February 10, 2012
Now Available for 2012 THT Essentials: Now Available The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012, an annual "must buy" for all baseball fans, is now shipping. Read this article to learn more about it.
THT's latest e-book Most Recent Comments
A baseball card mystery: Ontiveros and Schmidt (6)
A baseball card mystery: Ken Holtzman’s 1974 Topps card (16) 20,000 days since Herb Score’s injury (1) A baseball card mystery: Bill Sudakis and the strange light (5) Super at the right time (2)  
Lucas Apostoleris
Rich Barbieri John Barten Brian Borawski Vince Caramela Chris Jaffe Brad Johnson Mat Kovach Kevin Lai Myron Logan Chris Lund Bruce Markusen Jeff Moore Troy Patterson Harry Pavlidis Dave Studeman Steve Treder David Wade And here's the full roster. Dish TV Packages options for all televised baseball games.
Or you can search by:
Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets.  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Part of the USA Today Sports Media Group |
Tuesday, February 16, 2010How much will the Sox improve run prevention?Boston’s emphasis on defense this off-season has been well known. New acquisitions Marco Scutaro, Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron all have strong reputations for their defensive abilities. Boston also went out and signed the top free agent pitcher in John Lackey. The question many fans are wondering is just how much they will improve from last year. I decided to look at last season’s UZR numbers (courtesy of fangraphs) from their former player and new signings at each position. At the third base position Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis split time and combined for -12 runs in 2009. Adrian Beltre missed significant time with injuries but still racked up 14.3 UZR, which is good for a 26 run swing. The Sox upgraded at shortstop by singing Marco Scutaro. Scutaro posted a 0.9 UZR in ’09 and Boston’s trio of Alex Gonzalez, Nick Green, and Julio Lugo posted exactly the same number so no net change. Boston brought in Mike Cameron to patrol center field. Cameron’s 2009 UZR of 10 was 28 runs better than Jacoby Ellsbury. Ellsbury had a dismal year in the field according to UZR, which had him at -18.6 runs. Ellsbury will be making to shift to left field where he will take over for Jason Bay. Ellsbury has a small sample size of innings in left although CHONE projects him to be around +6, which is where I would cautiously predict as well. This is a 19 run upgrade over Bay’s -13 UZR last year. All told that is nearly a 74 run difference in defense alone before taking into account the addition of John Lackey to the staff. Lackey himself could keep an additional 30-40 runs off the board. Last year the Red Sox allowed 736 runs on the year. Allowing for some regression to the mean I can see the Red Sox improving their run prevention by 80-100 runs. This would put them around the ballpark of 630-650 runs allowed next season. Granderson, Neyer, and the Yankees defenseRob Neyer had a piece yesterday on his blog about the Yankees current outfield situation. A quick summary: Granderson's defense in center field has gotten mixed reivews, and the Yankees are considering playing him in left. I'm usually a big Rob Neyer fan and agree with most things he writes, but not today. Here is my problem with Neyer's argument: "My guess is that they'll stick with Granderson in center field for practical reasons. The Yankees can always move him to left field. But once there, it might be problematic to return him to center if, say, they signed a new left fielder next winter. It's pretty obvious that the organization doesn't care about defense. That's why they've got all those high-strikeout pitchers. They can carry Granderson's decent glove in center for at least one season and probably more." Neyer just spent the whole article talking about the Yankees potentially moving Granderson to left field, and then said that the Yankees don't care about defense. Why would the organization even be discussing the option of moving Granderson to left if the team didn't care about defense? The entire point of moving him to left would be to improve their defense. The answer to this question depends heavily on the actual defensive abilities of Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner. Both players have question marks surrounding their respective defensive performances. Objective measures haven't been kind to Granderson the last two seasons, but more subjective measurements tell a more positive story. Scouts would be extremely valuable in determining the truth here. Gardner has too small of a sample size to draw conclusions from UZR, but he has rated positively so far, and Sean Smith's Total Zone has agreed. If Gardner is the elite defensive center fielder many believe he is, then making the switch could make sense. A center fielder gets more opportunities over the course of a season than a left fielder, and those opportunities should go to the better defender. Keep in mind, though, that if Brett Gardner doesn't hit well, then things could change quickly. If Gardner builds on his solid rookie campaign, then the outfield switch would probably remain in place. But if Gardner regresses and begins to struggle, Granderson then has to move back to center field, with Randy Winn filling the left field spot. Winn is 35 years old, has never been rated too highly in center field according to UZR, and hasn't been a regular at the position since 2004. In short, Randy Winn shouldn't be playing center field on this team. It should be pretty interesting to see how this decision plays out over the course of the spring. (As an aside, why does Neyer question the Yankees acquisition and development of high-strikeout pitchers? Aren't those are the kind of pitchers that every team wants?) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||