Tired Legs in Centerfield

[picappgallerysingle id=”3228312″ align=”right”]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.

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.