haltz wrote:Every time he makes a play that gets made only 20% of the time on a ball that would be a double (1.02 runs) down the line, he gets credit for .8 runs. They aren't all worth that, but that adds up over the course of 36 extra plays.Transmogrified Tiger wrote:Yes, it's extremely implausible! I understand that arm is underrepresented in my simplistic example, but not substantially so since third basemen aren't taking a bunch of relay throws, nor are they involved in close tag plays with any regularity. It could make sense if the average defender made 0 of those non-routine plays, but they make a substantial number of them. Kris Bryant was a -1 UZR defender this year and made 31 of the 74 non-routine plays he had at 3B.Fat Strat wrote:Except that they are including throwing to go along with the added range. Is it really hard to consider that between his arm and range, Chapman saved 34 runs by making 67 non-routine plays? It's plausible. They're also including shift plays now, too, which wasn't included before (see the link in the Tweet).Transmogrified Tiger wrote:Only partially related to DeJong, but the idea that Matt Chapman saved 34 runs relative to average is absurd on its face. Just to use Inside Edge's stuff as a quick approximation, Chapman had 117 chances that were not classified as 'routine' (he missed 5 routine chances), and of those 117 he didn't make the play in 50 of them. Add in that in almost every case you likely need to make multiple plays above average to save a full run and it becomes physically impossible to accrue that type of value defensively.
One thing that might be missing here are the routine plays and how hard Bryant gets dinged for those that he missed. He missed 11 plays that were made 96% of the time, if they are worth on average .85 runs (just splitting the lwts difference between singles and doubles), that's .96 x .85 x 11 = -9 runs there as well. If he'd had as many routine chances as Chapman (358) and maintained the same average it'd be more like -14, where Chapman is only -4 runs on his five missed opportunities. Chapman gets some value over average being 98.6% on hundreds of routine plays if they are on average 96% plays.
If we take take Bryant's conversion rate of routine v. non-routine(simplifying for sanity's sake) and apply it to Chapman's chances, you have Chapman with 13 more routine and 18 more non-routine plays(10 of which are in the 60-90% 'Likely' band). There's just no reasonable way that gets close to 34 runs without valuing runs in a very different way than we do for hitting or pitching.