Josh Donaldson and David Freese

[Docwaukee]

first of all, one thing to note is that WAR is a counting stat and Donaldson has had quite a few more chances than Freese just as a baseline.

 

If you look at inside edge fielding, Donaldson has made almost 150 more outs than Freese.  Several of which were on balls that were classified as being out of range 90% of the time for 3bman.  Freese has made none of those plays. 

 

If you normalize the number of chances between the two, Donaldson has about 100 more outs to his credit.  Some of this is sample size related in that Donaldson has just had the ball hit his way more often relative to how much either guy has played. 

 

But overall, he's responsible for more outs by percentage of balls hit in his direction.  So chances are, if Freese had more chances, the difference would be even greater. 

[Lou]

Never said Donaldson wasn't better

[eaterfan]

How many guys are better than him? Who are they?

[Lou]

not Freese

[Hollyw00d]

How many guys are better than him? Who are they?

Beltre, I'd take him over anyone.

He's one of the few guys I've ever seen that makes 3B look easy. Dude makes ridiculous plays look boring.

[Bruce Nye]

Pie Traynor

[rageous]

How many guys are better than him? Who are they?

I would put Machado ahead of Donaldson easy.

[moccasin]

You also have to acknowledge the fact that the A's pitching gets a lot of ground balls, and they have huge foul ground on the 3rd base side. Yeah, other 3rd basemen wouldn't get to those foul balls. But they would be in the seats.

[NrM]

Defensive metrics just seem completely out of whack to me. Most advanced defensive metrics seem to be estimations(correct me if I'm wrong), so why is WAR giving as much value in defensive as they do for offense.

Edited July 16, 2014 by Poozy

[Stradling]

Yet Sosh still replaces him with McDonald in the late innings.

Probably the stupidest post I've seen in a very long time, congrats kid.

[rageous]

Defensive metrics just seem completely out of whack to me. Most advanced defensive metrics seem to be estimations(correct me if I'm wrong), so why is WAR giving as much value in defensive as they do for offense.

It doesn't.

You really should study WAR before making comment like that.

[Link]

A greater range causes him to collect many more balls that would have been hits against Freese than ones he made errors on that Freese would have made.

 

These numbers are arbitrary but let's just do it to make a point:

 

Shortstop A (Freese) has 200 balls hit at him.  He reaches 120, makes 1 error, and 79 go for a hit.  80 end up on base.

 

Shortstop B (Donaldson) also has 100 hit at him.  He reaches 150, makes 15 errors, and 35 go for a hit.  50 end up on base.  

 

Of course these are totally made up numbers (I was too lazy to actually check them) but here you can see how a player with MUCH worse fielding % can end up actually being a better defender than one who makes the routine plays but has less range.  Also remember that a lot of the errors he had Freese probably never would have come close to and would have been hits anyway.  So the number of plays Donaldson did not make that Freese would have is probably much lower than 15.

[ten ocho recon scout]

Link, ill say this. If someone (the second shortstop in your example) has 100 hit to him and gets to 150...id say hes a beast

Edited July 16, 2014 by ten ocho recon scout

[AngelsFanSince86]

Yeah I get the point now and I appreciate all the responses.  Seems pretty obvious to me now that you guys have explained it so thank you all for not giving me **** for my post.

[Link]

Link, ill say this. If someone (the second shortstop in your example) has 100 hit to him and gets to 150...id say hes a beast

 

 

Oops!  >_>  

 

I changed my example from 100 to 200 plays to make it easier to illustrate my point and apparently forgot to change that part.

 

That or Donaldson is just THAT good.

[eaterfan]

http://grantland.com/features/mark-buehrle-surprising-success/

A fun article that uses defensive metrics to explain the outstanding career of Mark Buhrle.

[HaloFan85]

Yea I know defensive WAR is pretty unreliable.  Didn't think it was that bad. Just wondering if I am missing something.

It comes down to defensive runs saved.  Donaldson leads the league in runs saved because of his range, so in other words, he's saving way more runs than he's giving up with those errors.  No harm no foul if an error doesn't lead to a run scored.

[rageous]

One thing i would say is that DRS gives much more credit to defenders during the shift.

And the defense is playing many more hitters in the shift this year and that accounts for most of Donaldson's increase in BWAR defense value this year.

[NrM]

One thing i would say is that DRS gives much more credit to defenders during the shift.

And the defense is playing many more hitters in the shift this year and that accounts for most of Donaldson's increase in BWAR defense value this year.

 

 

The runs are being saved because of the defensive shift instead of the actual defense of the player, yet the player is getting credit.

Am I wrong in this assumption?

[Hollyw00d]

http://grantland.com/features/mark-buehrle-surprising-success/

A fun article that uses defensive metrics to explain the outstanding career of Mark Buhrle.

Zack greinke is also a very good fielding pitcher.

Johnny cueto as well

[rageous]

The runs are being saved because of the defensive shift instead of the actual defense of the player, yet the player is getting credit.

Am I wrong in this assumption?

The exact formula for DRS and UZR is not public knowledge but this article shows the difference in the calculations for a team that used the shift most frequently in 2013.

 

http://www.crawfishboxes.com/2013/5/30/4378794/talking-sabermetrics-defensive-shifts-happen

[HaloMagic]

One thing i would say is that DRS gives much more credit to defenders during the shift.

And the defense is playing many more hitters in the shift this year and that accounts for most of Donaldson's increase in BWAR defense value this year.

Is there somewhere online where they keep track of what teams are utilizing the shift the most this season? I've seen quite a few A's games and it seems as though they utilize the shift a lot less than most teams. Maybe my perception is wrong.

[rageous]

Is there somewhere online where they keep track of what teams are utilizing the shift the most this season? I've seen quite a few A's games and it seems as though they utilize the shift a lot less than most teams. Maybe my perception is wrong.

I only know of 2013 data and last year the A's were the 9th highest in utilizing the infield shift.

[HaloMagic]

What accounts for Donaldson's DRS not being as impacted last year as this year? And if DRS is heavily influenced by shifts where as UZR isn't how would one reconcile that info with the fact that DRS and UZR basically have Donaldson's defense even at third base since he started there in 2012 (32 vs 28.3 runs saved, respectively)?