2006 Defensive Blues: Part II

NOTE: this article's data is obsolete and has been updated here.

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The other day I posted some of Chris Dial's defensive stats for the Pirates in an article called Dialed in on Defense.

In that article I explained that Dial's work used zone rating (ZR) as it's baseline and his work is considered to be the best of the ZR stats as one head of a three-sided coin.

Today I am posting the start of David Pinto's work who uses play-by-play data to determine the probability of a ball in play being converted to an out based on six parameters:

1. Direction of hit (a vector).
2. The type of hit (Fly, ground, line drive, bunt).
3. How hard the ball was hit (slow, medium, hard).
4. The park.
5. The handedness of the pitcher.
6. The handedness of the batter.

Pinto's work is better known as PMR - short for Probabilistic Model of Range. Again, his work is not the Holy Grail of defensive statistics.. neither was Dial's. It is the second side of the three-sided coin and, when you get all three sides together, you can decide for yourself what you like or don't like about any of them.

Personally, I think Pinto's work is THE best measure of defensive production that the fans have right now. Yes, they are park adjusted. Yes, the results are calculated against the last three years of data which made up the baseline.

That being said, here is his initial chart on each team's defensive production:

As you can clearly see, the Pirates had the second worst team defense in MLB under PMR. We'll know who gave it all away over the next couple of weeks as Pinto will release his findings position-by-position.

Look at the huge dropoff between the Reds and the Pirates - -0.0059 to -0.0090. That is a *huge* drop under Pinto's system.

Yep - that is the Royals sitting at #2 behind the Jays. Surprise!

For those interested, in 2004 the Pirates were 6th worst on D under Pinto's system and in 2005, were 14th best. That means we have averaged having the 22cd worst defense over the last 3 years.

You say it can't go anywhere but up in 2007 for Jim Tracy and crew? Hmm.. don't bet on it.