Very exciting news. I'm sure you've been following along with baited breath as I report the Royals' team and (some) individual results anyone else could find as David Pinto reports the results of his play-by-blay defensive metric, Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR) on his blog, Baseball Musings. I took a break because the news for the Royals wasn't particularly interesting or good...
Until now:
According to PMR, in 2008 the Royals had the best left field defense in the major leagues! The Royals won first by making 368 plays in left against an expected ~353 plays. That's 15 extra plays, or about 9 runs above average.
Congratulations to Dayton Moore, Trey Hillman, and the rest of the gang. It has to be the new guys and attitude they brought in, right? Let's see what PMR has to say about the Royals qualified individual performers in left field:
David DeJesus, while he didn't have a great year in center, was the second best LF in the majors by ratio. While in left field, DDJ made 136 plays against an expected ~122. That's 14 plays, or about 11 runs, above average. Keep in mind that's in part-time duty. So if he does have to move to LF, for whatever reason, assuming Tango's positional adjustment differences between CF and LF, DDJ at this rate would be worth as much or more than if he played an average center field.
Mark Teahen, having been put in his third position in three years, was seen by many to have struggled in left, at least at first, but he apparently didn't qualify for PMRs rankings here, although he did play right, where he was also a plus defender according to PMR in relatively little playing time. If he can keep that up in the corners and even return to his 2007 levels of offense, I really do think the Royals will have an average starter out there, even if his more subtle skills (baserunning, defense) mean that fans will never really accept that. Teahen was about +3 runs in limited time in right, so that would be about +5 or +6 over a full season.
Last but not least, the man who unselfishly let Teahen return to right field (and I mean that in all seriousness), fiery team RBI and Spiritual Leader Jose Guillen. In his short time in left, JoGui was about minus three plays below expected. In right, he was about 4 plays below expected. That's unfair, of course, because he also spent plenty of time at DH, so given a full season in the corners, I'm sure PMR would have had him between minus 12 and minus 20 like everyone else.
In any case, say it with pride:
ROYALS WIN (pmr 2008 lf team rankings)!!!!
ROYALS WIN (pmr 2008 lf team rankings)!!!!
ROYALS WIN (pmr 2008 lf team rankings)!!!!
