Reason #1 why the Mets will regress

by FTN414 on May 22, 2007 3:00 PM EDT Comment 6 comments

I'm planning on writing a large, in depth piece on the shortcomings the Mets will face going forward, and how their success now is unlikely to be sustained over the course of 162 games, but Jim Baker at BP today made a great point regarding the Mets defense, and that's a good piece for discussion to start.

A teaser of the article

>>>>>Playing with the sort function on the BP stats page, we find one of the contributing factors to the Mets' success in 2007: a whale of a Defensive Efficiency outlier. There, amongst the hitters park teams of The Golden Age of the All-Mighty Hurlermen, are the latest installment of the Metropolitans at .741.

This is good for the 23rd-best team mark since 1959--the earliest year included in the BP play-by-play database. (All further references refer to "since 1959" unless otherwise noted.) The most recent team above them are the 1981 Tigers, and the only team in the top 100 that is anywhere near them in vintage are the 2001 Mariners (59th at .735).

Are the Mets really this good? Yes and no. There are a couple of things at play here. For one, scoring is depressed, so a number of current teams are insinuating themselves into a Defensive Efficiency level that few post-strike teams have managed before. Looking at just the seasons since 1994, seven of the top 20 "Def-Effs" belong to 2007 clubs. The big league average so far is .705. Compare this with 1999, when the average was 10 points lower.<<<<<<<

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6260

So, they are benefiting from a marvelous run of team defense, but if we look at the core, is this type of run sustainable? My guess is, no. For this, I'll use a simple, easily calculatable metric, FRAR per Game. For the main players, I'll list their 2007 FRAR/G, then their 2006 number, followed by their career number. Remember, the higher the better, as FRAR calculates how many runs above replacement player the fielder saved

Lo Duca, 2007: .30/G
Lo Duca, 2006: .13/G
Lo Duca, TOTL: .19/G

Delgado, 2007: .20/G
Delgado, 2006: .01/G
Delgado, TOTL: .04/G

Easley, 2007: .20/G
Easley, 2006: .22/G (only 9 games played)
Easley, TOTL: .16/G

Reyes, 2007: .31/G
Reyes, 2006: .03/G
Reyes, TOTL: .11/G

Wright, 2007: .05/G
Wright, 2006: .15/G
Wright, TOTL: .10/G

Chavez, 2007: .22/G
Chavez, 2006: .12/G
Chavez, TOTL: .13/G

Beltran, 2007: .32/G
Beltran, 2006: .23/G
Beltran, TOTL: .17/G

Green, 2007: .05/G
Green, 2006: -.02/G
Green, TOTL: .10/G

When you digest this, you realize that everyone in the Mets starting 8, except David Wright, is playing over their head defensively, in some cases, far out of line with their career numbers. Is Carlos Delgado suddenly a gold glove 1B? Probably not....in fact, I know he isn't. However, these strong early season performances are correlating to the luck the Mets have had, and they are just as likely to regress closer to the mean as the season progresses. Reyes and Delgado are the two I think that could move backwards a good bit, and Wright might move in the positive direction, but overall, you should see this even itself out. If not, well, the Mets will be impossible to catch.

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Re: Reason #1 why the Mets will regress

I'm surprised the Mets have been as good as they've been through the early going. Most of what I figured might go wrong for them--a mess in the rotation, regression in the bullpen--hasn't happened. And what has gone wrong--slight offensive decline and/or time missed from the mid-30s guys like Delgado, LoDuca, and Valentin--hasn't hurt them.

John Maine is coming back to earth (4.91 ERA in May, after 1.35 in April), and the back of their rotation is pretty shaky with Pelfrey and the various fill-ins. But Oliver Perez looks like an ace, El Duque (pre-injury) and Glavine are still effective, and their best four relievers have been superb. A little regression in the field isn't likely to reveal all these guys as 5.00-ERA pitchers.

Given that their offense has been a little disappointing overall, I find the Mets pretty scary--and the Phils' prospects of overtaking them close to nonexistant.

by dajafi on May 23, 2007 1:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Your last sentence

I think is unfortunately the truth.

Bleeding Green Nation Philadelphia Eagles Blog

by JasonB on May 23, 2007 2:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Your last sentence

Well, I think there's a higher chance (though still unfortunately not all that great) they overtake the Braves, which I wouldn't have said a month ago. Atlanta's got really two very good starters; one is old, and the other might be overperforming a little. Their best hitter is an injury-prone 35 year-old. They have a couple other guys probably playing over their heads, and they don't have the farm depth they once did. Andruw surely will pick it up, but Ryan Howard presumably will too.

Of course, they've also got a much better manager/GM combo, and if "veteran leadership" counts for anything (and it probably does), they have the edge there as well.

by dajafi on May 23, 2007 2:40 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Reason #1 why the Mets will regress

Defensive performance is underrated, in terms of the impact on individuals and the team. We've all seen how one play can turn the entire momentum of an inning around, for better or worse. If Rowand catches Cabrera's line drive last night, they score 1 run, but the bases are empty with 1 out. Instead, it opened the flood gates and we got pounded into submission. Maybe that's an indictment of the team or Hamels, but Rowand's impact on the inning can't be overstated.

The more plays a guy makes, the more outs he makes for his team, the fewer runs are scored against the team. It's all relative and it's all connected. Billy Beane has begun to exploit the defensive aspect of the game, and I assume others will follow, including the Red Sox. The Mets are lucky so far, as they don't have a ton of guys with solid to awesome defensive profiles, they are just getting performances over their heads from mediocre or below average defenders. When (if) that trend reverses, then you'll see the Mets pitching go in the other direction, and that will reflect in the win column as well.

by FTN414 on May 23, 2007 1:17 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Re: Reason #1 why the Mets will regress

Here is a further illustration of my point, linking defense to pitching. Consider the teams that have made the playoffs since the Wildcard era began, and look at the defensive efficiency and how it relates to ERA. I used real simple methodology here, it's not meant to be super scientific, more just to give you a general idea. I took every playoff team from 1995-2006, found their team DER, their rank in the NL in that category, their team ERA, and their rank in that category as well. I found an average DER for all playoff teams, an average ERA, an average DER rank and an average ERA rank, then found the average difference between the groups. Here are some numbers

Average DER: .705
Average DER Rank: 6th
Average ERA: 3.86
Average ERA Rank: 4th
Average difference in ERA and DER: 3.3 spots

So, for example, the average difference was a little over 3 spots from DER to ERA. So, if you had the best ERA in the league, you normally had the 3rd or 4th best defense, and vice versa. There are outliers, of course. Here are the teams that had a gap of at least 6 spots between their DER and their ERA

HOU, 1999: .680 DER (15th), 3.83 ERA (3rd)
ATL, 2004: .698 DER (11th), 3.74 ERA (1st)
SFG, 2000: .693 DER (12th), 4.21 ERA (4th)
HOU, 2004: .693 DER (14th), 4.05 ERA (6th)
HOU, 1998: .699 DER (9th), 3.50 ERA (2nd)
FLA, 2003: .695 DER (14th), 4.04 ERA (7th)
SDP, 1998: .699 DER (9th), 3.63 ERA (3rd)
CHC, 2003: .700 DER (9th), 3.83 ERA (3rd)

Houston struck me as a mild surprise, but it simply illustrates just how good their pitching was. At some point, I'm going to run a test to see where these teams ranked in terms of strikeouts. Because, as you know, strikeouts do not rely on defensive strength, and can compensate for a poor fielding team.

But that brings us to 2007

NYM, .739 DER (1st), 3.55 ERA (2nd)
CHC, .723 DER (2nd), 4.01 ERA (8th)
SDP, .722 DER (3rd), 3.07 ERA (1st)
WAS, .716 DER (4th), 4.38 ERA (10th)
SFN, .716 DER (4th), 3.87 ERA (6th)
MIL, .708 DER (7th), 3.81 ERA (4th)
ATL, .699 DER (10th), 4.05 ERA (9th)
PHI, .693 DER (11th), 4.58 ERA (14th)

Looking at this, the Phillies have been a bit unlucky, but not really out of line. Chicago actually stands a good chance to improve a bit, as their ERA isn't reflective of their excellent team defense. Washington also seems to have gotten unlucky, but they are also a case of a team that doesn't strike a lot of guys out, so even with a high percentage fielding wise, the low strikeout numbers could be impacting their ERA, and I also suspect they are near the bottom of the league in terms of preventing home runs.

by FTN414 on May 23, 2007 3:00 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Re: Reason #1 why the Mets will regress

I forgot one more on the list above

LAD, 2006: .691 DER (12th), 4.23 ERA (4th)

I looked at K/9 to see if it had any impact on the outliers that I listed in my previous post. Here are those teams and their respective rank in terms of K/9

HOU, 1999: 7.43 (1st)
ATL, 2004: 6.36 (12th)
SFG, 2000: 6.70 (8th)
HOU, 2004: 8.00 (2nd)
HOU, 1998: 7.26 (5th)
FLA, 2003: 7.05 (5th)
SDP, 1998: 7.53 (2nd)
CHC, 2003: 8.68 (1st)
LAD, 2006: 6.58 (10th)

Well, that might give us an idea. 6 of the 9 outliers finished in the top 5 in the league in K/9 rate, which would indicate they were alleviating some of the responsibility from their team defense. Atlanta in 2004 and Los Angeles in 2006 are still outliers, and maybe we can attribute their success to the abject failure of others.

by FTN414 on May 23, 2007 3:54 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs