Baseball Prospectus last weekend posted an interview well worth reading. The interviewee is Tony Blengino, a new addition to the Seattle Mariners' front office. He runs their newly created Department of Statistical Research and has much to say about the mix of scouts 'n' stats, the way front offices make decisions, defensive metrics, the projection of college and minor league players, and much much more. Go, subscribe, read. I've excerpted a wee few bits and added my own commentary as I feel it relates to the Giants.
I think that defense is very underrated, still. I think
that player salaries over probably the last quarter century have been so tied to
offense, and defense only in the last few years has really begun to be paid
attention to on a large scale...So I do believe that defense is
undervalued in the marketplace, and a good way to pick up additional wins for
your club is to go out and try to significantly improve your defense. How long
will that continue to be an area of opportunity? Who knows, but if people
suddenly fully value defense, that means they're going to start to undervalue
something else.
Do the Giants know defense? Are they using the right tools to measure it? How much is a player's offense a counterweight?
If defense was uber-important, they might have brought back for one year Omar Vizquel, who even in a diminished 42-year-old state could probably out-glove Edgar Renteria. But they probably realized they couldn't afford a position player whose offensive skills lie somewhere between Barry Zito and Noah Lowry.
A similar internal debate no doubt is raging about third base. Do the Giants dare let Pablo Sandoval have the bulk of the innings at the hot corner and risk what could be excruciating defense? (Sure, Pablo's a great athlete, but are the major leagues a place to learn a brand-new position?) Problem is, as we know, there's no one else in house. Kevin Frandsen apparently isn't an option. Ryan Rohlinger looked lost at the plate last year. Scott McClain is an emergency AAAA call-up. Rich Aurilia would make a nice utility infielder on a cheap one-year deal, but his defense won't be much improvement.
That's why the Joe Crede rumors won't die. (Here's one -- just scroll down past the MannyMannyMannyManny.) There's too much defensive upside if a healthy Crede can take the bulk of the innings in the field. A healthy Crede would probably hit like David Bell in his one year in S.F. Or, if you prefer, like Pedro Feliz with a slightly better eye at the plate. Sandoval will not be blocked. Between Bengie Molina's days off and the wide-open job at first base, Pablo will get plenty of ABs in 2009.
More from Blengino:
...the farther away from the major leagues data is, the more you have to take it with a grain of salt. If you're in Double- or Triple-A and are young for your league, and you're performing, you have a pretty good chance to be a successful major league player. If you're in A-ball, there are some hoops you have to jump through; going from High-A to Double-A is a big difference-maker for me. In college, if you're a lights-out performer really standing out in some key statistical areas, then you've got indicators for success, but you're such a long way away that you can't get too excited about it.
This is fairly obvious, I guess, but it's good to remind ourselves that A-ball superstars are not major-league shoo-ins. Before we write The MadBum, Angel Villalona, Tim Alderson and Nick Noonan (not even an A-ball star) onto the 2011 major-league roster, let's see how they fare in Double-A. (I believe both Alderson and Bumgarner will start there this year.) Same caveat with Buster Posey, who was a "lights-out performer" in college. Add these general rules of thumb to the previous assessment of the equivalent talent levels of the fall leagues (Arizona = AA/AAA, Hawaii = High A/AA, roughly speaking), and the vague outlines of prospecthood start to fill in a bit more.
...every organization uses statistics in some manner. There are probably 10 where there is a heavy influence, 10 in which there is a significant amount of input but it isn't a critical-mass type of input, and there may be 10 where statistics have relatively little weight. But I guarantee you that all 30 teams use statistical analysis in some manner, and that all of them probably have for a longer period of time than people would want to admit.
Most statheads would assume the Giants are in that bottom third. Sabean made snarky comments about Moneyball -- perhaps because Michael Lewis described him as "master of the dry hump" -- and it's been generally assumed that he's been stuck in a swamp of RBI-and-runs-and-wins-good! primitivism all these years. (Side note: this is a counterintuitive piece that wondered if Sabes actually put Moneyball principles to use in the pursuit of older players.)
It's probably an unfair assessment, but truth is he hasn't tried hard to dispel it. Perhaps he uses the ill reputation to his advantage. (If so, it hasn't shown up in the Giants' on-field results.) One of the greatest mysteries about the Giants is how much they know, how do they know it, and how do they use it. They are excellent evaluators of pitching talent, that's for sure, but that seems based more on scouting. Everyone saw Lincecum's numbers and knew he was a beast in college, but the Giants looked past what nine other teams thought were serious mechanical flaws.
Sabean loves to play things close to the vest, and when he doesn't, he's often erratic enough (Manny Burriss: 2009 Starting Shortstop!) that it's hard to take his definitive pronouncements, well, definitively.
Is there someone in the bowels of Mays Field, hunched over a laptop crunching advanced defensive metrics and sworn to secrecy? If you're out there, Director of Giants' Statistical Research (Non-Dry Humping and Tire Kicking Division), drop me an email; I promise I won't tell. I just want to know.
