Betancourt and Morgan Revisited
Over the last few weeks, a couple of players with disputed defensive reputations have been traded. Nyjer Morgan was posting crazy good UZR numbers as a left fielder in Pittsburgh, and his outfield defense was the primary reason the Nationals acquired him. However, when the deal went down, a decent contingent of people claimed that Morgan’s numbers were inflated due to park effects in Pittsburgh that weren’t accurately being accounted for. The claim was that Morgan’s defensive numbers were inflated due to the context he was playing in.
Likewise, when the Mariners traded Yuniesky Betancourt to Kansas City, Dayton Moore caused quite the stir when he stated that he had no faith in metrics like UZR due to their unreliability. Betancourt is kind of the anti-Morgan, with horrifically terrible UZR numbers, but enough defensive talent that he should be better than what the metric indicates he’s performing at. Again, the question of context was raised – would Betancourt’s UZR improve once he got out of Seattle?
So far, we’ve only got a couple of weeks of data to look at, but the answers to date are resounding.
In 160 innings in center field since being traded to Washington, Morgan has a +4.9 UZR, which translates to +26.5 UZR/150. That’s actually higher than his UZR/150 while playing left field for the Pirates. If there was something about playing half his games in Pittsburgh that inflated his numbers, it apparently went with him to Washington. Or, more logically, it never existed in the first place. In reality, he’s just a fantastic defensive outfielder, no matter where he plays.
Betancourt? Still terrible. In 81 innings for KC, he’s posted a UZR of -1.8, which is a -25.2 UZR/150. That’s even worse than the level he was playing at for Seattle. Since Moore claimed it was obvious which players are good with the glove when you watch them on the field, I wonder how he’s felt about his new shortstop the last week and a half, where he’s been failing to get to balls and costing his pitchers outs. But hey, at least he’s posting a .156 wOBA, so it’s not all bad right? Oh.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
But seriously, how can someone like Dayton Moore become a GM. Baseball is moving towards advanced metrics, but guys like Moore, Minaya, etc. actively deny their importance.
when has omar denied their importance?
was it when he loved endy chavez?
DAMN MINAYA
Even aside metrics such as UZR, Morgan has gotten to balls that time and again would have never been reached by previous National CF’s — watching him in person, it is almost as if he is moving simultaneously with the ball as it is struck off the bat. Obviously, this is a very positive development from the perspective of the young pitchers who, with the exception of Zimmerman, pitch to contact (Lannan being GB oriented).
Doh! Zimmermann*
If it weren’t for the fact that Nyjer is really good, comparing him to previous Nats CF’s could be considered damning with faint praise.
I’m not disagreeing with the conclusion, but would this article have even been written if the results were counter to your a priori knowledge?
Far too many “gotcha!” posts.
Still patiently waiting for the ‘Kubel Revisted’ article.
Agreed, I don’t really think this was all that necessary. It’s a SSS issue anyway, so I wouldn’t even consider this particularly meaningful. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t correct, as it probably is, but at this point it’s unwarranted and feels like it’s just there to point out that Dave was right about both of them. We got it Dave.
My other problem with the article is the whole ‘UZR as Gospel’ thing. I’m not saying Cameron’s conclusions are wrong as I do agree that Morgan = Tremendous and Betancourt = teh suck, but the way Cameron continually presents UZR as iron-clad when he himself before the season said he believes UZR to have a margin of error of at least 5 either way… it just irks me a bit. UZR being MAYBE the best publicly-available metric isn’t itself a guarantee of any infallible accurateness.
Poor Banny
He finally develops himself into a GB pitcher and this is how the GM rewards him.
81 innings? 160 innings? these numbers are essentially meaningless. I’ve read several posts on this very site claiming that even one full season of data isn’t that reliable a sample size for UZR. There is absolutely no reason for this post, as far as i can tell.
Also, PNC Park (the home field of Morgan’s former team, the Pirates) has a very expansive LF (to the point where GM Neil Huntington has been on record saying the Pirates should employ another CF in left, rather than a typical corner OF). I would think, if anything, people may be saying his stats there were worse than they’d be in Washington. I’ve never heard the opposite, which is the argument that Dave Cameron is supposedly disproving in his post. Has anyone else, or is this a straw man?
I enjoyed this article.
What I see is a bunch of people who disagreed with the original contentions b/c of flawed logic. Now they want to scream SSS. Obviously there is an SSS issues, as Dave admits above. The point is there was a mountain of evidence before these trades that people disagreed with for some inexplicable reason (and yes, its not a strawman. People on here and other places did indeed defend those positions strongly). Everything that has happened since those trades furthers the notion that the already existing mountain of evidence was correct.
The shame isnt that there are so many “gotcha” posts. The shame is that there are so many bad GMs making so many bad moves that there are so many opportunities for “gotcha” posts.
So the stat that uses RngR to tell me Adam Jones has the second worse range of any CF while getting to more balls than any other CF, and that Jose Guillen is only slightly worse than Nick Markakis, is a good enough stat to bash Dayton Moore because 81 innings prove your point?
That is beyond ridiculous. I feel like I need to send you a box of Kleenex because the big bad GM hurt your little feelings.
Poor KC fans, it appears they’ve been driven to bitter dementia. Sorry your GM is garbage.
Do you really think that Dayton Moore hurt Mariners fans with that trade?
I like Morgan’s defense, but the notion that his 47 putouts and 4 assists since the trade are evidence of ANYTHING is preposterous.
i wouldn’t say there was a ‘mountain’ of evidence on Morgan in the first place. He has approximately one full season worth of UZR data if you combine all his OF appearances from 2007 to today. And I’ve still not seen anyone arguing there were park factors at PNC inflating his value, which is what Dave was referencing. I did see the opposite, however. Everything I’ve read this year prior to the trade raved about his defense.
Also, yes, the Betancourt move was dumb, and maybe not one of Moore’s finest, but do you really think Morgan & Burnett for Milledge and Hanrahan was that bad of a move for the Pirates? A 29 year old outfielder shouldn’t really fit into the plans of a rebuilding team, while the potential of Milledge may. (and it was generally accepted that Hanrahan for Burnett was a clear win for the Pirates)
I notice the Nats’ runs allowed/game has dropped by almost a run this month — 4.73 in July vs. 5.67 through June 30.
And the Royals have allowed 6.11 rpg since Betancourt joined the team, up from 4.82 in the 88 games before that. Small sample size, but eek.
So we can put the to bed because of the equivalent of a player hitting .400 for a week?
Yes, because it’s the equivalent of Ted Williams hitting .400 for a week.
Let’s explore that analogy.
Are you suggesting that if Ted Williams got traded to the NY Giants, and hit .400 for a week, that would serve as evidence that he was in no way aided by Fenway Park?
I don’t know why this article’s inspired 20 comments. Yuniesky Betancourt sucks at shortstop and it’s plainly obvious to anyone who’s watched him play and knows the slightest bit about baseball. Morgan’s a frickin highlight reel in the outfield. The best advanced defensive metric backs up what peoples’ eyes have told them. People, including the GM of the Kansas City Royals responded to this information derisively, and they were and are wrong. End of story.
Also, Yuni really, really sucks. God I’m glad he’s off my team.
Wow, Yuni has already been worth -0.5 WAR in less than two weeks with KC. That is impressive. Oh, and to the few remaining Moore apologists left who claimed that he would be an upgrade over Tony Pena Jr.:
Yuni’s WAR in ’09: -1.5
Pena’s WAR in ’08 (the historically awful year): -1.4
Yikes.
He’s been so bad, he caused Poz to “sell out” and go to work for SI. Or something like that. :>
There is a kernel of truth to what Dayton Moore says. UZR in year 1 is not well correlated to UZR in year 2. UZR with BIS data is not well correlated with UZR with STATS data for the same year. UZR is that the well correlated with Fielding Bible ratings for the same year.
While I believe the statistical analysis of fielding has made great strides in recent years and is probably better than a scouting only analysis, we should recognize that our metrics don’t seem perfect. We should consult multiple fielding sources and regress to the mean, depending on how large our sample size is. In other words, don’t treat the fielding metrics with greater confidence than they deserve.
The Pirates TOTALLY underestimated Morgan when they traded him for Milledge.
Isn’t Morgan’s defensive numbers borderline ridiculous? He’s 67% better than the next closest defenders: Longoria and Zimmerman. He’s destroying the field.
I’d love to see some chart or something to justify his ridiculous UZR. Because if it’s justifiable, Morgan’s having one of the best defensive seasons ever.
Of course we all know fielding metrics are fun for their noisiness and often times arbitary nature.