Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

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Magneto2.0
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by Magneto2.0 »

I guess I have no idea what good fielding is, because Pujols was an excellent defender when I saw him play here.

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Big Amoco Sign
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

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Magneto2.0 wrote:
May 18 21, 7:46 pm
I guess I have no idea what good fielding is, because Pujols was an excellent defender when I saw him play here.
Because he’s Pujols. It’s probably that he was too slow to get to anything hard to his right outside of 2007.

bWAR also says he wasn’t that good at defense in STL.

UZR is pretty fair to him as a Cardinal too. He was okay, but not great at defense. He was never Goldy level.

What were you referencing exactly between UZR and DRS? Sounds like defense wasn’t the issue but it was more that he was beyond terrible as an Angel at defense and base running that he had a lot of negative WAR years.
Last edited by Big Amoco Sign on May 18 21, 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Popeye_Card
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

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He was a good to excellent 1B in StL. The bad news is, he was a below-average 3B and LF which he played a good amount of in his early years, and FanGraphs applies a pretty substantial positional adjustment. So he was a negative defensive player mostly because of the position he played (1B), while Trout gets a decent amount of credit for being a mostly average CF.

Obviously there is value in the position Trout plays while being an elite hitter vs. Pujols being primarily a 1B and now DH. Still fairly impressive that Trout is catching up to Pujols in offensive value, though Pujols has posted negative value there for the past few years. He should have quit while he was ahead. In his last 9 seasons, he has added only 2.3 fWAR to his career total, thanks largely in part to the -3.3 in the last 5 seasons.

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Kincaid
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by Kincaid »

Baseball-Reference doesn't use OPS+ for WAR. Their WAR batting component is based on linear weights/wOBA just like FanGraphs. Pujols' batting runs for each site's WAR calculations are extremely similar, it's just that they differ on his baserunning, fielding runs, and the position adjustment for first base, and all of those differences are in the same direction (higher values for B-R than FG).

Pujols through his first ten years was at 77.3 fWAR. In his 11th season, Trout is at 78.1 (but his first year he was called up partway through and this season isn't over, so roughly comparable to a ten-year stretch). That makes it seem like Trout is keeping up with Pujols' production through the period Pujols was the undisputed best player in the game, which is already impressive. However, if you compare to Pujols' first 1288 games (the same number Trout has), then it's 78.1 for Trout vs 65.0 for Pujols, which is insane. And Trout now is about the same age as Pujols was through the same number of games.

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Popeye_Card
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by Popeye_Card »

Honest question - how do defensive metrics handle the intricacies of 1B vs. other infield positions? i.e. Receiving throws, pickoff plays, etc.

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Big Amoco Sign
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

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Popeye_Card wrote:
May 18 21, 8:23 pm
Honest question - how do defensive metrics handle the intricacies of 1B vs. other infield positions? i.e. Receiving throws, pickoff plays, etc.
While there’s a lot of intricacies, it should be pointed out that people like a broken catcher Scott Hatteberg had a
1B year in 2002 as good as any Pujols year and don’t forget late career Jim Edmonds slide into the position easily to handle those “intricacies.”

It’s the position you can be pretty unathletic to play.

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CardsofSTL
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by CardsofSTL »

Big Amoco Sign wrote:
May 18 21, 8:29 pm
Popeye_Card wrote:
May 18 21, 8:23 pm
Honest question - how do defensive metrics handle the intricacies of 1B vs. other infield positions? i.e. Receiving throws, pickoff plays, etc.
While there’s a lot of intricacies, it should be pointed out that people like a broken catcher Scott Hatteberg had a
1B year in 2002 as good as any Pujols year and don’t forget late career Jim Edmonds slide into the position easily to handle those “intricacies.”

It’s the position you can be pretty unathletic to play.
[expletive] maybe I could do it.

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Popeye_Card
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by Popeye_Card »

Big Amoco Sign wrote:
May 18 21, 8:29 pm
Popeye_Card wrote:
May 18 21, 8:23 pm
Honest question - how do defensive metrics handle the intricacies of 1B vs. other infield positions? i.e. Receiving throws, pickoff plays, etc.
While there’s a lot of intricacies, it should be pointed out that people like a broken catcher Scott Hatteberg had a
1B year in 2002 as good as any Pujols year and don’t forget late career Jim Edmonds slide into the position easily to handle those “intricacies.”

It’s the position you can be pretty unathletic to play.
I think you missed my point.

There are pretty significant differences between poor and excellent 1B’s in terms of how they receive and stretch for throws. Considering they are involved on the vast majority of infield ground-outs, and the difference between scooping a poor throw and a missed out plus extra bases for runners is pretty substantial - I am just asking if and how that is accounted for.

My recollection of Pujols as a Cardinal was he was very good to his left, and receiving throws/pickoffs. Perhaps the latter is all accounted for.

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Kincaid
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by Kincaid »

DRS has a measure of receiving throws in their run value for first basemen where they compare the number of successful scoops versus mishandled throws. I don't know how far back their data for scoops goes, though, so it might not be included in Pujols' St. Louis numbers.

As far as I know, UZR doesn't include it, but the creator of the metric has looked at it by comparing how many throwing errors each infielder had throwing to a particular first baseman compared to the same infielder throwing to any other first baseman. He found the effect was there but not that big compared to overall fielding ability. His summary of UZR in FanGraphs' glossary (from 2010) notes that it isn't included but could be worth 2-3 runs a year for an elite receiving 1B (which would mean less than that for the majority). Pujols was not in his best or worst list for first basemen scoops based on 2000-2008 data.

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Popeye_Card
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Re: Michael Nelson Trout Appreciation Thread

Post by Popeye_Card »

Kincaid wrote:
May 18 21, 8:54 pm
DRS has a measure of receiving throws in their run value for first basemen where they compare the number of successful scoops versus mishandled throws. I don't know how far back their data for scoops goes, though, so it might not be included in Pujols' St. Louis numbers.

As far as I know, UZR doesn't include it, but the creator of the metric has looked at it by comparing how many throwing errors each infielder had throwing to a particular first baseman compared to the same infielder throwing to any other first baseman. He found the effect was there but not that big compared to overall fielding ability. His summary of UZR in FanGraphs' glossary (from 2010) notes that it isn't included but could be worth 2-3 runs a year for an elite receiving 1B (which would mean less than that for the majority). Pujols was not in his best or worst list for first basemen scoops based on 2000-2008 data.
Thanks! I imagine it is really hard to quantify without being extremely subjective.

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