Other factors 1, numbers behind numbers 0

I’m not disagreeing with anything you wrote - it seems that he’s not playing hard out there and, shockingly, the Royals D set up is poor - but at the same time you’re using one inning of one game to show your point but attack the Royals for using a larger sample size to come to thier (opposite) view.

Ian,

There is no “larger sample size” that agrees with Dayton Moore.  Only using fielding percentage as a measure of defense could have been a defense of getting Betancourt and we all know FD% is a flawed stat.

As a SS Betancourt has cost his teams 6.5 runs every 150 defensive games according to UZR/150, but in 2008 and 2009 his UZR/150 has gone to -12.7 and -18.8.

Not only is he bad, but getting worse.  According to Fangraphs his value stands at ($-6.8) for 2009 so far.  That is third worst in the league behind only Jose Guillen and Brian Giles.

Ian,

Here’s the comment I made in a thread about this post at the Book blog:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/the_enemy_among_us/

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I don’t think any of the three ground balls in the shortstop area were simple plays.  But it was frustrating as both a Royals fan and a Bannister fan to see all three go for hits in an inning where Bannister was already struggling with his control and needing all the help he could get from his defense.

My impression is that an average defensive shortstop could have turned two of the three balls into outs.  That would have saved a couple runs and probably kept Bannister in the game.

I didn’t intend this as analytical piece.  It was more of a commentary on three separate issues that had been percolating in my brain and were brought together by watching the game last night.

1) Bannister has transformed into a groundball pitcher.  This seems like a good thing; however it means he is more dependent on his infield defense.  It’s unfortunate his GM just acquired a poor defender at SS.

2) I was curious about Dayton Moore’s comments about defense, as represented by the widely-noted quote, “The defensive statistics - I still really don’t understand how some of those statistics are evaluated, I really don’t. When you watch baseball games every single day, its very apparent who can play defensively and who can’t.”

Last night I finally got to listen to the whole Moore interview.  I think he’s gotten short shrift in the perception of his one comment taken out its context in the whole interview.  The interviewer basically asked him (paraphrased), “Sabermetricians are saying that you made a bad trade because you got a shorstop that is bad defensively and has a bad on base percentage.  Is that true?” And Moore’s response (again paraphrased), “Statistics are just one thing we consider.  Defensive stats don’t capture everything.  There are other factors like defensive positioning.  I trust what my scouts had to say about Betancourt having good defensive skills.  OBP is just one facet offense, Betancourt has had above average power for a SS in the past.” I’m not sure I agree with all that on balance, but it doesn’t make him out to be as stupid as the previous widely-quoted excerpt does.

3) I have been curious about measuring Yuniesky Betancourt’s defense.  I know that what I saw last night was a very small sample size—only three ground balls.  So I don’t feel that I really know much more about his defense than I did before.  But in that small sample size, my “scouting” impressions of Betancourt were very poor.  Either he just has very limited range, or he’s not trying very hard.  Callaspo was certainly moving around the infield much, much faster than Betancourt.  On the first ball hit by Ellis, I didn’t necessarily expect Betancourt to get to it, but I was disappointed that he didn’t even get within 15 feet of it.