Who will get a better contract this winter, Markakis or Jones?

[weams]

6 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's entirely plausible that Nick is really a -4 RFer and Jones is a +2.  Or -9 and -5.  Which changes the overall analysis not at all.

He was asking why the stats say what they do about these guys. The answer I gave is bad data.  It is based on human projection. Not on the true measures. Which I hope come soon and straighten this all out. 

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, weams said:

I was thinking Nick might still be  a neutral right fielder.  And with bad inputs, we don't know where that would leave Adam. Maybe -4? We don't know!

And at the fractions of a win level it just doesn't matter.  It would be one thing if our eyes said Nick was Roberto Clemente and the metrics said Adam Dunn.  But the metrics say he's a bit below average, and, well... he's a nearly 36-year-old who wasn't terribly fast at 26.  

The metrics agree with subjective observation a large majority of the time.  They can't be as fantastically ridiculous as you claim.

[wildbillhiccup]

In somewhat related news Jones was sort of trying to defend Antonio Brown on Twitter last night. He made a sarcastic comment when someone reported that Brown had unfollowed the Raiders and Derek Carr on Instagram. He said something like "not a big deal, it's his instagram!" and the reporter tweeted back "it would be a big deal if my wife unfollowed me on instagram", which I thought was a great reply.  Adam isn't the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to social media. 

[DrungoHazewood]

5 minutes ago, weams said:

He was asking why the stats say what they do about these guys. The answer I gave is bad data.  It is based on human projection. Not on the true measures. Which I hope come soon and straighten this all out. 

Statcast says Nick is a slightly below average RFer.  That's the current gold standard, that seems to be pretty solid.  It also says Jones is a -5 RFer this year, and a -18 CFer last year.  All of that generally agrees with less sophisticated metrics.

The cases where even the older metrics appear off by a mile are rare.

[SurhoffRules]

26 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Statcast says Nick is a slightly below average RFer.  That's the current gold standard, that seems to be pretty solid.  It also says Jones is a -5 RFer this year, and a -18 CFer last year.  All of that generally agrees with less sophisticated metrics.

The cases where even the older metrics appear off by a mile are rare.

BBref says that Jones is better in RF than Markakis by dWAR. It also says that his RF is the same as Nick's, he's committed 5 errors to Nick 2 (in a few less games), and has less assists than Nick. I'm just a little confused because all those are components of the dWAR so I'm just not seeing what the input is that's saying Adam was worth more in the field this year than Nick.

Honestly though, I haven't put a ton of effort into understanding dWAR as most of the time it agrees with my eye and I kind expect of the newer defensive metric revolution to make improvements on it anyway. Shrug.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, SurhoffRules said:

BBref says that Jones is better in RF than Markakis by dWAR. It also says that his RF is the same as Nick's, he's committed 5 errors to Nick 2 (in a few less games), and has less assists than Nick. I'm just a little confused because all those are components of the dWAR so I'm just not seeing what the input is that's saying Adam was worth more in the field this year than Nick.

Honestly though, I haven't put a ton of effort into understanding dWAR as most of the time it agrees with my eye and I kind expect of the newer defensive metric revolution to make improvements on it anyway. Shrug.

bb-ref says that Jones has been a -1 fielder, primarily in RF, in 123 games.  They say Nick is a -5 RFer in 104 games.  Both of them get -4 runs of positional adjustment for being mostly RFers, since RF is easier than an average position, and you don't want a -4 RFer being valued equally with a -4 CFer or SS.

bb-ref's defensive numbers are based on adjusted outs compared to average.  Markakis' range factor (i.e. {PO+AST)/9 innings) is 1.81.  Jones' is 1.86.  The league's is 2.00.  They adjust the range factor to account for opportunity context, which varies due to things like the handedness of their pitching staffs, or the GB/FB tendencies of their pitching staffs, and the strikeout rates of those pitchers.  Then those adjusted outs per game are turned into run values per however many games they've played.

They're figuring defensive run values by methods that are not the same accuracy as offensive stats.  @weams is not wrong when he says defensive metrics aren't as reliable as offensive metrics.  But to me that just means that we know Jones' -1 might be -6 or might be +1, which in the grand scheme of things doesn't amount to much.  You don't need to throw it all out and make up stuff.

[SurhoffRules]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

....that we know Jones' -1 might be -6 or might be +1, which in the grand scheme of things doesn't amount to much.  You don't need to throw it all out and make up stuff.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for tossing it out entirely or dismissing it until improvements are made. Just coming to terms that when you bundle it all up into the final WAR number, the range of what is current considered acceptable for dWAR can result in a +/- 8 million dollars of value when you look back at how a teams roster is constructed. The offensive portion of it seems to have far and away more certainty.

That makes comparing the 3M contract Jones got vs the 4M contract Markakis got difficult. If Jones is -6 in the field, his contract stunk. If Markakis was 0 in the field, his contract moves from adequate to great. For a number thats certainly supposed to be compariable between players at the same position, it's a large delta in terms of allocating roster dollars.

Regardless, I suspect most front offices would look at either player as a risk to underperform given where they both are in their careers and whatever their contracts do or don't look like next season will reflect that.

[DrungoHazewood]

9 minutes ago, SurhoffRules said:

To be clear, I'm not advocating for tossing it out entirely or dismissing it until improvements are made. Just coming to terms that when you bundle it all up into the final WAR number, the range of what is current considered acceptable for dWAR can result in a +/- 8 million dollars of value when you look back at how a teams roster is constructed. The offensive portion of it seems to have far and away more certainty.

That makes comparing the 3M contract Jones got vs the 4M contract Markakis got difficult. If Jones is -6 in the field, his contract stunk. If Markakis was 0 in the field, his contract moves from adequate to great. For a number thats certainly supposed to be compariable between players at the same position, it's a large delta in terms of allocating roster dollars.

Regardless, I suspect most front offices would look at either player as a risk to underperform given where they both are in their careers and whatever their contracts do or don't look like next season will reflect that.

I think you might be over emphasizing the defensive part of the package.  Whether Jones was a -5 fielder or a 0 fielder is kind of down in the noise.  We know he's a -5 bat, and close to average on baserunning and hitting into double plays.  And we know about 15 runs separates replacement level from average in 123 games.  So Jones is somewhere between replacement and +5 runs.  I don't think any current MLB front office is going to swing a contract $millions of dollars based on five runs.  They know as well as you and I do that five runs is a rounding error.  They offered him $3M a year because that's a decent sum for a veteran player around his level of production.

[SurhoffRules]

17 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think you might be over emphasizing the defensive part of the package.  Whether Jones was a -5 fielder or a 0 fielder is kind of down in the noise.  We know he's a -5 bat, and close to average on baserunning and hitting into double plays.  And we know about 15 runs separates replacement level from average in 123 games.  So Jones is somewhere between replacement and +5 runs.  I don't think any current MLB front office is going to swing a contract $millions of dollars based on five runs.  They know as well as you and I do that five runs is a rounding error.  They offered him $3M a year because that's a decent sum for a veteran player around his level of production.

I get what your says but I suppose I'm either not articulating what I'm mulling over well enough to contribute to the discussion or perhaps what I'm mulling over really isn't relevant.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is if it is acceptable to say that WAR see's players like Markakis and Jones as very close defensively, but if we blindly flip their dWAR (-0.6 and -1.3) components Adam becomes about a -0.3 player and Nick jumps to 0.7 (I think), then a full win's worth of value is well withing the currently tolerable outcomes for their WAR.

When I'm looking to assign value to someone performance, it seems a little loosey-goosey to have one component to a total WAR number that can swing a person from being a useful piece over 100 games to below replacement level. If +5 defensive runs is a rounding error why can that tolerable range impact the final replacement value to such a large order of magnitude? Perhaps its not unreasonable to say a -0.3 and a 0.7 player are that different, but I know if I was looking at signing someone in the 32-36 range it would certainly be nice to understand how they are able to produce in the field.

I'm comfortable with noise within a season and noise across seasons, but perhaps my expectations (or desires) for accuracy are unreasonable at this point. The new positional based defensive metrics will start to trickle out in the coming years and I imagine we'll have a much more consistent idea of how to rate players defensively.

My prediction for 2019 is that neither Markakis or Jones gets more than 2.5 million.

[SurhoffRules]

On 5/30/2019 at 4:24 PM, Frobby said:

Fangraphs has Nick at 0.7 fWAR ($5.4 mm) and Adam at 0.6 ($4.6 mm).    I think both teams are getting pretty good value so far.    

Fangraphs apparently thinks much less of Nick's defense as the season has progressed. They have him at -12.6 to Adams -4.7 pushing Adam's fWAR to 0.4 to Nick's 0.1 That puts Nick's contract out of the point where it provided any positive value.

I do know many people prefer fWAR inputs and weight to bWARs and I should probably start quoting that.

[DrungoHazewood]

26 minutes ago, SurhoffRules said:

I get what your says but I suppose I'm either not articulating what I'm mulling over well enough to contribute to the discussion or perhaps what I'm mulling over really isn't relevant.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is if it is acceptable to say that WAR see's players like Markakis and Jones as very close defensively, but if we blindly flip their dWAR (-0.6 and -1.3) components Adam becomes about a -0.3 player and Nick jumps to 0.7 (I think), then a full win's worth of value is well withing the currently tolerable outcomes for their WAR.

When I'm looking to assign value to someone performance, it seems a little loosey-goosey to have one component to a total WAR number that can swing a person from being a useful piece over 100 games to below replacement level. If +5 defensive runs is a rounding error why can that tolerable range impact the final replacement value to such a large order of magnitude? Perhaps its not unreasonable to say a -0.3 and a 0.7 player are that different, but I know if I was looking at signing someone in the 32-36 range it would certainly be nice to understand how they are able to produce in the field.

I'm comfortable with noise within a season and noise across seasons, but perhaps my expectations (or desires) for accuracy are unreasonable at this point. The new positional based defensive metrics will start to trickle out in the coming years and I imagine we'll have a much more consistent idea of how to rate players defensively.

My prediction for 2019 is that neither Markakis or Jones gets more than 2.5 million.

I don't think the difference between -0.3 and +0.7 wins is all that meaningful.  That's a win.  It's 10 runs.  There are always going to be uncertainties. You have to assume any metric is going to have an implied error range.  If we're talking MVP votes, and one player is +8 wins and other is +7.3, that's not definitive.  If they're both corner outfielders in Milwaukee, maybe.  If one's a shortstop in LA and the other is a pitcher in Washington there are a lot of layers you could peel back and discuss and still probably not come up with a definitive answer.  

In any case, Mike Trout is 61 runs above average with the bat.  He's +0 with the glove according to bb-ref.  He's a +3 baserunner, gets +2 for defensive position.  If we're missing his total value, it's not predominantly because the defensive metrics stink.  Even if he's really a +10 or a -10 CFer (and StatCast says he's a -2) his offensive and other contributions are vastly more important.  Even if you're a @weams-level defensive metric skeptic Trout's WAR can't be off by more than 15%.  At the edges it might turn him into a 7 or 9 win player instead of 8, and more likely 7.5 or 8.5.  Defensive metrics aren't turning MVPs into bums or vice versa, they might turn a small handful of superstars into really good stars or average regulars into somewhat below-average players.

And five runs of uncertainty on defense should have very little impact on the valuation of a long-term deal.  Over five years that might make a $75M deal into a $65M or $85M deal.

[SurhoffRules]

@DrungoHazewood I still get feeling that we're talking past each other a bit and that's mostly coming from my side of the conversation. I understand, appreciate, and agree with everything your saying about how the WAR numbers are put together and I appreciate the effort you put into your replies.

[atomic]

45 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't think the difference between -0.3 and +0.7 wins is all that meaningful.  That's a win.  It's 10 runs.  There are always going to be uncertainties. You have to assume any metric is going to have an implied error range.  If we're talking MVP votes, and one player is +8 wins and other is +7.3, that's not definitive.  If they're both corner outfielders in Milwaukee, maybe.  If one's a shortstop in LA and the other is a pitcher in Washington there are a lot of layers you could peel back and discuss and still probably not come up with a definitive answer.  

In any case, Mike Trout is 61 runs above average with the bat.  He's +0 with the glove according to bb-ref.  He's a +3 baserunner, gets +2 for defensive position.  If we're missing his total value, it's not predominantly because the defensive metrics stink.  Even if he's really a +10 or a -10 CFer (and StatCast says he's a -2) his offensive and other contributions are vastly more important.  Even if you're a @weams-level defensive metric skeptic Trout's WAR can't be off by more than 15%.  At the edges it might turn him into a 7 or 9 win player instead of 8, and more likely 7.5 or 8.5.  Defensive metrics aren't turning MVPs into bums or vice versa, they might turn a small handful of superstars into really good stars or average regulars into somewhat below-average players.

And five runs of uncertainty on defense should have very little impact on the valuation of a long-term deal.  Over five years that might make a $75M deal into a $65M or $85M deal.

Being an average defensive center fielder makes him a good defensive player.  Unlike the Orioles most teams put good fielders in center.  You say he only gets +2 for being a center fielder but corner outfielders get negative numbers for their position so it is more than +2.

Centerfielder is + 2.5 runs.

Right Fielder is -7 runs

 

 

[atomic]

Interesting thing is DH is -15 runs. Mancini is played about half a season in Right Field.  His defense is rated -15 runs per season.  So he loses 8 runs over if he was just a DH.  I think that is a major fault of using WAR to evaluate him.  

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, SurhoffRules said:

Fangraphs apparently thinks much less of Nick's defense as the season has progressed. They have him at -12.6 to Adams -4.7 pushing Adam's fWAR to 0.4 to Nick's 0.1 That puts Nick's contract out of the point where it provided any positive value.

I do know many people prefer fWAR inputs and weight to bWARs and I should probably start quoting that.

You could just split the difference between bb-ref's and Fangraphs' valuations.  And make sure to look at Statcast to see if anything changes.

And I doubt that the Braves signed Markakis on the assumption that he'd provide right around +0.8 wins for $6M, and are disappointed by 0.1. They signed him because they thought he'd probably give them mostly full time play, hit .275 and not embarrass himself on defense, which is what he did until he got hurt.