The Giants and the Left Field Decision
The World Series is headed to San Francisco, which means Bruce Bochy has a decision to make. The games in Kansas City allowed him to start Michael Morse at DH, getting another power hitter into the line-up without forcing Morse to run around the outfield, but under NL rules, Morse will either have to play left field or come off the bench as a pinch-hitter. Morse is a terrible defender when healthy, and it’s not clear that he’s recovered enough from his oblique strain to live up to even his own low standards with the glove, but then again, the competition is converted first baseman Travis Ishikawa, who isn’t exactly a defensive standout himself.
If you’re going to have a defensively challenged left fielder, might as well pick the one with the better bat, right? Well, I’m not sure that those should really be the two choices being debated here. I’d like to suggest that maybe the best option isn’t either Ishikawa or Morse; instead, maybe the Giants best chance to win would come from starting Juan Perez.
Yeah, I know, Juan Perez can’t hit, as his .170/.224/.270 line this season indicates, and both Ishikawa and Morse have hit big home runs for the Giants in the postseason, so there’s a significant downgrade to taking their bats out of the line-up, especially with a pitcher already being forced into the line-up. Hit Perez and a pitcher back-to-back, and you’re basically asking to kill any rally that the middle of the order might start, right?
Maybe not. Perez’s 2014 big league line was terrible, but it also came in just 109 plate appearances. You don’t really want to base future performance on a month’s worth of at-bats, no matter how bad a player was in those opportunities. Especially when we see Perez’s numbers in Triple-A:
196 PA, .316/.372/.508, .385 wOBA, 128 wRC+
That isn’t a very big sample either, of course, but Perez posted a 105 wRC+ in Triple-A last year, and a 116 wRC+ in Double-A the year before, so his minor league track record does suggest that he does possess a modicum of offensive ability. And it’s why Steamer projects him as an 84 wRC+ hitter going forward; his minor league numbers suggest that he’d be a below average (but not disastrous) hitter, not too dissimilar from Brandon Crawford, who projects as a 90 wRC+ player and is an unquestioned regular for the Giants based on his defensive value.
Perez doesn’t have the same amount of defensive value as Crawford, but in a very limited sample, there is a decent amount of evidence that Perez’s defensive skills can be quite valuable. Over the last two seasons, here are the top 15 outfielders by the ARM portion of UZR, which rates players on how well they stop runners from taking extra bases and by cutting them down with outfield assists. I’ve included the same component of DRS, as well as scaling both to per-1000 innings.
| # | Name | Inn | ARM | rARM | ARM/1000 | rARM/1000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leonys Martin | 2,375 | 18 | 18 | 8 | 8 |
| 2 | Juan Lagares | 1,849 | 17 | 17 | 9 | 9 |
| 3 | Alex Gordon | 2,737 | 17 | 15 | 6 | 5 |
| 4 | Gerardo Parra | 2,516 | 15 | 14 | 6 | 6 |
| 5 | Yoenis Cespedes | 2,060 | 13 | 17 | 7 | 8 |
| 6 | Adam Jones | 2,762 | 13 | 11 | 5 | 4 |
| 7 | Marcell Ozuna | 1,937 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| 8 | Jose Bautista | 2,100 | 10 | 14 | 5 | 7 |
| 9 | Nori Aoki | 2,255 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
| 10 | Nick Markakis | 2,695 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 11 | Yasiel Puig | 2,071 | 8 | 9 | 4 | 4 |
| 12 | Juan Perez | 498 | 8 | 5 | 15 | 10 |
| 13 | Bryce Harper | 1,835 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| 14 | Chris Denorfia | 1,715 | 7 | 8 | 4 | 5 |
| 15 | Ender Inciarte | 909 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 4 |
Despite playing a little less than 500 innings, Perez rates as equal in total value created through stopping runner advancement as some of the best throwers in baseball; on a per-innings basis, no one has been better, by either UZR or DRS’s arm ratings. Of course, we’re dealing with less than one-half of one season’s worth of data, and we can’t just take these numbers as Perez’s true talent defensive level after we’ve thrown out his small-sample offensive numbers in favor of a more favorable projection. We need to regress these pretty heavily as well, even though the ARM portion of UZR/DRS is more stable than the range portion.
Using pretty heavy regression, Steamer forecasts Perez as a +8 defender in left field over the course of a full season — his +6 FLD projection on the Steamer600 tab includes some projected CF innings — which makes him about +0.5 WAR player over 600 plate appearances; the glove is good enough to play in the big leagues, even though the bat is genuinely poor. Of course, you don’t want to be starting a +0.5 WAR player in the World Series, but the reality is that’s what the Giants are going to be picking no matter who they start.
Even with his career 122 wRC+, Morse has been worth less than +1 WAR per 600 PA over his career, thanks to his atrocious defense in the outfield and extremely poor baserunning. Steamer doesn’t even buy into Morse’s offensive levels being sustained, projecting him as a 108 wRC+ player, which combined with his other skill deficiencies, makes him an essentially replacement level outfielder. And that’s when he’s healthy enough to run. If you assume that he’s even partially diminished in the field due to the oblique strain, then he’s probably a net negative in the outfield.
Given the need for multiple pinch-hitters in NL ballparks, Morse is clearly best deployed as a bat off the bench. You get one potentially high leverage plate appearance without any of the negatives of him playing the field, and can even pinch run for him if he reaches and the situation calls for it. Playing him in the field for six or seven innings to try and get two extra at-bats just isn’t worth it.
Ishikawa has been the compromise choice to date, providing more offense than Perez and more defense than Morse. But realistically, the gap at the plate probably isn’t large enough to justify playing Ishikawa in left against a team that has identified him as a significant liability in the field. Let’s take a look at the play that led to the Royals 3-2 lead on Wednesday night, for instance.
Lorenzo Cain is on second base after doubling to left center on a ball just out of Ishikawa’s reach. I think a better LF probably makes that play, but that can be a gray area which is tough to prove, so let’s just focus on the next play. Billy Butler lines a hard single to left field. Ishikawa plays it on one bounce, and here is a screenshot of where Cain was on the bases when Ishikawa fielded the ball.
Cain is three steps from the third base bag at that point, and yet, he’s not even considering slowing down. Here’s the screenshot from where he’s made the turn.
Ishikawa is already in his throwing motion. Cain’s foot is still on third base. And the result?
Ishikawa’s throw is a lob into the cutoff man, and it hangs in the air long enough for Cain to run ~60 feet before the ball is caught harmlessly near third base.
Lorenzo Cain is really fast, of course, but never has it been more obvious why Travis Ishikawa has spent his career playing first base. Watch the full replay again in normal speed, just to see how amazing this was as a sight in an MLB game.
Statcast tells us that Butler hit the ball 112 mph, so this ball got to the outfield as fast as any playable ball ever will. It was hit almost directly at Ishikawa, and he was able to field the ball coming towards the plate. And while the initial reaction was to credit the speed of Cain, we actually have Statcast data that shows that Cain’s top speed on this play wasn’t actually quite as extraordinary as you might think from the raw video. Here’s a screenshot of the recorded top speeds of the three runners on the play, via Statcast’s replay.
Cain got up to 20.2 mph — or 29 feet per second, a more useful measure of speed on a baseball field — which is certainly moving, but it’s only fractionally faster than the 19.5 mph top speed of Eric Hosmer. Even Billy Butler — who is among the slowest players in the game, and running out of the box without the chance to get a head start — got up to 16 mph (23 feet per second) on the play.
Cain went from his moving lead on second base to crossing the plate in ~6.3 seconds, for an average speed of about 25 feet per second if we think he ran about 160 feet on the play. That means that his recorded top speed was about 20 percent faster than his average speed. Even if we assume Butler was running top speed on a single to left where there wouldn’t be a play at first base, and we assume he can’t possibly run faster than that 16 mph, that still translates to 23 feet per second at full sprint. Knocking 20 percent off that would lead to an average speed of 19 feet per second, and even if we think he’s going to be much slower at reacting and getting started, we probably can’t get him down much below 17 or 18 feet per second for the entire play.
At 17 feet per second, it would have taken Butler roughly 9.4 seconds to score from the position that Cain was in when the ball was hit. I’m not sure three more seconds is enough for Ishikawa’s throw to get cut off, the relay to make it home, and Posey to make a tag. At the very least, it would have been close, and Butler is one of the very slowest players in baseball. Pretty much every player on the Royals would have scored on that play, or at least, made it very close.
With Cain on the bases, this was a no-contest run on a missile to left field where the runner wasn’t even at third base when the ball was fielded. Cain reached because Ishikawa couldn’t get to a fly ball to left, then scored because Ishikawa can’t throw. Juan Perez probably could have gotten to his double, and very likely would have been able to either make a play at the plate or hold Cain at third on Butler’s single.
The projected offensive gap between Perez and Ishikawa is +12 runs per 600 plate appearances. To think that Perez doesn’t make up that gap with his glove, you’d have to think Ishikawa is something close to a league average left fielder. I don’t see how we could realistically conclude that Ishikawa is anything near average defensively in left field right now, especially against a team that is going to be as aggressive on the bases as the Royals.
The Giants will need multiple pinch-hitters in each of the next three games. Ishikawa can provide value in hitting for a pitcher against a right-handed reliever, so starting Perez doesn’t remove him from the game entirely. But the Giants shouldn’t risk letting the Royals run all over Ishikawa again. The value of having Perez play left field is likely more valuable than trying to let Ishikawa hit a few extra times.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
You’re a smart man Mr. Cameron, what are you doing for the game tonight?
Mrs. Cistulli, you’re trying to seduce me.
I could watch stat cast videos all day.
Seriously am I the only one who wishes this was how live broadcasts always looked, or at least replays? Love this stuff.
Very interesting read. It would seem that against a team with a lot of speed like the Royals you would want the D in left. When I watched Cain score on the hit to left I was also amazed that the throw was so poor. I was thinking Mo’ne Davis could have thrown out Cain.
Is this supposed to be a diss? Mo’ne Davis can really throw!
There’s this law of human social behavior, sometimes called Brisbee’s Law, that goes:
In any gathering of 2 or more SF Giants’ fans – whether at AT&T, in a public room, in a private viewing den, assembled ’round the screens in the electronics section at the mall, in a chatroom – whenever there’s a screen shot of, or the least even-just-in-passing mention of the name of, Juan Perez, then then time it takes before one of them says ‘If Perez could only hit TWO FREAKING THIRTY, then I for am prepared to arm myself to the teeth to defend his owning a permanent outfield spot’, is the square root of what any rational person [ie. not a fan of baseball] can possibly imagine.
There are those who will point out, because they have and do often, that if the Giants just COMMITTED an OF spot to Perez, then, in time, those minor league OBPs he keeps putting up would show, most of them anyway, at AT&T, and we could move on to deal with the planet’s other pressing problems.
The projections have him hitting better than .230 and they still think he’s a .5 WAR outfielder on a full-time basis. Dude’s not a starter.
He’s also already 27 y/o and you would have hoped he had figured it out by now.
A correct statement of Brisbee’s Law: take pitches, try to walk – hey did you catch the latest Game of Thrones?
Dave makes a pretty compelling case but one factor not considered here are Jeremy Guthrie’s platoon splits the past couple seasons:
2014: .270 wOBA RHB against / .364 wOBA LHB against
2013: .277 wOBA RHB against / .392 wOBA LHB against
I’ll ask the experts here how much this should be weighed in however I think I was Bochy I’d be more inclined to stick with Ishikawa to start and then put Perez in for defense in the middle innings if they can get an early lead. Particularly against the Royals bullpen, I’d think you want to maximize your chances of scoring early.
Also, Ishikawa’s splits evidence an advantage against RHPs, particularly starters, that has sustained* across his career.
[*with the one exception in 2012, being limited to OBP and then in a sample size so minuscule as to remove all meaning]
Plus Bochy has cultivated what I like to call an anti-FG rep, in the sense of generally erring on the side of rewarding recent productivity over data that sustainable over time, EXCEPT with Juan Perez.
Stories have been reported of Perez making some [for-him uncharacteristically] positive contribution to the Giants’ offense in a game (say, a dinger), and the next day, aware of his being subject to ‘the exception’, enlisting BamBam Meulens in seeking out Bochy to plead his case for inclusion under Bochy’s general [anti-FGs) policy. And that, even despite the absence of any advocate assigned to argue the converse, Perez LOSES the argument — to Bochy citing historial splits and Tango-type rationales!
Bochy DOES know about sabermetrics, including such notables as Tango and FanGraphs. He fosters the impression of ignorance about or contempt for them … unless and until needed to back up a decision.
So: very unlikely Bochy puts unnecessary and avoidable pressure on Morse to avoid looking like a complete clown to the world in defending LF, and also unlikely that Bochy suddenly decides to go against his treatment of Perez as ‘the exception’, particularly where Ishikawa’s got that historical split advantage, and the comfort margin of a little more familiarity in covering LF at AT&T, and, as you argue, a darn sound basis for starting Ishikawa to help nail Guthrie before Yost is able to go to the fire Hydra.
Surprised that aspect was left out of the main article. Seems rather significant to me.
If Cain left Kalamazoo at 1pm heading west and Hosmer left Chicago at 1:45 pm heading east, where would they collide?
Somewhere along intersecting outer arms of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, in (by estimate) approximately 4 billion years.
Uh, if I’m looking at the map right, somewhere on the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Depends: If they go ‘dead’ W and E respectively, they miss each other by a substantial margin and never collide at all; thus, my invocation of the coming galactic conflagration. If it’s as crows fly, then Idcwas [Say it aloud, it’s dirty.] is correct. And G’s answer relies on there being insufficient controls in the hypothesis from which to derive a rational consensus.
St. Joeseph at 2:39pm local time
And for good measure, Billy Butler leaves…no, he still hasn’t left Denny’s yet. Polishing off another Grand Slam. Syrup on *everything*.
They would never collide. Kalamazoo is not at the same latitude as Chicago, so Cain would safely pass Hosmer many miles to the north.
Also, we would need additional information about their swimming speeds to figure out at which point they would reach the same longitude.
“I’m not sure three more seconds is enough for Ishikawa’s throw to get cut off, the relay to make it home, and Posey to make a tag.”
You must be out of your mind. Three seconds is an eternity in baseball. That’s about the time it takes from the pitcher starting his delivery to the time the ball reaches second base from the catcher on a steal!
Umm…
A delivery from the stretch to a target 60 feet away is likely a faster process than an outfielder taking a couple of steps or a crow hop before uncorking a throw to a target over 100 feet away.
Likewise, a catcher popping up and firing to a target 127 feet away is probably faster than a SS having to catch a cutoff throw and turn or pivot to make a throw home from a similar distance.
A pitcher throws hard. Ishikawa throws like a girl.
It’s really not that hard to fathom.
Look at the screenshot. All Crawford has to do is catch and throw ~80 feet to the catcher, and that screenshot is before Cain has even reached home. Now add THREE seconds to that!
A better context is that a runner three seconds behind Cain would be barely rounding third in that screenshot.
Ishikawa’s “throw” reached Crawford by the time the three seconds began.
Dave – your point is good and stands, but the specifics are a bit off. Cain was on base during that particular inning after a single to center and a Hosmer walk. His double was in the first. He also scored there.
It is interesting that the 3B coach is windmilling the entire time. It seems clear that KC, while an aggressive running team anyway, knows that there is no arm in LF and that you can basically run at will on anything hit there.
That Statcast image is from the first inning. In the sixth inning images Hosmer stays at second while in the Statcast image Hosmer is on third base. I don’t know how drastically different Cain’s speed was in the sixth inning vs the first inning, but I’m guessing it could be significant since the first inning single by Butler was an easy score.
Brandon Belt in left field. Michael Morse at first base. You’re welcome.
maybe. expecially with KC’s great bullpen that might be a recipe for innings 1-5, to maximize run production expectancy, and then put in Perez and shift Belt to first. It is not Bochy’s style however.
Morse is just as bad defensively at 1B as he as in LF and Belt hasn’t played the OF all year. So now you’d have defensive liabilities at 2 positions instead of 1. Doesn’t sound like an upgrade to me.
In this game, Ishikawa’s inferior fielding (and throwing) ability might be tested, or it might not. However, his superior hitting ability will definitely be tested, at least 3 times.
One can add to this the observation that postseason success correlates more with defense than with hitting*. Interesting article and discussion. I tend to agree that Perez might be the best choice. He will be in left after about the 5th inning I believe in any case.
* Too lazy to provide the reference for this. You guys know it i assume.
A dumb question: can anyone tell me where to find postseason WPA for 2014?
Well, tonight it’s Jeremy Guthrie to start for KC and Ishikawa is a left handed hitter which neither Perez or Morse is, so there’s that..
Three seconds is an eternity when it comes to throwing a ball.
I don’t know Butler’s chances of getting thrown out on THAT throw or even on 1000 random throws by Ishikawa, but there is close to a zero chance that Butler (or almost anyone but a really fast runner) gets sent on that hit. I think there were zero outs.
People already mentioned this, but, yes, the handedness is important. I have the gap between them in offense v. a RHP of 14 runs. V LHP it is…zero.
Versus a LHP, Perez is a no-brainer. Versus a RHP, it is probably a tossup.
In terms of defense, how would a hypothetical Perez-Blanco-Pence outfield compare to a Gordon-Dyson-Cain outfield?
My own view is that there is not much difference between those two outfields. Perez and Blanco both have exceptional range and good to excellent arms. Pence seems like a pretty good defensive outfielder as well…
Ishikawa lobbed into the cutoff man because he was most likely told to do so after a similar 1st inning play:
Cain was on 2nd, Hosmer on 1st. Butler hit a liner into shallow left-center. Ishikawa ranged to his left to cut it off and tried to gun down Cain, who by the look of the highlight had rounded third by a few strides before the throw was made. The throw was fairly accurate, but way late and allowed Hosmer to advance to 3rd easily.
Although Hosmer didn’t end up scoring, I’m sure Ishikawa got a quick slap on the wrist from Ron Wotus about the ill-advised throw when he got back in the dugout. The play you are referencing happened 5 innings later, and Ishikawa definitely should have charged and thrown home, probably nailing Cain by 15 feet and leaving runners on 1st and 2nd with one out.
The point you make about Ishikawa exhibiting the instincts of a converted 1B are absolutely accurate. Both plays showed very poor judgement, and his bat has not justified said judgement. It is definitely a gamble putting him out there hoping the Royals won’t hit the ball TO THE LEFT SIDE OF THE OUTFIELD. But Peavy didn’t really help him out in either of those situations with Butler and Salvador Perez clearly trying to pull it at any cost every at bat.
Personally I’d also like to see Perez in left. When it really comes down to it though, I don’t really have a say in the matter. I do, however, hope It pays off for Bochy, as he will definitely be the one shouldering the blame if it doesn’t.
How did Morse ever play SHORTSTOP in the big leagues? Silly Stuff.