Cool outfield defense charts at Baseball Savant

[Spy Fox]

Maybe some of you have seen these before, but my first exposure to them was in a Fangraphs article today. There are some pretty interesting charts and graphs at Baseball Savant that track the plays outfielders do and don't make. 

 

You can look at charts like this one for Adam Jones which shows every hit he allowed in the CF zone and a black dot in the middle showing his average starting point. The color indicates the percentage likelihood of making an out-- so this particular chart can confirm the eye test that, because of his tendency to play shallow, Jones is better at coming in on balls than going back, as there are a lot of whiter and bluer dots towards the warning track area, indicating there are hits out there that other CFers would have caught. 

You can also look at the same info in graphical form which plots each hit or out in terms of hang time and distance from then fielder. This allows for some interesting comparisons such as noting that Seth Smith seems to be worse at getting to the routine plays than Hyun Soo Kim, as evidenced by the dots in the blue on this hits graph:

...but that Smith might be better than Kim in terms of making difficult plays at long range, as evidenced by the dots in the red in this catches graph:

Smith did have about 50 more chances in the OF than Kim did last year (160ish to 110ish), so that is definitely a factor in having more of the extreme dots. But it does seem that, even proportionally to innings played, Smith had a higher rate of impressive plays but also a higher rate of flubbed easy catches. Which might suggest that he has better range than Kim but is more prone to bad routes or misjudging? 

Small sample size and all that, but I think this is a pretty interesting tool that I hadn't seen before, and I'd like to check out some other comparisons.

Unfortunately I can't find the Mark Trumbo charts for last year, which I was interested in to see whether his charts looked as bad as I would have expected. They have him classified as a 1b, so maybe that these OF charts are coded to only show up for the players classified as outfielders.

Hope some of you enjoy checking this out, and maybe share any observations you find. 

[25 Nuggets]

Great work SpyFox.

Basically this is a case where metrics meets the eye test.  Jones plays too shallow, and Smith has more range than Kim.

Do you have similar graphs for Angel Pagan and Mark Trumbo?

[Spy Fox]

57 minutes ago, 25 Nuggets said:

Great work SpyFox.

Basically this is a case where metrics meets the eye test.  Jones plays too shallow, and Smith has more range than Kim.

Do you have similar graphs for Angel Pagan and Mark Trumbo?

They don't have Trumbo. But here are some of Pagan's charts from last year in SF. The first one didn't copy with the title, but it's for Hits Allowed, with Pagan's average starting point in the middle:

Honestly, it's hard to tell that much from the charts unless you're comparing it to somebody else's. And Pagan had a lot more chances than either Smith or Kim.  

 

[PaulFolk]

4 hours ago, Spy Fox said:

Smith did have about 50 more chances in the OF than Kim did last year (160ish to 110ish), so that is definitely a factor in having more of the extreme dots. But it does seem that, even proportionally to innings played, Smith had a higher rate of impressive plays but also a higher rate of flubbed easy catches. Which might suggest that he has better range than Kim but is more prone to bad routes or misjudging? 

Interesting stuff! Could Smith's struggles have something to do with ballpark factors? Do Safeco's outfield dimensions lend themselves to letting balls with a longer hangtime sometimes fall in?

[Spy Fox]

2 hours ago, PaulFolk said:

Interesting stuff! Could Smith's struggles have something to do with ballpark factors? Do Safeco's outfield dimensions lend themselves to letting balls with a longer hangtime sometimes fall in?

Who knows? Maybe the dimensions contribute since Safeco's outfield is big, but as far as we know those hits were in a different stadium. It could also just be fluky stuff like wind. 

It would be awesome if there were charts like this and then you could click on each dot and bring up the highlight. Maybe someday.