Daily Notes: Speed and Defense Leaders, Laggards

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Speed and Defense Leaders, Laggards
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Speed and Defense Leaders, Laggards
Introduction
This past November the author wrote a piece examining the value of elite speed as measured in wins — which it to say, those sorts of wins as might be produced by baserunning and (in this case) outfield defense.

What follows is a sort of conceptual relative of that brief study, insofar as the object has been to identify those players who have been most productive this season by means of baserunning and defensive ability alone. What the author has done is find, for each player, both his baserunning runs and also his total of defensive runs saved (UZR) with the positional adjustment from WAR included.

While the caveats regarding single-season defensive numbers absolutely apply in this instance, one will also observe that, by including positional adjustments, as well, that the effect of the volatility of those same numbers over a small sample is somewhat muted.

Speed and Defense Leaders
Here are the top-10 players this season by the methodology outlined above. Run is runs produced by means of baserunning. Def is a combination of UZR and the positional adjustment from WAR. Tot is a combination of those two figures.

Name	Team	PA	Run	Def	Tot
Andrelton Simmons	Braves	488	-1.0	22.7	21.7
Carlos Gomez	Brewers	437	4.8	15.7	20.5
Manny Machado	Orioles	514	-1.0	21.5	20.5
Shane Victorino	Red Sox	356	2.6	16.0	18.6
A.J. Pollock	D-backs	334	2.4	16.2	18.6
Nolan Arenado	Rockies	356	0.0	17.9	17.9
Russell Martin	Pirates	361	0.2	17.6	17.8
Lorenzo Cain	Royals	386	-0.3	17.5	17.2
Elvis Andrus	Rangers	500	8.0	7.6	15.6
Alexei Ramirez	White Sox	479	4.1	11.0	15.1

Speed and Defense Laggards
Here are the bottom-10 players by speed and defense, according to the methodology outlined above.

Name	Team	PA	Run	Def	Tot
Adam Dunn	White Sox	437	-2.6	-17.5	-20.1
Prince Fielder	Tigers	506	-3.0	-15.2	-18.2
Lucas Duda	Mets	269	-2.0	-16.1	-18.1
Raul Ibanez	Mariners	367	-2.6	-14.9	-17.5
Chris Carter	Astros	402	-2.9	-13.7	-16.6
Paul Konerko	White Sox	347	-5.9	-10.6	-16.5
Kendrys Morales	Mariners	464	-3.9	-12.0	-15.9
Victor Martinez	Tigers	475	-5.5	-10.4	-15.9
Maicer Izturis	Blue Jays	357	-2.2	-13.6	-15.8
Michael Cuddyer	Rockies	387	0.0	-15.6	-15.6

Three Notes
• Cleveland outfielder Michael Bourn, the player who most distinguished himself in that November study for producing wins by means of speed and defense, ranks only 96th among all major leaguers this season, at +5.0 runs total.

• Among players with more than 100 plate appearances recorded this season, Yankees (and former Dodgers) infielder Luis Cruz has produced the highest rate of speed and defense runs produced, with 41.7 of them for every 600 plate appearances. Among players with more than 300 plate appearances, Arizona’s A.J. Pollock is first overall, at 33.4 runs per 600 plate appearances.

• A complete page featuring every player is available here.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Miami at Atlanta | 19:30 ET
Jacob Turner (77.1 IP, 109 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR) faces Brandon Beachy (10.0 IP, 105 xFIP-, -0.2 WAR). While the latter has done less in the way of “preventing runs” then he’d likely prefer, he’s managed an 11.5% swinging-strike rate over his first two major-league starts — i.e. very similar to the mark from his excellent 2011 season.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.3.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Kyle Gibson	MIN	3	3	4	1	6	CHA	John Danks	14:10
Jered Weaver	LAA	4	7	6	7	6	CLE	Scott Kazmir	19:05
Rick Porcello	DET	8	8	8	3	9	NYA	Ivan Nova	19:05
John Lannan	PHI	2	1	4	2	7	WAS	Dan Haren	19:05
Jarrod Parker	OAK	3	6	5	6	5	TOR	Esmil Rogers	19:07
Andrew Cashner	SD	6	6	5	3	4	CIN	Bronson Arroyo	19:10
Jacob Turner	MIA	6	2	6	8	7	ATL	B. Beachy*	19:30
Jake Peavy	BOS	7	8	7	6	7	KC	Ervin Santana	20:10
Liam Hendriks*	MIN	6	3	5	1	7	CHA	Chas. Leesman*	20:10
Matt Garza	TEX	5	3	3	4	1	HOU	Erik Bedard	20:10
Chris Rusin	CHN	3	5	5	3	7	STL	Lance Lynn	20:15
Francisco Liriano	PIT	9	7	6	7	3	COL	J. de la Rosa	20:40
Jeremy Hefner	NYN	5	6	6	2	9	AZ	Patrick Corbin	21:40
Kyle Lohse	MIL	5	4	4	5	3	SEA	Joe Saunders	22:10
David Price	TB	8	10	7	3	5	LAN	Chris Capuano	22:10
Chris Tillman	BAL	4	9	4	5	2	SF	R. Vogelsong	22:15

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.