Bay Vs Cameron
With the season over and the clock ticking towards the beginning of free agency, you’re going to see a lot of rankings of the available players. I would imagine that every single one of them will have Jason Bay slotted in as the #2 position player on the market, behind only Matt Holliday. And there’s every reason to expect Bay to pick up the second biggest check of any free agent position player this winter.
However, there’s another right-handing hitting outfielder on the market that is a better player than Bay and yet will still demand a fraction of the price. That player? The chronically underrated Mike Cameron.
Did you know that, since 2002 (the first year we calculate WAR for), Mike Cameron has been worth +29.6 wins, or about the same as David Ortiz, Aramis Ramirez, and Jim Thome? Or that Cameron has posted a WAR of +4.0 or higher in three of the last four seasons? Yet, due to a slew of factors that include accumulating a large portion of value on defense, spending most of his career in extreme pitchers parks, and posting a low average with a lot of strikeouts, Cameron has never gotten the recognition he deserves.
That will continue this winter, when Bay signs a contract that dwarfs what Cameron will receive, despite the fact that there’s really no argument for Bay being a better player.
Bay is a better hitter – that much is clear. Bay’s career wOBA is .384 versus a .347 mark for Cameron. A 40 point gap in wOBA is significant, and is the obvious driving force for the difference in perception between the two. But how much more value does Bay provide with the bat than Cameron in any given year?
Bay has produced +28 runs above average per 600 PA with the bat since 2002, while Cameron is at +13 runs above average per 600 PA over the same time frame. That’s a 15 run per season gap. It’s a real difference, but probably smaller than the perception of their relative offensive abilities.
That’s just the offensive side, of course. On the other side of the ball, Cameron is one of the better defensive center fielders in the game, while Bay is a bad defensive corner outfielder. You don’t have to trust UZR to agree with those assessments. Those aren’t controversial statements.
If we want to look at the numbers, Cameron is +6 UZR/150 over the last eight years, while Bay is -8 UZR/150. But, of course, they aren’t being compared to the same average baseline, since Cameron plays CF and Bay plays LF. Historically, the gap between an average LF and an average CF is about 10 runs, so the gap is actually 24 runs over their careers.
Even if you don’t like UZR, and you want to cut that number in half to account for your uncertainty about defensive value, you’ll still come out with a total value that makes them about equal. And, given the samples we have, you should trust UZR a lot more than that. With a correct amount of regression, the defensive difference comes out larger than the offensive difference, making Cameron the better player overall.
So, if Cameron has been the better player, why are teams going to pay more for Bay? Overvaluing offense is certainly one factor, but there’s also the age issue. Cameron is going to be 37 next year, while Bay just turned 31. That changes the way we project them going forward.
However, the primary factor in any aging curve has to be the starting point of a player’s value. Cameron may be older, but he’s also better, and he has a skill set that ages significantly better. He’s shown little to no erosion in skills over the last few years. At worst, you could use the age gap to make them have fairly similar projections in value for 2010.
Yet Bay is going to get a three to five year deal for something in the neighborhood of $15 million per season, while Cameron is probably going to have to settle for a one year deal for around the $10 million he made last year.
That’s nutty. If you think Cameron’s on the verge of collapse (he’s shown no signs of it) and you don’t trust defensive metrics (in this case, the conclusions are pretty obviously true), then you think that they’re similarly valuable. In reality, the odds are pretty good that Cameron is going to outperform Bay next season, just as he’s done in most every season recently, and he’s going to do it for far less money.
If you want a right-handed hitting outfielder this winter, and you don’t want to pony up for Matt Holliday, Jason Bay is not the alternative. Call Mike Cameron instead.
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I was looking at this yesterday wondering if the Red Sox are discussing the possibility of signing Cameron and moving Ellsbury to Left.
I’d approve.
Then again, I’m not even sure if the Red Sox organization has seen the troubling defensive metrics on Jacoby Ellsbury. We’ll see what kind of faith the Boston FO has this winter, I guess.
I think they have said they view Ellsbury’s defense better than the metrics. Probably enough so that it would not make sense to move him. However, the rare opportunity to spend less money, commit less years and gain draft picks, all while improve your team next year would seem to be pretty tantalizing.
I think some people are missing the larger point here. So even if you want to argue Bay is a little better than Cameron think about the price difference. If they are close and one guy is half the price for at most half the years it seems pretty clear which one could be considered the better investment.
Well obviously Ellsbury can play defense, just the standard for CF is so high right now, that what is elite defense in the corners is nothingness in CF.
So for all we know, Ellsbury is playing very good defense in CF, just most other players are better.
walkoffblast, if Bay is a little better, I don’t think the logic that Cameron is the bigger bargain applies to a rich team that wants to be the best it possibly can be. That said, I wouldn’t mind Cameron in center and Ellsbury in left….Ells/Cameron/Drew would be one heck of a defensive outfield.
I’ll be very, very interested to see if people agree with you in the comments. I think this is kind of a silly argument to make; did you lose a bet, and were forced to say Cameron is better than Bay?
Cameron IS a better player overall.
But a 7 year age gap is not exactly minor, even if Cameron hasn’t shown decline yet. Ask Brian Giles, it can happen in a hurry.
It’s a 5.5 year age gap. And Bay is the one who is a Giles comp, not Cameron.
Giles also broke down at his age 38 year.
Cameron’s top 3 in similarity score on b-r retired at ages 37, 38, 38, and 38 respectively.
So you can’t really blame me for slight skepticism on how he’s hold through a multi-year deal.
Is there any evidence that B-Ref’s similar players tell you anything about the player you’re looking at, let alone just three of them?
Any evidence it doesn’t?
It’s definitely not unreasonable to say Cameron could fall off, and fall off in a hurry.
Or he could be an awesome sign.
The burden of proof is on you to show that your evidence is actually that.
And, yes, we’re aware that the possibilities of collapse are there. We care about probability, however. You’re arguing that it’s more probable that he’ll decline because of his age, but you’re not accounting for the specific way players of his athletic ability sustain their performance.
I care about probability as well.
Just judging on players whose careers followed similar trajectories, 2012 Bay is probably more likely to be like 2009 Bay than 2012 Cameron is to 2009 Cameron.
I’d take 1-2 years worth of Cameron over 1-2 of Bay easily, however. But since all I can really consider right now is an analogy to another player, Jim Edmonds had a similar skill set to Mike Cameron, and his defense proceeded to collapse in his final years via UZR. He kept hitting, though.
I think Cameron is a very good player, but mind me if I’m not sure about 2012 Mike Cameron on my team.
Well, sure, but you don’t have to take 2012 Mike Cameron to acquire 2010 Mike Cameron. And that’s a huge benefit.
Very true, but I’d have to question someone’s sanity (the MLB GMs or Cameron’s agent, not sure yet) if Cameron doesn’t get 2 years. Even if his performance is frontloaded, odds are he’ll fulfill the contract easy. I don’t think the Brewer fans I know realize that he was about as valuable to their team as Braun.
I agree.
I expect most people to disagree. That’s kind of the point of the post – there’s a commonly accepted “wisdom” that says that Bay > Cameron. I believe that common wisdom is wrong.
It’s definitely your last-name bias showing…
Dave, I have to disagree on two fronts.
1) Too much lip service to age. If you want to be generous in the b-r similarity scores and project Cameron out alongside Rick Monday, who retired at 38, then Cameron has about 2-3 years of shelf life left. Bay probably has 4.
2) Little thing called the DH. Cameron’s been historically about a +9 run bat per 600 PA. Bay about +28. Still a slight edge in overall talent to Cameron, but once again, he’s no young guy.
3) Baseball prospectus, outside of 2008, has been nowhere near as damning of Bay’s defense as fangraphs anyway. I’d love to see some Dewan +/- #’s on Bay, though, for a third opinion.
Given Bay’s current skillset, I’m not sure he has more than a year or two left either. Once his power goes, he’s toast – he literally only has two major league skills at this point, power and plate discipline. When the first declines, the second becomes less useful.
As for the DH option, if you move him out of the field, you also have to lower your expectations for his offensive production due to the DH penalty. Bay’s not Adam Dunn, where he’d clearly gain value by DH’ing rather than playing the field. For him, it’s basically an even trade-off. He’s a +3 win player either way.
And, finally, there’s no real reason to pay attention to BP’s defensive numbers.
Why not?
I ran a regression of WAR to team wins and WARP-1 to team wins. WARP-1, at least in 2009, was slightly better.
& While I fully agree TTO hitters will regress quicker, I was thinking more along the lines of 3 years left for Bay.
We talked about this in the really long WAR thread a while ago. WARP can correlate to team wins as well for other reasons and still have problems with its structure. In the case of their defensive numbers, there’s no real reason to use a non play-by-play metric for years that we have play-by-play data available.
I thought BP updated FRAA to reflect PBP data?
If I’m mistaken, then my apologies.
I converted THT’s OOZ into OOZR and combined it with RZR to get a composite range score for LF’s using data from the last three years. Of the qualifiers, only Pat Burrell ranked worse than Bay. Even when I loosened the reigns to include any LF who logged a minimum of 400 innings in a single season, Jason Bay ranked 52 out of 58, ahead of Burrell, Cust, Kubel, Reed Johnson, Thames and Catalanotto. That’s bad company, and Johnson was probably a victim of the small sample size.
There is enough measurement uncertainty for advanced fielding metrics that I agree collecting other opinions makes sense. However, I wouldn’t use BaseballProspectus’ fielding stats or any other system that doesn’t use play-by-play data to confirm or deny what UZR is telling us. Here are Dewan’s numbers though, available to subscribers are BillJamesOnLine.net.
Jason Bay’s Fielding Bible Runs Saved in LF: -1 for 2009, -8 for 2008, and -8 for 2007.
Mike Cameron’s Fielding Bible Runs Saved in CF: 3 for 2009, 7 for 2008, and 5 for 2007.
The one variable/question for me is intended use. For a team like the Cardinals, are Cameron’s D numbers going to improve enough in the move from CF to LF to offset the 1 WAR loss due to positional adjustments. If you just take Cameron’s numbers and move them over (i.e. no fielding improvement) you basically have Juan Rivera (a 3.5 WAR player). That being said Cameron at 3.5 WAR may be a better value than Bay.
Who’s to say that Cameron wouldn’t improve playing in left? In fact, he’d improve if he was exactly the same, because the baseline he’d be evaluated against would lower. I think he’d be a perfect fit for either Atlanta (with McLouth moving to left) or New York (with Gardner/Cabrera becoming insurance against A-Jax not being ready). Both clubs have players in the system that make short-term options in the outfield preferable, and Cameron doesn’t sacrifice quality.
He definitely might, wasn’t trying to imply that he wouldn’t. I fully expect him to make up some of the difference, I was wondering/pondering if he’d make up the entire difference. Either way he’d still be valuable, especially on a short deal.
As a Yankees fan, as soon as Gomez was sent to the Brewers I was already loving the idea of Cameron in Center until Jackson is ready.
Mets fan here. I desperately wanna see Cameron working for my team- Dave, that is, not Mike.
That being said, this was a great article. And I fear Minaya will target Bay for his next big hand-out-a-big-contract-to-a-greatly-overvalued-player move. See Francisco Rodriguez.
Cameron may be as good as Bay on a one year basis. Probably not as good, given the age difference, on a 3-4 year basis.
In structuring a deal, I might offer Cameron two years, $25 million. $15 million for year one, $10 million (perhaps club option) for year two.
Cameron would sign that deal in a heartbeat. He made 10 mil last year and I doubt he is getting a raise. He probably is worth 15 but wont get it while Bay might be worth 15 and may get more. That is kind of the point.
“In structuring a deal, I might offer Cameron two years, $25 million. $15 million for year one, $10 million (perhaps club option) for year two.”
I sincerely doubt it would take anywhere near that amount. Part of the appeal in finding “undervalued” players is that you usually don’t have to pay them what Fangraphs says they are worth. He is just coming off a year in which he made $10 million, I believe. I just cannot imagine any team paying him more than that for any season for the rest of his career.
I think Cameron for one year is a perfect ft for the Yankees.
A perfect fit for almost any team!
For whatever reason I was reminded of two free agents from last year, Burrell vs Ibanez, and how hard it really is to predict when players are going to drop off a cliff due to aging. The typical methods are accurate in groups, or with enough samples, but on a case to case basis it’s almost impossible to get this stuff right. Anyway, last year there was a ton of discussion around Burrell and Ibaneaz and clearly, based on this year’s resutls we know which one performed better. Bay has always reminded me of a Burrell like player, not sure why.
A year from now, and thereafter, this will be a fun article to revisit to see how these two do when compared to each other.
I personally think both could end up good, or falling off a cliff.
Cameron will be the better value, though, no doubt. What’s he going to earn this offseason, $5-7 mil a year? And with the Red Sox already giving Ellsbury the vote of confidence evidently, it’s hard to see any big market teams driving that figure up.
I don’t know why, either. I think some people have gone little over the edge in coming up with players to compare Bay to who happened to fall off a cliff young. Like players who have always been slow and unathletic, or really big guys with noticeably long swings. He isn’t a good defensive player and he strikes out a lot, but not because of either of those things.
It’s just projections. Historically, high HR/BB/SO guys don’t age well.
Sure you’ll still have your Thomes and McCoveys and Killebrews every once in awhile, but in the end, most decline early.
BTW, I calculated (HR+BB+SO)/PA, and 39th of all time is Mike Cameron. That’s higher than Mo Vaughn. I’m going to start calling Mike Cameron a TTO hitter now.
Cameron, of course, is nothing like most TTO hitters. He’s an athletic CF, and we know that those types of players age well.
You have to compare him to physically similar players. Mo Vaughn tells us nothing about Mike Cameron.
It was just a joke, Dave.
I just never actually realized how much of a skill set, at least hitting-wise, Cameron shares with those kinds of hitters, and it’s probably another reason why he’s so underrated (since the common idea is fast center fielders are “supposed” to hit .300 and not strike out a lot to be good)
Ray Lankford was the same way.
I’ve learned something new today.
Cameron > Lankford, though
The big difference between the two is that Mike Cameron is only more valuable than Bay playing CF. So if you’re looking for a corner outfielder *only*, Bay is the better pickup. Cameron would probably play LF incredibly well, but due to positional adjustment would he still be better than Bay?
Well, depends, positional adjustments are designed so that expected UZR + positional adjustment would be equal for any two positions a player is equally suited for. Cameron very well could make up the difference.
Yes, you can’t compare Mike Cameron to the physically unsimilar Mo Vaughns of the world, you can only compare Jason Bay to them.
Any substantive difference between the two in terms of baserunning? Is it negligible in terms of wins compared to offense and defense, or do we just not have good enough metrics yet to fully describe it?
I believe baserunning is incorporated into wOBA on this site.
Are you talking about just stolen bases, or does it incorporate other measures of baserunning?
I’m not exactly sure. Does anyone else know?
I’m pretty sure wOBA just accounts for SB/CS.
Look at their Speed Scores.
Unless someone is an amazing or terrible baserunner, I believe the received logic tends to side on it being pretty negligible. The most even a great baserunner is going to add over a season is half a win or so over an average one, likewise, the most you’ll lose is about half a run on the basepaths (bearing in mind that being slow to first base will be accounted for in respective BAs/OBPs). So about the biggest difference you’ll see between a great baserunner (say, Chase Utley) and an awful one (say, Ryan Howard) is one win, at a major stretch.
One point I would mention is that the comparison is somewhat apples to oranges. One is a CF and bottom-of-the-order hitter, and the other one is a LF/DH and middle-of-the-order hitter. So the needs of the team or teams in question should have something to do with which player makes more sense to acquire (at whatever price).
A couple things. First, I’m not sure I’d limit Cameron to ‘bottom of order’. JD Drew hit 7th a lot last season and he’s not what you usually think of a ‘bottom’ hitter. Where you hit is team-dependent, as you say. Second, Jason was hitting mostly 6. Middle of order? Technically yes. But on good AL teams, the 567 batters are similar. The super-premium guys hit 3-4 and Jason almost never hit there.
Bottom-line, I like Jason and would love to see him come back in a Red Sox uni. But $15-18 Mil is just too much for a #6 hitter. Especially for an average (being generous here) defender at a non-premium position. Cameron make a lot of sense for Boston. He can handle center for a year or two while Jacoby learns to defend and/or Reddick-Kalish-Westmoreland can step in.
LF Ellsbury
2B Pedroia
C Martinez
1B Youkillis
DH Ortiz
CF Cameron (Lowell and Cameron are almost interchangeable here)
RF Drew
3B Lowell
SS Gonzalez/Lowrie
Overall, this lineup would win more games than the Sox lineup from ‘09.
Personally I would rather something like:
1 – Pedroia
2 – Drew
3 – Martinez
4 – Youkilis
5 – Ortiz (he did have a .264/.356/.548 line from June 1st on that got lost in the badness of April and May)
6 – Cameron
7 – Ellsbury
8 – Lowell
9 – Lowrie / Gonzalez if we re-sign him on the cheap
I still worry about the offense of this lineup, if we would generate enough offense compared to the Yankees.
Agreed, it’s a good-but-not-great lineup. I love Youk, just not batting cleanup.
I think most Sox fans want to trade for Adrian. If Tazawa, Bowden, Lars, and a mid-level prospect will get it done, go for it. More than that and I’m leary.
Ellsbury, Pedroia, Martinez, Adrian Gonzalez, Ortiz, Cameron, Drew, Lowell, and SS is an offense on par with the Yankees.
I can’t see how Gonzalez won’t require at least one of Buchholz or Bard and, frankly, for a team with the resources of the RedSox, I don’t see why you SHOULDN’T want to give up one of those chips. Let’s say Bard, Bowden, Anderson and one C-grade prospect gets it done – I think that’s pretty fair for both teams.
Defense is much better than the Yankees and that offsets the bat difference. Anyone notice that great defensive teams win more close games than bad defensive teams with the same run differential? A run saved is worth more than a run scored every regression run shows this…
Cameron hitting 6th for the Red Sox would be a big step down for their lineup. Bay hit 4th for much of his time with the Pirates (based on what I remember). I know, it was the Pirates, but they actually had a very good offense in 2008 and he was right in the middle of it. I think 6th was a little low for him with the Red Sox.
It’s pretty clear to me that MLB owners/GMs don’t value defense as much as they rightfully should. Even those few who DO value it don’t have to pay fair value because the market is set by the majority. So I think you’ll continue to see these kinds of examples until/if conventional thinking on defense begins to change.
I may be speaking out of my ass here (since I was born in ‘86), but wasn’t defensive wizards often overrated during the 80’s, or worse yet, perceived defensive ability? Or was it just base-stealing? I know things weren’t a streamlined machine like they are now, except for maybe Oakland.
I never recall a time when great defensive players were given their due. I would say that most gold gloves were given to the wrong guy and gold Gloves did significantly raise income, but the great defender who could not hit well above average has always been underpaid and under appreciated.
To PhD Brianhttp: Ozzie. Smith.
I thought it was obvious the Cameron > Bay. Huh.
Am I the only person who clicked on this hoping for a smackdown wherein an analyst of baseball statistics savaged a director of alleged movies?
Michael Bay is like Hollywood’s Dave Kingman. So little production despite so much resources.
Thank you for this article. I now feel (more) justified in having spent the last two or three days telling people that the one player the Yankees should get this offseason no matter what (i.e., regardless of whether they pony up for the more obvious Lackey) is Mike Cameron.
Well, Bill James’s projections are out and they have Cameron as an average hitter and Bay as a +27 hitter. Considering Cameron’s production over the last several years, it looks like he’s getting a pretty big hit for age.
Throw in the 10 run positional gap and give them their average UZR for the last three years — about +7 for Cameron, -14 for Bay — and even with age concerns, Cameron still comes out as the better player by a handful of runs.
This seems like a total no-brainer. It’ll be interesting to see where the other projection systems peg these two.
Thanks, Dave, for writing this article, because I think a lot of people (like me) are going to Cameron’s page and rediscovering just how underappreciated he’s been over the years.
Ack, did the math wrong… make that +3.5 UZR, on average, for Cameron over the past 3 years, making them just about equal given James’s projections.
How about a Hermida/Cameron platoon? Cameron has killed LHP over the last three years (over 900 OPS). And the latter’s defense could almost cancel out Hermida’s. I think a short term solution best for Boston anyway given the outfield depth in the minors.
Also would look into trading Ellsbury and putting Cameron in center.
so much of baseball is situational. Pitches thrown certain pitches to certain players depending on who’s on base, who’s up next, who’s in the hole, and how many outs there are.
This makes Bay more valuable to the Red Sox lineup than Cameron, unless they think Ortiz will be the Ortiz of yesteryear.
I think if you can get Adrian Gonzalez, he replaces Bay’s bat…and eliminates a need for a 3-4-5 type of hitter. Adrian-Youk-VMart is fine.
So…that said…Cameron/Hermida & Gonzo vs Bay & Lowell: no-brainer. Better D in OF and in the IF.
Maybe – Sign Scutaro to play SS. Or trade Ellsbury in a deal for Hanley, then sign Figgins to play LF and leadoff. Imagine Figgins, Pedroia, Hanley, Gonzo, Youk, VMart, Papi, Cameron, Drew.
They should trade Buchholtz and Ortiz for Pujols. DH Pujols. I think they also should trade Lars Anderson for that pitcher the Giants have (Lincieum?). He’s good. Then Re-animate Cy Young and Ty Cobb. I can think of some more moves they should make, but I wanted to stay grounded in reality.
I think if anyone gives Cameron (Mike!) a 2years 18M deal, with an option for a 10M third year with a 1M buyout, he will take it in a heartbeat. It gives great value and flexibility to the club who is signing him and I believe he won’t be upset by his salary (the respect issue for veteran).
Quick question: Who’s more valuable? Yadier Molina or Mike Cameron?
Do you have an answer in mind? I hope you wouldn’t try to answer this question based on the Fangraph values. My answer is that there is no way to really answer this question until there is a way to quantify catchers’ defense.
The Fangraphs estimate for Molina has his defense as +0.5 runs, and I don’t even know where that little bit comes from. My guess is that Molina would be more valuable once catching defense was taken into account. Or you could subtract Cameron’s +10 credit for runs saved and just use his positional adjustment (which is all Molina gets credit for on defense apart from that +0.5 I mentioned. If so, you’d find that they were pretty much even last year, with Molina ever so slightly ahead.
By some accounts, Molina is something like 7 runs better than average this season. Using TotalZone’s numbers, available on B-R:
2005: +13 (959 inn)
2006: +15 (1037 inn)
2007: +12 (861 inn)
2008: +6 (1002 inn)
Don’t think 7 runs bumps him past Cameron, though.
Great article. I’ve been thinking that Cameron would be one of the best free agent values on the market, though I wasn’t sure if he was better than Bay (guilty of overvaluing offense and assuming Cammy’s D would fall off). I could definitely see Cameron slipping through the cracks and accepting a deal like Bobby Abreu took last off season. He makes a ton of sense for the Yankees who need to stay away from long term contracts (I know, the supposedly have endless money, but reports are that they are trying to pare down payroll to the $180 million range and have $166 committed to only 12 players next season). I think Cashman does see the value in Cameron though as he has tried to acquire him a few times, most notably last offseason in an aborted deal for Melky Cabrera.
The Green Monster
“Cameron” says “Cameron” is better than Bay…Hmmmm.
(Just kidding).
Mike Cameron and Erik Bedard are Type B FAs
I have a wish list.
Going back to the age argument, I can see why Bay may get a longer term contract. But for next year at least likely cameron is as valuable if not more valuable a player. Giles did fall off a cliff this year. i thought that was much more foreseeable. In fact, i think fangraphs was a little guilty of prasisng (I forget which writer wrote about it) the decision to keep him. If you looked his carrer had shown a steady erosion of certain skills, last year’s bump up masking the overall decline. Cameron doesn’t seem to be quite in the same boat.
So i will have to agree with Dave’s assessment here. Correct. my instant reflex is to say Bay is better. However, that instinct has been whittled here to the point where I pretty quickly, with no need to read the piece, realized how it would play out.
Turns out ya read this site enough and it is pretty convincing on certain points, even to curmudgeons.
About athletic CFs aging well:
Could someone point me to an article that supports this?
This runs very much counter to my observation that players who derive a lot of value from their speed (i.e., great outfield defenders and basestealers) tend to fall off a cliff earlier than anyone. Running speed seems to peak at the onset of physical maturity and decline thereafter. Kenny Lofton didn’t seem to be nearly the CF at age 28 that he was at age 24.
Frankly, I am surprised that Cameron is still covering as much ground as he is.
Argonbunnies, as a Mets fan, I coulda sworn his godlike fielding days were over by the time he played with the Mets. UZR’s from that tenure seem to back that up, but then he got good again it appears. Maybe he has gotten better jumps recently if he has lost any speed and that has made up for it.
And don’t get me wrong. I liked cameron when he was with the mets. Lotta Ks and all, but he seemed like a decent guy, decent player. But his fielding didn’t seem as good as advertised. Not sure if any other Mets fans agree with that assessment.
GMs overvalue offense just as much as WAR overvalues defense. Offensive numbers are verifiably quantitative while defensive metrics are subjectively quantitative. The defensive numbers have great value, but to weight them equally with such a large margin for error isn’t ideal
I would say I’ve always been in favor of error bars for win value statistics, but that’s what PECOTA’s for.
Been clamoring for Cameron to the Yankees for the past few years and will continue this winter.
speaking of which…
Fans will never understand what a great defense does for a pitching staff, other than creating highlight videos. It’s the difference between going into the eigth or into the sixth or seventh. Good defenders are burglars.
The better and deeper your pitching staff, the greater that difference becomes, and the rest of the game becomes more important–moving runners, scoring from third, on base percentace, yada yada. Everything a position player does becomes more important, and a team has greater focus.
I remember Whitey Herzog defending Ozzie’s million dollar contract by saying something like “A guy that prevents 100 runs is as valuable as a guy that knocks in 100 runs.”
That understanding, IMO, is why the 82 Cardinals could win the WS with no one on their team having more than 19 HRs (George Hendrick). You can put George in RF when you McSpeedster covering CF.
Looking at the defensive ratings of Hernandez (1B), Herr (2B), Ozzie (SS), and Oberkfell (3B), it’s amazing.
Their SP’s — Andujar, Forsch, Stuper, and Mura weren’t THAT great.
The emphasis on D was one of the reasons why Hernandez, with only 7 HRs, was likely as valuable to his particular team as ANY 1B was to their own respective squad.
As I said in another thread, I always thought Figgins was a great fit for the Cardinals … a fast Terry Pendleton, so to speak.