You Be the Scout!
It’s mostly forgotten now, on account of the drubbing, but after the Giants scored early against James Shields, the Royals tried real hard to also score early against Madison Bumgarner. By that I mean the Royals made two outs and then had a batter get hit by a pitch, but with two down and Lorenzo Cain on first, Eric Hosmer clobbered a centered fastball toward the left side of Gregor Blanco. Off the bat it was a screaming line drive, and it looked like a ball that might get the Royals back into the game, but Blanco managed to make some kind of sensational play and the inning was over.
As Hosmer batted, the Royals’ win expectancy was about 22%. When the catch was made, that dropped to about 20%. Had the ball found ground for a run-scoring double, the win expectancy would’ve jumped to about 32%. So the catch was worth about 12 percentage points, between made and not made.
What I ask of you, the audience: how difficult of a play do you think it was? Pretend you’re an Inside Edge scout. Categorize the play! I understand this isn’t something you do, so maybe as an audience you’ll suck at this, but I’m interested in seeing how the opinions come in. I guess I should show you the play and give you some additional information.
The catch, from one angle:
The catch, from another angle:
Here’s where Blanco started, and roughly where he wound up:
Here’s a different way of considering that, that doesn’t indicate much about depth but does feature a standing ghost(!):
Off the bat, the ball was in the air for about 3.87 seconds. It was hit something like 390-400 feet. Buster Posey celebrated, understatedly.
So then, what do you think? Difficult play for an average center fielder? Ordinary play for an average center fielder? Extremely amazing play for an average center fielder? Mets fans might end up skewing this, but to balance that out perhaps they’ve mostly stopped paying attention to baseball for the time being.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Important…he is playing REALLY deep. He does not have to go back on the ball at all on a ball that almost reaches the warning track. I change my mind to Likely from Even, and maybe even routine, for most center fielders.
Not a tough play.
He’s also shaded over toward left, though, so he has to go a long way for a ball that wasn’t in the air for very long. He took a good route and got a good jump. I don’t think it’s routine by any means. Probably between even and unlikely.
I’m not sure we aren’t supposed to take positioning into account? Maybe it’s “how likely would a center fielder catch a ball hit like this”, to give credit (or blame) for knowing batted ball tendencies, etc. That would certainly make shifts weird to calculate though, so probably not.
mets fan skewing the results here 🙂
Blanco is probably faster than the average CF. He got a pretty good jump and ran a pretty straight path to the ball. i think closer to 20% or so…but it’s hard to tell. was he running at full speed? was his route good? not really sure
also, are we saying an average CF makes this X%, or off all CFs X% make this play at some rate? cause if the average CF is a couple steps slower than Blanco, they might NEVER make this play.
No statcast on this?
no 🙁
Per the Inside Edge scale I would rate it Unlikely. Blanco got a great jump and although there was a little arc to his route I assume that was by design to allow him to run along the fence instead of into it. Plus Blanco’s speed is probably a little above average even among CFs.
BTW one part of the broadcast I did like last night was the mic on Hosmer. Hearing his exchange w/Moustakas about Bumgarner’s cutter and w/Belt about Blanco’s catch on that ball were nice little windows into the game. Would like to see a bit more of that (along with fewer dugout interviews while there’s an actual game going on).
if I was the one who hit that I’d tell you that outfielder is el diablo
I’d peg the likelihood of a CF making the play at around 35%. A good jump, direct route, and player speed all contributed to Blanco making the play.
I would categorize this as an above average play for an average center fielder. Blanco has above average speed, probably 60 on the 20-80 scale, combined with a good break on the ball and playing deep he made this look fairly routine. I wouldn’t say that the catch was unlikely, but it certainly wasn’t even (35% sounds about right). So while it wasn’t routine, it was not ‘extremely amazing’ either.
According to BIS, the correct answer is 25%
https://twitter.com/msimonespn/status/525005930023641091
does the BIS analysis take fielder position into account? Seems it does not, making it a bit tougher for Blanco.
It was unlikely, I think. He was shaded towards left field then had to run all the way over to right center field gap to catch the ball. Perhaps he made it look easy to some because of his speed, but that is quite a run, I think.