fielder has two backup coverage areas, while the other two have obviously only one. All that running around has to take a tole on the player. So Gammon's assertion that moving the left would keep Ellsbury fresher on offense isn't far fetched, would this translate into meaningful improvement in his overall numbers however, it is hard to say.
Exactly.
This is part of the problem with this study. First, UZR/150 only goes back to 2002, and for a lot of the players we're talking about, they've only been playing for 2-3 years full time and have even less UZR data to work with.
Also, I'm not particularly comfortable using stolen bases as a metric, something that can fluctuate without skill being involved from season to season, without something like BABIP to balance it out (in terms of AVG).
So, I wanted to show a quick example of what we can work on now, and possibly expand it to just a handful of players, where we'll be able to use more amounts of data.
Someday I want to live in a world where analysts stop acting like playing baseball is more difficult that "The Battle of the Bulge…"
What?