Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com broke the news late Tuesday afternoon that the Marlins had traded Dan Uggla to the Braves for lefty reliever Mike Dunn and Omar Infante. The reaction in the twittersphere was immediate and intense, mostly centering on the fact that the Marlins have seemingly cornered the market on relievers with their past few trades.
Yesterday, we took a look at what goes into infield defense by examining the cases of Mike Jacobs and Hanley Ramirez. Keeping with the themes of defense and, well, the Florida Marlins, I decided to check some data out at the suggestion of colleague Brian Cartwright. Brian astutely pointed out that both Ramirez and second baseman Dan Uggla have posted similar fielding numbers in the sense that both looked slightly different in 2006 and 2008 than they did the year in between.
Interestingly enough, Miguel Cabrera’s defense at third base has followed the same trend, -4 in 2006, -8 in 2007, and -4 in 2008. Of course, Cabrera did not play for the Marlins last season, and was replaced by Jorge Cantu, who proceeded to post a -6 UZR. Let’s visualize the overall UZR numbers for their infield in this span, stacked up next to each other:
Name 2006 2007 2008 Jacobs -3.2 -4.1 -11.1 Uggla +7.0 -9.6 +2.9 Ramirez -5.5 -19.1 -0.3 Cabrera* -4.3 -8.1 -6.2
*-Cantu for 2008
In 2006, Jacobs and Cabrera were quite comparable. The next season, Jacobs declined slightly while Cabrera fell off much more, yet their infield peers, perhaps in trying to make up the difference, lost 14-16 runs from the year prior. Last season, the third base situation improved a bit and Ramirez bounced back fantastically. Conversely, Jacobs experienced a vast decrease in his defensive mark and Uggla gained 11-12 runs.
Their respective ranges produce similar results. While we might expect worse range from Jacobs and Cabrera/Cantu to lead to worse UZR marks for Uggla and Ramirez, there seems to be more at work here. Cabrera’s range decline of a couple of runs cannot be the sole contributing factor to Ramirez’s overall defensive mark falling completely off the chart. Likewise, how would Uggla get that much better if Jacobs also fell by the wayside?
As the Chase Utley/Ryan Howard example showed, where Utley posted a ridiculous + – score largely due to Howard’s lack of range, worse range at a position right next door can lead to more opportunities. Unfortunately, many forget that more opportunities can also lead to more failure, but Ramirez and Uggla did not cost their team drastically more error runs than they had in 2006, meaning their extra opportunities were not as detrimental as you might think.
As both MGL and I have shown here, more range actually leads to less errors, and vice versa, with less range leading to more errors, but even when the ranges of Ramirez and Uggla took significant hits in 2007, they did not experience huge shifts in errors compared to the league average fielder at their position.
It makes perfectly good intuitive sense that when the infielder playing next to you shows poor range, that your numbers would also suffer, but that does not seem to be the definitive case here. Perhaps something else is at work, like the pitchers being hit very hard, or both players experiencing the injury bug, but I do not have the end all solution here. Maybe a wisdom of the crowd approach would serve well to answer this question. So, what say you? Why would the defensive numbers of Ramirez and Uggla drop so drastically in 2007 when Jacobs and Cabrera did not take too significant of a hit? And why then would Ramirez and Uggla improve even though Jacobs severely worsened?
Marlins second baseman Dan Uggla seems primed to post his best offensive season yet. Through 67 games he is hitting .289/.369/.613—a .982 OPS—with 19 home runs, 23 doubles, and 49 RBI. His slash statistics and OPS would all be career highs should the season, for whatever reason, end today. His SLG has surpassed the .600 mark due to 43 extra base hits out of 73 total. His .324 ISO confirms that, yep, Uggla’s got plenty of power.
Interestingly enough, Uggla has been somewhat inconsistent, month to month, this season. In April (and March 31) he proved detrimental, represented by his -0.216 WPA. Since then, however, he has contributed 2.039 wins to the second place Marlins. Even though his June WPA is a positive 0.504, his general statistics look closer to his April than red-hot May:
April: 115 PA, .255/.330/.471, .801 OPS, 4 HR
May: 113 PA, .347/.425/.827, 1.252 OPS, 12 HR
June: 62 PA, .245/.339/.491, .829 OPS, 3 HR
His SLG in May essentially equaled or surpassed his OPS in both April and the first half of June. While a player with a K% as high as Uggla’s–he’s in Ryan Howard territory right now–may not sustain high and respectable batting averages it does not mean he cannot still prove to be a productive power threat. Last year, he hit 31 HR with a .245 BA and a .286 BABIP; right now he’s close to 2/3 of the way toward matching his home run total and he’s got a .289 BA/.351 BABIP helping to increase his productivity.
If the Marlins want to defy the odds and stay in contention until the end of the season, Dannyboy is going to need to sustain some semblance of consistent productivity since most would attest their young pitching staff is not very likely to hold up from now until September 30th.
If you’ve taken an introductory math class, you’ve probably seen the bell curve graph that explains how the distribution of things are grouped around the average and thinner at the extremes. National League second baseman have decided to band together and disprove normal distribution in 2008, however.
As a group, they are hitting .267/.335/.415 for a .750 OPS. Normal distribution would suggest that we’d find a cluster of players with an OPS between .700 and .800, but in reality, only one of the 13 qualified second baseman falls in that range – Luis Castillo. The other twelve are split into two distinct groups – tremendous and terrible. This morning, we look at the guys excelling, and tonight, we’ll look at those who are dragging the average down.
We’ve talked about the amazing years Chase Utley and Dan Uggla are having. Both are having historically tremendous seasons for a second baseman, and they’re mortal locks to represent the NL at the all-star game. But behind those two MVP candidates are four pretty good players in their own right.
Orlando Hudson: .303/.372/.503, 0.82 WPA/LI
Brandon Phillips: .287/.336/.529, 0.55 WPA/LI
Kelly Johnson: .299/.362/.495, 0.34 WPA/LI
Mark DeRosa: .297/.384/.449, 0.66 WPA/LI
All of these guys are having seasons that would create a strong case for an all-star bid in any other year. Hudson and Phillips both add terrific defense to their offensive value, while Johnson and DeRosa continue to be the under the radar stars for their respective teams. You really can’t go wrong with any of these six guys, as all of them are having tremendously valuable seasons.
While most of the attention directed towards second basemen is deservedly paid to Chase Utley, another NL East player of the same position, who also happens to have a five-lettered last name beginning with “U” has been posting some pretty solid numbers of his own. Clearly, the title of this post indicates I am speaking about Dan Uggla, who has helped the Marlins to a 23-14 record; believe it or not… that is the highest winning percentage in baseball. Yes, folks, the Marlins, as of right now, are “the best team in baseball.”
Uggla has posted some pretty drastic splits in his numbers this year but let’s first examine everything on the whole:
2006: .282/.339/.480, 112 OPS+, 27 HR, 33 2B-3B, 154 GP
2007: .245/.326/.479, 108 OPS+, 31 HR, 52 2B-3B, 159 GP
2008: .279/.359/.618, 155 OPS+, 11 HR, 12 2B-3B, 36 GP
Taking batting average out of the equation, Uggla essentially performed the same last year as in his rookie season. Many thought he fell into the sophomore slump due to his .245 BA and big jump in strikeouts (123 to 167), but his OBP, SLG, OPS, OPS+, HR and RBI all remained relatively similar. Additionally, his BABIP was a tad lucky in 2006 whereas it was right on par last year. This year, however, everything has jumped and were he to keep pace, he would finish the season with close to 50 home runs. This is not very likely to happen, though, so instead of focusing on what he could do this year, let’s look at what is contributing to these numbers, starting with his splits vs. pitchers:
vs. RHP: .307/.383/.733, 11 HR, 24 RBI (115 PA)
vs. LHP: .200/.293/.286, 0 HR, 3 RBI (41 PA)
Here are his home/road splits:
Home: .213/.306/.533, .839 OPS, 6 HR, 12 RBI (85 PA)
Away: .361/.423/.721, 1.142 OPS, 5 HR, 15 RBI (71 PA)
And here are splits between April and May:
April: 26 GP, .255/.330/.471, .801 OPS, .306 BABIP, 4 HR, 12 RBI
May: 10 GP, .353/.439/1.059, 1.498 OPS, .313 BABIP, 7 HR, 15 RBI
He has homered in seven of his ten games this month and has an absolutely ridiculous SLG and OPS. Additionally, looking at his career splits, May has always been his best month. In May, over the last three years, he has an OPS of 1.026; next closest is June’s .903.
To sum everything up, this year Uggla likes facing righties and hitting on the road, and in his career, REALLY likes this month.
