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Getting Defensive: Author John Dewan Discusses Michael Young’s Move to Third and Defensive Statistical Analysis

Three years ago, John Dewan, a disciple of baseball stat guru Bill James and one of the founders of the statistical treasure trove STATS, Inc., published the first edition of The Fielding Bible. It was the first publication that aimed to truly quantify the importance of fielding.

Dewan used plenty of complicated sabermetric formulas to come up with a “plus/minus” system to determine what kind of impact fielders had on the game. Among the theories presented by Dewan was one that suggested Rangers then-shortstop Michael Young was the worst defensive shortstop in the game.

It took Dewan three years to come up with a second edition and it’s a far more complicated, far longer book. In it, he tries to get closer to definitively measuring the impact of fielders. In this year’s book, he ranks Young, who has since moved to third, 25^th among 35 shortstops.

Here’s how other Rangers fared in the book: Chris Davis (17^th at first base); Ian Kinsler (27^th at second base); Brandon Boggs (7^th among left fielders) and Josh Hamilotn (26^th among center fielders).

Dewan’s most recent edition of The Fielding Bible is 385 pages long. It is closing in on the version left by the Gideons in my hotel room. Dewan has a lot to say about fielding and he said some of it to me. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

Us: Recently, you wrote that the move of Michael Young to third and the ascent of Elvis Andrus to short would be worth about 40 “saved runs” for the Rangers and that according to your calculations that might equal for more wins. Tell me about your thoughts on Young moving to third and on your theory.

Dewan: “I think a middle infielder should improve as a fielder by moving to third base. It’s a less challenging position than shortstop. And the best asset you can have at third base is a strong throwing arm. I think his arm is strong, fine for third base. But I did point out that he made a number of poor throws last year. So, you do have to be aware of that. Nevertheless, he HAS to be an improvement over their third base play last year. If he’s an average third baseman and Andrus is a little above average as a shortstop, the number of runs they will save is big. It’s a huge improvement.”

Us: In the first book, you outlined a plus/minus system for breaking down fielders. As briefly as possible, explain how it works.

Dewan: “It tells you how many plays above or below the average fielder at that position a player made or didn’t make. Philadelphia’s Chase Utley was a +46 last year. It was the most we’ve ever seen. He made 46 more plays than the average second baseman.”

Us: And this year’s breakthrough is the “runs saved” stat. Explain, please.

Dewan: “The plus/minus system is the foundation for what we do. But we evaluate a number of other options, using various other metrics. We’ve taken the plus/minus and factored in all the other metrics and converted that into how many runs that player saved. It’s the key component of this book. I think it led to the most important statistical breakthrough I’ve ever had. Philadelphia had the best team defense last year and saved about 80 runs. That was about 130 runs better than the worst team defense, Kansas City. The Rangers had the best offense in baseball, scoring 901 runs. And that was about 260 runs better than the worst offense in baseball. When I put the two numbers on top of each other it just kind of hit me that you can make an argument that defense is worth about half as much as hitting. You’ve got to give fielding and defense a lot of importance.”

Us: Our problem with defensive statistical analysis is that so much of it is subjective. You are determining what plays a player should and shouldn’t make. To us, it’s almost like taking an at-bat for a hitter and saying ‘he should have doubled on this pitch or he should not have struck out on this one.’ How accurate can defensive statistical analysis be?

Dewan: “I think the first book took us about 40 percent of the way, but that still left 60 percent that had not yet been analyzed. I think this book takes us to about the 60 percent level. I think hitting stats are about 80-85 percent accurate because there is still no accounting for certain things. So, we’ve still got a way to go.”

Us: What’s one area that’s still kind of iffy for you?

Dewan: “You hear so much about the handling of pitchers by catchers. This year I tried to take a stab at evaluating that. I made some progress. There was one extreme example, using catcher’s ERA. Brandon Inge came out ranked very poorly in our book. And you could compare him to Pudge Rodriguez when both were with Detroit. Well, when Pudge was traded to the Yankees, he had worse numbers than Jose Molina, who came out ranked very well in our book. So there was some evidence that Molina was at the top tier and Inge at the bottom with Pudge in the middle.”

Us: What’s the most bogus stat in baseball?

Dewan: “I know a lot of my colleagues would say ‘hits allowed’ for pitchers. I don’t think it is bogus, but I do think it is less important than a lot of people give it credit for. Most pitchers are going to allow somewhere between 26 and 30 percent of the batted balls put in play to wind up as hits. It’s also very dependent on the defense behind them. So, I just don’t think the total hits allowed means that much.

Us: And since you’ve tried to advance the debate on defensive stats, just how bogus is fielding percentage.

Dewan: It is all we had for like 120 years, but it is pretty much unusable. Nobody really knows what it means. That was one of the reasons we wanted to come up with this book. We wanted to come up with a system people could better understand.”

We hope to have more with Dewan from time to time, breaking down particular aspects of the Rangers’ fielding and other areas.  If you want your own copy, you have one of two options. Order it here or join our flock of Twitter followers and find out how you can win one.