John Mabry was a surprise to me, being that high.

If you had splits, I'd be curious to know how Howard did at first month by month or pre vs post All Star Break. Having watching him all year, he made a ton of bad plays early on, then righted himself as the year progressed.

Only big surprise I see is Helton. Although, what do other metrics say about him? All I really know is that he won a few GG's.

67 outs worth of difference with the glove alone, and somehow Howard is judged 'more valuable' than Pujols. Frankly, NL MVP this year was even more hallucinatory than 2005's AL Cy Young to Colon rather than Santana.

David,

Is this based on groundballs only?

Knowing that the Yanks are looking for a righty 1B, I'm hoping they go out and acquire some young guy who has been buried for a while, like KC did with Ryan Shealy last season. Anyone have some good names for 1B stuck in AAA? I'm really hoping for someone not named Rich Aurilia, or any other old, decrepit veteran.

No, it's all balls in play, David.

re: howard v. pujols, wes helms, Scott Rolen, Schilling

1) first, pujols did have a good year with the glove this year. but not so long ago, he was a butcher with the glove, having both a bad range and committing boatloads of errors, when he was an outifielder/thirdbaseman. for better or for worse, the writers remember this and haven't takent the time to study recent developments at first base.

2) it's true that howard's range is a bit less than average at first base, but so what? he led the league in runs created, homers, slugging percentage and about six other offensive categories, including times reached base, walks, etc. it's axiomatic in sabrmetric analysis that a great, even perfect defensive first baseman can only save you about ten runs a season, while a great offensive first baseman can produce many more than than. if you're going to play a butcher on defense, play him at first.

3) the differences in defense should NOT play a role in adjudicating the MVP award, because they don't play much of a role in formulating the runs created or win shares formulas. In any event, they're taken into account by win shares so you can look at those if you want. the bottom line is that Pujols won last year, he already has an MVP award, Howard had a fantastic season, and it would have ben unjust not to reward Howard for his fantastic season, even if Pujols had a marginally better one in some sabrmetric world. In the baseball world of real fans and baseball writers, hitting 58 homer runs is the land of jimmie foxx and hank grreenberg, and that's what Ryan Howard did, and he also won the home run derby at all star game hitting moon shots that left the stadium. he left no doubt who hits the LONGEST homer runs in the league and the FARTHEST home runs in the league.

4) Wes Helms is a below average first baseman. The Phillies now propose to put him at third base on a fairly regular basis the next two years; his win shares are, on average, offensively, less than David Bells, while he has a terrible butchers' glove instead of the very good glove that Bell had. Helms had a good year last year earning around 15 wins shares but on average he is much less than that. On the other hand Nunez only earned about 3 win shares for the phils, so one supposes with Rollins, Utley and Howard all averaging around 25-30 win shares each, the Phils just want 10 or more win shares from 3d base and a bit of right handed punch. Nonetheless, as the fielding charts for the Phils overall showed, they were very poor in converting ground balls into outs overall. Helms at third will not help them.

5) One still thinks back about what might have been had Scott Rolen stayed a Phillie. If the management had simply hired a manager Rolen wanted, instead of Bowa, and given him what he wanted, they might have kept Rolen and Schilling, and eventually developed Howard, and Utley, and now the Phils would be the envy of both leagues. Rolen would be ideal for the Phils to hit behind Howard and to play third base, and even if he only played 120 games a year, they could have developed a caddy system for him like a nunez. Maybe Abreu stays and wins a playoff or two in that scenario.

6) when all is said and done, Abreu, Rolen, Schilling, Thome, a lot of talent will have passed through philly the last few years with very little to show for it except for the 93' title and a number of winning seasons with 85-88 wins where they were in 2d place or just out of the wild card, which is not bad, but not perfect.

7) the phils have also shipped out a lot of young pitching talent, like elizardo ramirez to the reds for cory lidle, carlos silva to the twins for eric milton, taylor bucholz to the astros for billy wagner, etc. in deals where the veterans are no longer around, which they will eventually regret. Also, placido polanco to the tigers for ugueth urbina a couple years back--polanco could have been retained and eventually been playing third base now--his range factors and defense are good, and while his oba and power are not great, he has a good batting average and is a good clubhouse presense. he can field the position well and would have been a good third baseman. he was a good caddy for rolen.

--art kyriazis, philly

David, you said:

"BMC, every ball in play has a probability of being turned into an out by a particular fielder. I just add up those probabilities for each ball in play, divide by balls in play, and that's predicted DER."

I know you have addressed this in the past but I can't seem to remember.

Doesn't the overall model of your system not account for ball hogging? i.e. I believe last year it showed that Derek Jeter was excellent at catching flyballs however most of those flyballs were simply popups that had an out probability close to 100% but he caught so many of them if inflated his numbers (iirc).

Any chance there is some bias in these numbers?

I also see you say the model is based on 2006 data only. Does that mean you scrapped the 3-year moving average you had been using in the past which caused some confusion due to changes from year to year?

Thanks again for posting this stuff... it is very, very interesting.

David -- How did Nady's numbers fit into the chart?

Stewie,

There's always a chance of bias, but my guess is luck is a bigger factor than bias. As for catching a lot of pop ups, that shouldn't make a big difference in terms of the difference column. I scrapped the multi-year base because BIS made a change to their scoring system this season, and previous seasons were incompatible with the new data.

Pop-ups make a huge difference in the "Difference" column. The first baseman might a 40% probability of catching any given pop-up to the right side of the infield, but if Pujols always calls the pitcher and second baseman off, he gets +.6 plays, even though there was a 99% chance of the ball being caught. Are you going to run the infield models with groundballs only?

It would also be great to see home/road splits on players at some point, since the model for any given park with just one year of data could be off a fair amount. For example, Pujols' rating would be much more impressive to me (leaving aside the popup issue) if he were +20 at home and +19 on the road, as opposed to +35 at home and +4 on the road.

At what point in time was Pujols considered a butcher with the glove? He was average to above average even when he played third base and it was roundly commented on even at that time, that if he settles into a position he is going to eventually win a gold glove. He won the minor league equivalent to the gold glove his only year in the minors, so he's never had a reputation as being bad with a glove.

I'm curious how does foul balls help Pujols by this method, I seem to remember him catching more fouls than in previous season, and was thinking that the new park is favorable to those type of outs.

art kyriazis:

Some comments about your post...

"...not so long ago, he [Pujols] was a butcher with the glove, having both a bad range and committing boatloads of errors, when he was an outifielder/thirdbaseman. for better or for worse, the writers remember this and haven't takent the time to study recent developments at first base."

I would agree that Pujols has seemed like a lackidasical feilder outside 1st base, but ever since he moved to first he has been considered really good, gold glove this year even. Um, I know writers don't vote on Gold Gloves, but you think these guys would have noticed he was a serious canidate the past couple years?

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"the differences in defense should NOT play a role in adjudicating the MVP award, because they don't play much of a role in formulating the runs created or win shares formulas."

Um, didn't Pujols edge Howard in win shares 39 to 31?

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"the bottom line is that Pujols won last year, he already has an MVP award, Howard had a fantastic season, and it would have ben unjust not to reward Howard for his fantastic season"

Simultanously you make your best and worst points here. If you are claiming that Howard deserves the MVP for a historic season, I think that is a valid argument, tho I'd think it would have held more weight before the Hank Aaron award was introduced. If you are claiming that Pujols doesn't deserve the MVP because he won last year, I'd like to know what principle this idea is based upon. Put another way, I see no evidence that show that being the most valuable player the previous year somehow diminishes a player's value in the current year. But if you tell me it just makes a better story to "spread the wealth" so to speak, I'll give you that one too.

David -- how did Nady come in at 1B with the Pirates?

art kyriazis wrote: it's true that howard's range is a bit less than average at first base, but so what? he led the league in runs created, homers, slugging percentage and about six other offensive categories, including times reached base, walks, etc.

Uh, Howard was third in the NL in walks behind Adam Dunn and Nick Johnson and finished second behind Pujols in slugging.