2006 Defensive Blues: Part II - Updated

Earlier this week I posted the start of David Pinto's PMR team defensive rankings and since then David has determined an error existed dealing with the way the data was scored this year compared to previous years. So this post updates my original article.

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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 were calculated against the last four years of data which made up the baseline. Unfortunately, Pinto determined that Baseball Information Solutions changed their scoring system this year and that means he will have to start his baseline all over again, beginning with 2006. Despite the miscue this year, his system is still the best in my opinion.

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

Now this looks a lot more like what I have been describing to my readers all year - that the Pirates were the worst team in MLB converting balls in play to outs in 2006.

I found this to be quite shocking -- the Pirates allowed a MLB league average number of balls in play (ranked 16th). Considering the Pirates pitching staff had the 8th highest H/9, it almost seemed improbable that we would have allowed league average number of balls in play.

The fact our young arms, who were just learning to pitch, were able to hold down the number of balls put in play is a positive note heading into 2007. If the group can limit balls in play just 5% more next year (just 1.5 less per game), they will have a chance to be productive (in limiting balls in play) at the same rate as the 2006 Astros, Marlins, or Twins. That's not bad company by any means.

Also, don't forget the Pirates had a 6.65 K/9 rate last year which was good enough for 13th best in MLB. True, Perez racked up 61 of them in 15 games but his replacement, Tom Gorzelanny, racked up 40 in 11 games. The Pirates pitching staff should only be better in 2007 as our young arms mature even more and we, hopefully, add a veteran starter who can miss a few bats too.

As always with young arms, walks kill the team and that was what nailed the coffin door shut on us last year. While post-ASG stats were a bit better than before the ASG, they were still extremely high.

So, our work is cut out for us in 2007 -- we can only get better converting balls in play into outs and we can only improve on pitching to contact.

We'll post Pinto's player rankings as whole when he is finished releasing all the positions.