2023 Defense Thread

[Jagwar]

As bad as the defense was last night, I was surprised that there were only 3 unearned runs. 

[Frobby]

18 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I think the Urias play was the worst and I have been noting Urias's decline on other threads. His defense is really concerning right now. His bat is OK, but can we afford to be missing routine plays? Right now he is down to -8 OAA, better only than Frazier. Total reversal of his GG season last year. I've been a big champion of Ramon in the past but he just isn't getting it done. 

To me, his defense has been good most of the year, but he has been brutal lately.  He’s made six errors all season, and four of them have been this September, not including that play last night, which was scored a hit.  I have no idea what’s going on with him lately, but it seems to be in his head now.  I know OAA doesn’t like him, but Rdrs has him +4, Rtot at +4 and UZR at +6.1.  To my eye, he’s been good most of the year, but horrible lately.  

[forphase1]

1 hour ago, Jagwar said:

As bad as the defense was last night, I was surprised that there were only 3 unearned runs. 

Because the score keeping sucks.  I've seen probably a dozen plays by the Os and their opponents this year that in the past would have been classified as errors but instead has been called hits.  I don't know if it's because the league changed the shift rules and are trying to show that hits are up across the board so they have asked score keepers to learn towards hits or if all the data now (EV, catch probabilities, etc) have them being like 'that was really hard hit, so let's not call it an error'.  Either way measurements like unearned runs and even errors and fielding percentages are becoming less reliable IMO.

[DirtyBird]

The defense has been pretty bad since the series at Fenway