Lies and Damned Lies: Selected Twins Statistics

by Jon Marthaler on Jul 7, 2010 1:13 PM EDT in By the Numbers

The season's just past half over. With the midpoint past, here are a few selected numbers for the Twins in 2010.

Joe Mauer's line for the year: .303/.377/.432. Former Twins catcher Brian Harper's line for his six seasons in Minnesota, 1988-1993: .306/.342/.431. (Harper walked half as often but also struck out half as often.) Joe Mauer in 2010: Brian Harper with sideburns?
Justin Morneau leads the AL in Wins Above Replacement with 5.2 (according to Baseball Reference). Three other Twins have been worth more than a win apiece: Mauer, Orlando Hudson, and Jim Thome. Morneau is the only player in either league above 4.5.
Morneau is currently on pace to set career highs in hits, doubles, walks, AND strikeouts.
Last place on the current team in Wins Above Replacement: Michael Cuddyer, -0.7.
Depending on who you ask, Delmon Young has been either exactly as valuable (0.8 to 0.8, Baseball Reference) or slightly less valuable (1.2 to 1.4, FanGraphs) than Nick Punto, in terms of Wins Above Replacement.
Over a quarter of Jim Thome's fly balls have gone over the fence (25.6%). Among players with 100 plate appearances or more, only Tyler Colvin of the Cubs has a higher rate in the majors.
FanGraphs says that, in terms of Win Probability Added, Francisco Liriano is your most valuable Twins pitcher. Jon Rauch is third. Second? Brian Duensing.
Liriano, at 2.88, leads the majors in xFIP. Ubaldo Jimenez? 3.74. (Stephen Strasburg, after six starts, is at 1.88.) Second place amongst qualified pitchers is Cliff Lee, at 3.25.
Somehow, Liriano also has the worst BABIP against among qualified pitchers, at .352. Yet just one out of every forty fly balls he gives up have become homers, second best in the league.
Kevin Slowey has the worst ground ball / fly ball ratio in the league (among qualified pitchers), at 0.55.
23.4% of the balls that get put in play against Scott Baker are line drives, third-worst in the majors.
FanGraphs also says that, in terms of Ultimate Zone Rating per 150 games, Cuddyer costs the team runs this year if you put him at first base (-4.6), second base (-37.6), third base (-6.6), or in right field (-16.5).
Another UZR stat: Delmon Young, traditionally the worst- or second-worst defensive left fielder in the majors, has only been the sixth-worst this year. At -5.4, he's right between Austin Kearns and Chris Coghlan in the list of qualified left fielders.

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Punto/Young

Love it! Good luck finding someone who doesn’t think that is s typo.

by Joshua P on Jul 7, 2010 1:32 PM EDT reply actions

Young

Im suprised his D is still rated that low he has miss played a few routes but he has also made multiple run saving assists with perfect throws to the plate or 3rd.

by holymackerel on Jul 7, 2010 2:48 PM EDT reply actions

I'm surprised too, but he has made a massive improvement at least.

Baseball reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.-Terence Mann/James Earl Jones in FoD

by Twins33 on Jul 7, 2010 3:05 PM EDT up reply actions

Is WAR overly dependant on UZR 150?

It’s the only reason I can think of that would make Nick Punto rate higher than Delmon Young.

Lil’ hep Adam?

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Jul 7, 2010 3:11 PM EDT reply actions

WAR is calculated based on total runs above replacement, both offensive and defensive, and FanGraphs uses UZR for the defense component (if you check a player’s page on FanGraphs, the “Fld” value immediately preceding his WAR will be the same as his UZR). Because of this, Delmon’s UZR is -2.3, so he’s apparently been worth 14-15 runs above replacement level offensively – I can’t find that exact value on his FanGraphs page, but I did find that he has a 7.1 wRAA (Runs Above Average, calculated using his wOBA), and I’m assuming that there’s another calculation comparing his wOBA to his position’s replacement level to figure his Runs Above Replacement and plug that into WAR.

Question: Is there a replacement level for defense, or is league average considered to be replacement level? UZR is measured against the league average, which seems like it might underrate players’ WAR if there is an actual “replacement level”. Common sense tells me that most “replacement” players are replacement level because of their bats, not their gloves, but it seems at the very least like an inconsistent standard unless there’s some evidence that replacement-quality players are likely to provide league average defense.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on Jul 7, 2010 3:28 PM EDT up reply actions

league average fielding is considered replacement level

but a quote I heard one time is really important to understand:

“there are no replacement level fielders, or replacement level hitters, just replacement level players”

So, it doesn’t really matter where you put the “replacement runs”, just that you put them into the WAR calculation. An average player is 20 (give or take) runs better than a replacement player over the course of a season. It doesn’t matter if this is due to fielding, hitting, or some of both. Rondell White and Alexi Casilla might both be replacement-level, even if Casilla is an average fielder and a horrible hitter, and White is an average hitter and a horrible fielder.

Anyway, the way WAR is calculated (or at least the way it is broken down on fangraphs) is

Hitting runs above AVERAGE + fielding runs above AVERAGE + Position adjustment + replacement runs

replacement runs are the difference between what an average player and a replacement player produce, given the number of PAs.

"Pinch-bunters don't have a ton of value, even with the Twins"

by Steven Ellingson on Jul 7, 2010 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Great summary

Thanks for the info – I hadn’t thought about it that way before, possibly because the first replacement-level stat I encountered, VORP, was offense-only, so I just assumed that offense and defense had their own values.

Do you know where the positional replacement-level adjustments live on the internets? I have vague ideas of about what they should be, and I guess I could calculate them from players’ wRAA and WAR values on FanGraphs, but it would be nice to have the base value for easy reference (and to spare me the math).

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on Jul 7, 2010 5:02 PM EDT up reply actions

The positional adjustments that fangraphs uses, are: (I think!)
c: +12.5
ss: +7.5
cf, 2b, 3b: +2.5
rf, lf: -7.5
1b: -12.5
DH: -17.5

These are in runs per season, though I don’t know how many PA’s go into a season.

"Pinch-bunters don't have a ton of value, even with the Twins"

by Steven Ellingson on Jul 7, 2010 6:08 PM EDT up reply actions

They're debatable also

And in reality they fluctuate over time. Everyone has roughly the same replacement level but if you doublecheck using the actual worst regulars it moves from that baseline.

by DJL44 on Jul 7, 2010 6:23 PM EDT up reply actions

looks like I was right on those

but here it is for future reference
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/position-adjustments/

"Pinch-bunters don't have a ton of value, even with the Twins"

by Steven Ellingson on Jul 7, 2010 6:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Oh, and that's just the positional adjustments

After adding wRAA (batting runs above average), UZR (fielding runs above average), and the positional adjustment, you have RAA – runs above average.

to get to war, you need to add “replacement runs”, to convert it from average to replacement.

Then you have RAR – runs above replacement. Divide by 10 to get WAR.

Or, just look at the bottom of the player page on fangraphs. It has it broken out nicely. In order to do the exact positional and replacement adjustment, you’d need to do a bunch of dividing, since they change with playing time.

"Pinch-bunters don't have a ton of value, even with the Twins"

by Steven Ellingson on Jul 7, 2010 6:34 PM EDT up reply actions