Tuesday, July 8, 2008
A Tale of Two Defenses
The Tampa Bay Rays are storming through the American League right now and the media is picking up on it. There's been quite a few articles written about the surging Rays recently and with good reason. Baseball Prospectus is taking credit for picking them to win 88-90 games this year, but the first analyst who put up a bullish forecast for them was Sean Smith at his blog. Sean predicted them to win 89 games, and so far they are on pace to shatter that.Enough people have written about the Rays that I'm not going to get into it here, except for one thing. Defense.
| TM | POS | 07 ZR | 08 ZR | 07 Diff | 08 Diff | 07 RS | 08 RS | RS+/- |
| TB | 1B | .801 | .853 | -12 | -1 | -9 | -1 | 8 |
| TB | 2B | .786 | .817 | -18 | -3 | -14 | -2 | 11 |
| TB | 3B | .751 | .831 | -4 | 6 | -3 | 5 | 8 |
| TB | CF | .852 | .878 | -16 | -5 | -13 | -4 | 9 |
| TB | LF | .907 | .913 | 16 | 14 | 13 | 12 | -2 |
| TB | RF | .869 | .871 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 |
| TB | SS | .760 | .827 | -29 | -1 | -22 | 0 | 22 |
| TB | Total | .815 | .854 | -62 | 10 | -48 | 8 | 56 |
07 ZR: 2007 zone rating at this position
08 ZR: 2008 zone rating at this position
07 Diff: 2007 plays made compared to average
08 Diff: 2008 plays made compared to average
07 RS: 2007 runs saved compared to average
08 RS: 2008 runs saved compared to average
RS+/-: Runs saved at position compared between 2007 and 2008
Note that 2008 is just a bit over half over, so we are comparing a half season to a full season. Still, the difference is stark. Last year, the Rays were horrific defensively. They made 62 plays fewer than average and allowed 48 runs more than average according to zone rating.
So what's changed? The biggest improvement is at short, where Jason Bartlett has been a big improvement over the sordid cast of characters that manned short last year led by Brendan Harris's -13. 2B is also improved, although still slightly below average. A year of on the job training in CF has helped B.J. Upton improve his zone rating in CF from .859 to .889, and not only can Evan Longoria hit, he's playing a slightly above average 3B. Willy Aybar has provide plus defense at 1B, 2B and 3B off the bench as well.
What really stands out is that this year's Rays team is 56 runs better defensively than last year's squad, and we still have 70+ games to go. If they continue at their current pace, they'll save another seven runs above average by season's end. That's a 6+ win difference on defense alone. If I get some time I'll see if I can find the biggest year to year changes in defense according to zone rating since 1987, but I'd be surprised if there was ever a bigger improvement than that.
So yeah, the Rays are good.
Page 1 of 1 pages: