Is it worth it to have Kubel in the tield?

We talked about whether or not it was a valid concern that the Twins defense was missing a lot more balls in the outfield. I thought I would dig a little deeper and see if the team is improved by the replacement of Carlos Gomez with Jim Thome.
On the surface, this is an obvious "yes". But of course, we aren't replacing the bat of Gomez with the bat of Thome, we are replacing the glove of Gomez with the glove of Kubel as well. This is an overly simplistic take on the situation, of course, but it's a look worth taking.
Kubel's fielding this year has been very poor by almost every metric. His fielding percentage is high, of course, because of the balls he gets to, he usually catches. Of course, he doesn't get to all that many balls. His fielding percentage is the lowest among outfielders, and his WAR (wins above replacement) based solely on fielding is -.8. His bat is actually not doing a whole lot this year, and is providing only a .7 WAR this year, but we aren't looking at that. For comparison purposes, Gomez's fielding WAR was .9, so the change in fielding WAR is -1.7. Not so great (and that's comparing Gomez to Kubel... the comparison to Delmon Young is even more staggering, - 2.8)
Thome, who is evaluated exclusively on his bat, is providing a WAR of 2.4. It's his best season since 2007, which is why he is in the lineup every day. If this tells you how much more valuable a bat is than a glove, Carlos Gomez' outstanding glove gave him the same WAR as his forgettable bat: .9. The change, then, from having Thome instead of Gomez is +1.5. Again, we aren't taking into account Delmon Young's addition to the every day lineup
Certainly, there are flaws in the logic and my methodology... I'm doing this after 1100pm on a Tuesday night, after all. For example, a truer reflection of the outfield defense would explore Gomez vs Span in center and Kubel vs Span as a corner outfielder. Also, my understanding of the statistics used isn't as good as it should be, but the simplified conclusion I have made here is this: A straight replacement of Gomez with Thome, moving Kubel from DH to the field is a slight downgrade in the quality of the team. Thank goodness for Delmon Young's bat and JJ Hardy's glove.

Double Play Stats...

This post goes out to my Baby Brother, Jacob. For without him, I probably wouldn't have found the link to the blog post this blog post is about. That statement really don't make much sense, but really, it does.

Shawn wrote an article on his blog about a new stat he was working on coming up with. I think his stat has a legitimate point, but I think the execution of calculating it still needs work.

Shawn pointed out that guys who hit into double plays hurts his team. Thus, he calculated a stat that took the on-base percentage and subtracted an out for each double play the hitter hit into.

Here's where the problem comes in for me. Let's say Tom, Dick, and Harry bat in order during a game. Tom and Dick have excellent on-base percentages but very little power. This means Harry is likely to often come up to bat with Tom or Dick on first base. Poor Harry has a lot of opportunities to hit into double plays, and therefore, likely has hit into a lot of them.

On the other hand, Huey, Dewey, and Louie bat in order. Huey and Dewey have pretty good power, but their on-base percentages are pretty poor. Therefore, when Louie comes up to the plate, it's not very likely that there's someone on first base, so he doesn't really hit into that many double plays.

Here's the thing: both Harry and Louie could hit the ball exactly the same in every at-bat. But Harry's on-base percentage would be much lower than Louie's based on the stat Shawn presented us with. To me, it strikes me as unfair. It's simply a matter of where Harry and Louie are in the line-up. If you'd switch them, they'd likely be hitting exactly the same. (In fact, Dick is probably fairly vulnerable to the double-play, too, while Tom is probably not at all, when in reality all three are similar hitters in my hypothetical line-up.)

I told my cousin who was begging for the Twins to trade Joe Mauer to his team: "Why, do you need more guys to hit into double plays?" The reality is that Mauer is often like Harry in our hypothetical example: Span and Hudson typically get on base often, and Mauer is somewhat of a ground-ball hitter, making him vulnerable to double plays, putting him on the leader board for grounding into double plays. But people who know stats also point out that based on opportunities, his double play percentage isn't on the leader board.

I think there should be some way to account for double plays in stats. Right now, the only one I'm in favor of is the double play percentage, which calculates the percentage of double plays based on the opportunities to hit into them (runner at first, less than two outs). I wouldn't mind seeing the two stats (OBP and GDP%) combined, actually. I haven't worked out the science, but I'd like to see the math that Shawn figured out, but not straight-out subtracting a hit for every double play. With that, players get penalized when they have more opportunities, when really it's the manager's fault for putting him in that place in the line-up.

I miss Fire Joe Morgan

For those that don't know, Fire Joe Morgan was a baseball themed website that would find things that were said by the talking heads of the Universe, or written by sports writers, and would take them down if it was deserved because of their ignorance. It was written by actual TV writers in disguise (like Mose Schrute) and was funny, whether or not you agreed with their angle.
As you can guess, their favorite target was Joe Morgan, renowned for his belief that statistics are some kind of meaningless voodoo magic. He was at it again Sunday night during Sunday Night Baseball. The topic was the Tampa Bay Rays, and how well they are playing. Orel Hershiser and Jon Miller discussed the Rays averaging 2 more runs a game than their opponents, which is amazing. Well, not to Joe, who said the most amazing thing I have ever heard, "You know me, I don't really believe in run differential".
I shared this immediately with my friend, and he said "I... don't even know how to come at that." Nor I. First there is the philosophical, spiritual aspect, but if there truly is a God, I am comfortable saying that He is not run differential. I'm with Joe there.
I think, though, that Morgan  was talking about believing in run differential being a telling stat, to which I say what the hell, dude? Let's strip down baseball to its core. In order to win, you need to score more runs than the other team. It's that simple. Runs scored, those are the runs you put across the plate. Runs against are the ones your opponent scores. Run differential is the difference between those two numbers. With that boiled down definition of baseball, scoring more runs than the other team, we have Joe Morgan saying that the valuation of that, run differential, is something he doesn't believe in. How does he determine who how think a wins, if it's not by the run differential? Dirt on the uniform? Smiles (Carlos Gomez, at last check, is still leading the league in smiles)? In Joe's world, The difference in runs scored versus runs against does not tell you anything about your ability to score runs versus the ability to prevent runs. No siree!
The Phillies won the game in question. Or the Brewers. It's hard to tell since it's so subjective.