Joe Panik

[Rog]

An article in Bleacher Report yesterday ranked Joe Panik only #19 among second basemen.  Kind of seems like the other extreme from when the MLB Network ranked him #4 entering the 2016 season.

Bleacher Report cited Joe's decline in defense in 2017 and indicated it might be due in part to his playing the third-shallowest among NL second basemen.  Brandon Drury played the deepest, averaging 155 feet.  Joe played an average of 147 feet deep.  It would seem Joe has the arm to play deeper, which should mean he would get to more balls.

Boly has played infield, so I would like to ask him how he chose his depth.  I would presume it would be to play as deep as he could and still feel he could throw the runner out.  I wanted to ask him too if the depth he played had to do with playing at a depth where he felt he would get a truer hop.

And how is one's fielding affected when the infield is at double play depth and when the infield is "half-way" or in?

[klaiggeb]

You presume correctly, rog. That's exactly what I did.

But there's a couple things those stats DON'T show; (1) the coaching staff determines the depth of all the players.

(2) the depth of the second baseman is often determined by the number of outs and the # of times there's a runner on 1B.

IF Joe played more shallow, DOES that take into effect the outrageous number of base runners that were on 1B during the season?

[Rog]

Another thing that probably doesn't take into account unless it specifically sorts them out is positioning brought about by the over-shift. I would guess because of the extreme difference in a second baseman's depth between the over-shift and a more normal defense, those would be easy to filter out, but I don't know the exact methodology used. That might enable eliminating the depth on plays where the infield is in or where a corner infielder is closer because of the threat of the bunt. Because the infield grass is deeper near the middle of the diamond, a second baseman who plays more up the middle would tend to play deeper, as well. Come to think of it, playing closer to the bag in double play position might not cost as much actual depth as one would first think, since the further up the middle an infielder plays, the more depth it would lead to. offsetting some of the moving in as well as over.

What I like about these numbers is that they're something both Joe and Ron Wotus can look at and see if the added knowledge might indicate some sort of adjustment. They might compare, for instance, the depth Joe has compared to the depth of Brandon Crawford. Because he has the shorter throw, Joe should on average be playing slightly deeper than Brandon. Since there are more right-handed batters than lefties, over the course of a season Joe would normally have the opportunity to field more pop flies, which should also lead to slightly more depth.

Back to your point about more runners on first base with fewer than two outs. It's a good one. The Giants faced 215 more batters than the Diamondbacks and 136 of them came with a runner on first with fewer than two outs. That would make a clear difference, although likely not anything close to the eight feet depth difference between Drury and Panik. Viable point you brought up.

It would be intriguing to build a chart with the depth of the various second basemen headed up and the percentage of plate appearances that came with a runner on first and fewer than two outs going sideways. It would be intriguing to see the correlation between the two, which would give us a better idea of how much that situation likely affects fielder depth.

The bottom line is that there is far more information now available to aid decisions and point out factors that might otherwise have gone unnoticed or perhaps misdiagnosed.

Keep in mind too that this is just something I stumbled across in my baseball reading based on something that is available to the public. The teams themselves have a huge abundance of information to analyze. If they can gain a one out per game advantage or even a base per game advantage, that could translate into a big enough advantage to win one or two or more games over the course of a season.

Framing likely does that, and hence it is a skill that is now being developed far more than before. The affect of launch angle on home runs hit is changing swings.

Don't get me wrong, the stats themselves never made a mechanical change or solved a single problem. But the stats identify possible areas of improvement -- such as over-shifts -- and improve game performance.

Here's an area we talked about a long time ago. Base runners get thrown out far less frequently trying to advance on a hit or out than they do when trying to steal. Might that imply that base coaches and base runners would benefit from being more aggressive on batted balls?

Much of base running and coaching is based on the arm strength of the fielder, but might taking a closer look at when to be more aggressive pay some dividends? If a team could, for instance, pick up 100 extra bases during a season while losing only 10 outs, that would translate into more runs being scored, which would in turn translate into more runs. When base stealing, teams might make 40 outs in order to take 100 extra bases.

What I'm throwing out here is hypothetical, but a team could have its players and coaches be more aggressive during spring training, for instance, and see how it works out. My sense is that the initial results would be mixed, but that the more a team changed and refined its mindset, the more base running bases per out it could accumulate. In addition, by better understanding the advantage of taking the extra base in particular situations, base coaches and runners would have an even better idea of the risk and reward of taking the extra base than they already do.

The types of things we're talking about here are subtle areas, but if a team can pick up a run per area in 20 different areas, that will on average translate to two more wins per season. The average cost of two more wins per season on the free agent market is somewhere around $15 million.

If metrics can help a team pick up one more win per season on the free agent market, that's worth perhaps $7 million. And if in-game adjustments can pick up another win or two, that can be the difference between making the postseason and not making it. See why teams are exponentially increasing the size of their analytics departments?

Think, for instance, that a pitcher would benefit from knowing precisely the results of his throwing various pitches in various counts? Think he would benefit from knowing the difference in his own results between the 1-2 count and the 2-1 count? Might help a pitcher learn, for instance, how important it is to throw strikes on say the 1-1 count.

Think it would help a pitcher to know exactly how often batters chase his particular pitches -- by count? Think it would benefit a pitcher to know just how pitch sequencing affects the results he achieves? How location affects the results?

We're just talking off-the-top-of-the-head stuff here. I'll bet there are scores of areas in which teams can benefit from analytics -- both on the field and off. Probably even hundreds. As a former pitcher, Boly will can tell us that making adjustments isn't easy, but that the more information a pitcher (or hitter or fielder) has identifying the possible difference in results a change can make, the more motivated he will be to make the change, and the more likely he is to make the best change available.

I don't think anyone here has played at a high enough level or in a recent enough time to know how much information is available to bring to the decisions a player or organization makes. We're talking hundreds of millions of value available to the major leagues. That's why the teams are spending many millions of dollars to acquire and analyze such information.