… summarized one of the world’s top grandmasters, back in 1973. If your position had a slight fracture in the clavicle, he’d consistently reach over and grab you by the trapezius. If you’d lost a little vision in your right eye, he’d gear his pressure to revolve around the left hook. “I like to see ’em squirm,” he gloated after butchering another field of GM’s.
.
.
Interesting discussion — of course — at Seattle Sports Insider. Seriously: would it be okay to put Dayan Viciedo in right field, or would it not? How about Ackley-Ajax-Melky? Would that cost you?
It looks a little odd to have
- LF Decent
- CF Decent
- RF Questionable
across the OF. It looks and feels uncomfortable, in part because we are so used to having at least one reassuring GG candidate out there. “How bad can our OF defense be? We’ve got Ichiro out there.” Or, “we got Condor in right.” Or, “we got James Jones out there for his glove.” You can focus on the “compensator” out there. With an Ackley-AJax-Platoon RF defense out there, it’s sort of melancholy.
But! The M’s will have a K or two on their pitching staff next year. Chris Young’s not coming back. FACT: The more K’s, the less important defense is. James estimated defense to be, what, 20-25% of the game in the year 1906, like this:
- Offense = 50%
- Pitching = 28%
- Defense = 22%
Now that’s more like pitching = 34% and fielding = 16%.
Like Jonezie pointed out, all the FA bats came off the board first in December 2014, like the NFL draft seeing 27 offensive players taken in the first round. Teams can’t score on anybody with this strikeout context. James says, “you could make rules to reduce the K rate by 20%, and it would simply move baseball back into historical norms.”
Therefore: you HAVE to de-emphasize defense on your roster. It is an imperative. This is the wrong time for UZR to get (even more) fashionable.
We’re talking about baseball in general. What if a specific team turbo’s out this effect?
……
Kiddies, when James Paxton hucks a 97-MPH screamer past a hapless lefty, or gets a worm-burner off a hapless righty, what exactly is Dayan Viciedo’s defensive % impact? That’s right. It’s nothing.
Taijuan Walker, says Capt. Jack, is now hitting 100 MPH. Let me read that sentence again.
Hisashi Iwakuma gets one of the highest GB rates in the league. And fans, what, 7-8 men a game? OF’s simply don’t matter as much when WBC-san is on the mound.
Felix’ K’s were way up last year, and his GB’s way down (onto the ground, that is, with a 56% rate). That’s compared to Already Felix.
Happ and Elias throw their flyballs into the Great Safeco Air-Popcorn Machine.
The bullpen, we’ve heard, is capable of a strikeout here and there. That is 30% of the innings. In Seattle, innings 7-9 go to a wipeout bullpen where the defense matters even less. (Except for Tom Wilhelmsen, whose defense saved his keister last year… Well, that’s one pitcher. 14 outta 15 ain’t bad.)
Visually, my favorite thing about the Mariners right now is watching James Paxton stand on the rubber with a blank face, wishing the batter would hurry up and get in there.
……..
Interestingly, the Boston Red Sox have stuffed their rotation with ground ball machines and spent mucho dinero on hitting. We’ll attend to defense with ground ball pitchers, sez they. The M’s are doing them one better. We’ll attend to defense with — > pitchers who get ground balls and who whuff 8 men a game.
……..
This all means that the CORRECT play is to — > slide matter and energy out of defense and into your bats. That’s any team in baseball. Much less a team with the M’s type of pitchers.
It’s like blitzing a gimpy QB with a slow release. The cost is way down and the reward is way up. In the NBA, it is like going into the key if the other team puts 5 guards and small forwards onto the floor. You try to shoot 3’s against that defense, because you believe in 3’s, do you? Go ahead. It’s your funeral.
You’ll beat yourself, if you let your own personal biases dictate your approach, as opposed to customizing it, and putting your finger on the soft spot of the defense.
Lemme drive by that again. If you love defense in the abstract, and the game is morphing to become defense-unfriendly, you indulge your whims at your PERIL.
They said of Fischer, “no matter what the position, he knows where it hurts.” An isolated pawn here, a weak dark square there, a vulnerable King at the other place … when Fischer attacked, he did it with leverage. Sometimes, leverage just mechanically overcomes your will to resist.
Whether inadvertently or by design, so does Jack Zduriencik “know where it hurts.” That’s with Strikeout Pitchers Not OF Defense. This year, he does. Doing it “his way.” Right now in the ‘Merkin League, that means Nelson Cruz, Melky Cabrera, et al in RF, not a soft-skills WAR defensive hero.
Enjoy,
Jeff
Detect O Vision Mainframe 