As commonsense as this is, it has been shown in a study that good team fielding defense in the regular season is related to playoff success. As noted previously, Baseball Prospectus, in its book, "Baseball Between the Numbers", Chapter 9.3, "Why Billy Beane's S**t Doesn't Work In The Playoffs," studied the issue of success in the playoffs, and found that good fielding defense, using their proprietary measure, is significantly associated with team success in the playoffs, from 1972 to 1995. Thus, if any team wants to maximize their chances in the playoffs, you have to have good team fielding defense.
Up The Middle
Furthermore, there is the old truism in baseball that you want to have strong defense up the middle: catcher, secondbaseman, shortstop, and centerfielder. This is also commonsense as well.
Let's examine the Giants defense in 2018, and looking forward to 2019. Obviously the catcher is key defensively because he handles each and every pitch. Cannot have passed balls or a lot of wild pitches that get away. Plus they handle the pitchers and the pitch selection as well. And has to be able to throw out base stealers on a regular basis.
Thus defense is key at catching, and hence why Posey has been kept there, and why the Giants selected Joey Bart, an excellent college defender, who hopefully can take over for Posey in 2020-21. Also probably why Zaidi has not re-signed Hundley, his defense is pretty poor, and Aramis Garcia was pretty good in limited play last season, as well as showing flexibility by playing well at 1B. And he has acquired a couple of good defensive catchers in Erik Kratz and Steven Vogt (passed to minors to start season).
Both 2B and SS have a lot more assists and putouts than the 3B, over 50% more balls handled each. Hence why Panik and Crawford has been steady starters, and why Panik is suddenly not, when his defense took a dip (as well as his hitting, to be fair). But his off-season program appears to have worked to return him to prior spryness. Solarte is the new MI bench player.
Obviously, 1B handles a lot more balls than the other infielders, but the vast majority of them are throws from the other infielders straight (for the most part) to him, not fast grounders hit to him, particularly since most hitters are right-handers and most hitters pull the ball to their side of the field. Still, more important than 3B, plus the Giants under Sabean has focused on elite 1B defenders in Snow and Belt. 1B might be the exception to the up the middle rule, for the Giants.
In the outfield, the centerfielder gets over 100 more balls to handle than either of the corner outfielders, over 30% more balls to handle. In addition, the centerfielder is usually the quarterback of the outfielder, directing the other outfielders to certain positions, depending on the tendencies of the hitter and how the pitcher plans on attacking that hitter. Furthermore, in ATT, with that huge right-center "Death Valley" gap, that gives the CF more real estate to cover in the outfield, requiring more defensively out of the centerfielder in ATT. It also demands more out of the rightfielder as well, which is why there is talk sometimes this off-season of the Giants under Zaidi getting a CF-level defender in RF. Duggar, who showed elite fielding in 2018 per StatCast should man CF well, and Zaidi recently acquired Michael Reed, a superb defensive CF-capable outfielder, who got an out at 3B the other day.
Thus, if it is important to have great fielding defense, then it is that much more important to have strong defense up the middle because they handle the most batted balls among the fielders. Obviously, this is more important for pitchers who put more balls into play, but people need to remember that even the pitchers with a lot of strikeouts and walks, who put less balls into play, still have the majority of plays (and outs) happening out on the field via a batted ball.
Good defense is paramount, and great defense up the middle is what you shoot for in putting together a successful baseball playoff team, which allows the team to roster better hitters who are poor defenders, at the corner positions..
No comments:
Post a Comment