Catalanotto now in play?

[JohnBriggs12]

"if Braun isn't upset by the idea of moving, we shouldn't be either".

 

That's irrelevant. It isn't Braun's job to be focusing on the big picture.

 

 

 

 

Ryan Braun: Zero errors with Ben Sheets on the hill!

[homer]

Matthews had 30 errors in 157 games (and still managed a .939 fielding percentage) at age 21.

 

Braun had 26 errors in 112 games (with an .895 fielding percentage) at age 23.

 

It's not like I'm saying he CAN'T improve but from the day he was drafted scouts and management types all over baseball have been saying he would have a tough time improving.

 

Some things to consider:

 

1) Will he improve enough to where his offensive MORE than outweighs his D?

2) Will he improve soon? This is a small window of opportunity that this group has for success

3) Is he more valuable as a really bad thirdbaseman and great offensive player or as an average left fielder and really great offensive player?

[Fatter than Joey]

Eddie Mathews made 30 errors in 1953 and led the NL in errors by a 3rd baseman 3 times in his first 6 years. He's a hall of famer.

 

In 1953 Matthews played in about 40 more games made 100 more putouts and 150 more assists. He was head and shoulders better than Braun.

 

Here's a fact for you. Braun did not make one error when Ben Sheets was on the mound.

 

How many starts was this? -- It seems Sheets was healthy when Braun was in AAA, and when Braun was up Sheets missed games.

 

You want his error total to go down? Keep Sheets healthy, and/or find more power flyball pitchers.

 

Sure. This is one way to address our porous defense -- however rather than retool our rotation, I think the easier fix may be to slide Braun into LF.

 

Braun's defense did not lose them the division.

 

There are many reasons we lost the division -- Braun's defense is one of them. Infield defense is something that needs to be addressed.

[JohnBriggs12]

Matthews had 30 errors in 157 games (and still managed a .939 fielding percentage) at age 21.

 

Braun had 26 errors in 112 games (with an .895 fielding percentage) at age 23.

 

It's not like I'm saying he CAN'T improve but from the day he was drafted scouts and management types all over baseball have been saying he would have a tough time improving.

 

Some things to consider:

 

1) Will he improve enough to where his offensive MORE than outweighs his D?

2) Will he improve soon? This is a small window of opportunity that this group has for success

3) Is he more valuable as a really bad thirdbaseman and great offensive player or as an average left fielder and really great offensive player?

I think he will improve Homer much like Edwin Encarnacion did with the Reds in 2007.

 

Encarnacion was nearly as bad in 2006 as Braun in 2007 making 25 errors in 111 games at third (.916 FA). Braun made 26 errors in 112 games (.895).

 

Encarnacion improved markedly in 2007, committing just 16 errors at third in 137 games, improving his fielding average by .037 to a very respectable .953.

 

Aramis Ramirez is another guy who has had huge error totals (33 in 2003) and turned into a solid defender at 3B.

[Ennder]

If it was just the errors I could buy Braun improving but his range was also terrible last year. If Braun improved as much as Weeks has since he came up, Braun would still be the worst 3B in all of baseball... and Weeks is still in the bottom 5 at 2B. Add in Fielder being slightly below average and things are pretty ugly.

[Oldcity]

So how about Frank Catalanotto? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[RU Rah Rah]

In all of these de facto Braun defense threads, I haven't seen a break-down on when the errors happened throughout the course of the season. IIRC (and purely anecdotally), he started out competently in Nashville, and then did OK in his first month or so in Milwaukee -- before he started genuinely stinking up the joint.

 

But that's not based on anything concrete -- I'm just sort of vaguely remembering things from early in the season, and I can't seem to find game logs for fielding.

[molitor fan]

I just did a quick search on baseball reference game logs, and Braun errors did not lead to an unearned run in 16 of the 26 cases. For the other 10 errors, a comination of 16 unearned runs were scored. In two of these occasions, Braun's errors followed other errors that led to 3 runs, so it was difficult to ascribe total responsability. Thus 13-16 unearned runs were attributable to Braun. These errors that led to unearned runs occurred on June 1st and 10th, July 3rd and 28th, August 5th,8th,14th,17th, and Sept. 23rd and 27th.

[Klements Bratwurst]

I just did a quick search on baseball reference game logs, and Braun errors did not lead to an unearned run in 16 of the 26 cases. For the other 10 errors, a comination of 16 unearned runs were scored. In two of these occasions, Braun's errors followed other errors that led to 3 runs, so it was difficult to ascribe total responsability. Thus 13-16 unearned runs were attributable to Braun. These errors that led to unearned runs occurred on June 1st and 10th, July 3rd and 28th, August 5th,8th,14th,17th, and Sept. 23rd and 27th.

Thanks for doing the research on this, but this only tells some of the story. Although some of the defensive metrics that are out there have their own flaws, they do have some good ways of evaluating defensive talent. Some plays aren't called errors when they should have been, etc.

Case in point- Brewers lost the game to Philly at home the day after that dramatic come from behind win against Cole Hamels when Prince hit the bomb to put the Crew ahead. The Crew had a big lead entering the 9th inning the next day and when the game got close, a semi-routine grounder was hit to Braun to his left that most third baseman would have been able to range over and make the play to end the rally and get the Brewers into the win column something like 6-4. The ball skipped past him under the glove and in to left field. The flood gates opened and the Brewers went on to lose. No error was given on that play which is why errors only tell half the story.

 

When you lose the division by two games, in my opinion, you have to find ways to improve anyway you can, and moving Braun's awesome bat to left, and plugging in a Counsell defender without the Counsell bat would do wonders to help this team so you limit the above scenarios to very few and far between. Take those plays and also the plays marked as errors and Braun has a long, long, long way to go to be even servicable at third base.

 

How about Franky Cat again??? I am not sure I am interested in him. Still give me Teahan or Rolen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sveumrules]

i'm not sold on frank cat, either. gross could probably put up a similar line (in a platoon) for less money, and wouldn't cost anything to get. my preference at this point for the lf/3b conundrum would be, in order...

 

lofton

teahen

 

gross/dillon/kapler/gwynn/in house

 

beltre

rolen

[derflotr]

Case in point- Brewers lost the game to Philly at home the day after that dramatic come from behind win against Cole Hamels when Prince hit the bomb to put the Crew ahead. The Crew had a big lead entering the 9th inning the next day and when the game got close, a semi-routine grounder was hit to Braun to his left that most third baseman would have been able to range over and make the play to end the rally and get the Brewers into the win column something like 6-4. The ball skipped past him under the glove and in to left field. The flood gates opened and the Brewers went on to lose. No error was given on that play which is why errors only tell half the story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not trying to refute your point here because I see it, but you could also argue that the Brewers already gave up 3 runs in that inning prior to that. Matt Wise had an error as well, and the Brewers corrected that problem this offseason. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

Braun hit a HR in that game, too.

 

[molitor fan]

David Wright, who ended up winning the gold glove, made 21 errors last year, 8 of which ended up costing the Mets an unearned run or more; these ended up to be 12 unearned runs in total.

[homer]

David Wright had 21 errors in 159 games and had a .954 fielding percentage. He also had a range factor of 2.71 vs. Braun's RF of 1.98 (lg avg was 2.25). Range factor is defined as assists + put outs divided by games played.

[And That]

David Wright, who ended up winning the gold glove, made 21 errors last year, 8 of which ended up costing the Mets an unearned run or more; these ended up to be 12 unearned runs in total.

This sounds like something Joe Morgan would say. Joe?

 

Gold glove = entirely subjective and largely meaningless award. Errors = a poor way to judge defense, especially when making an anecdotal comparison. Figuring out how many unearned runs errors led to (and then I'm trying to assume comparing that to Braun or whomever) = an anecdote with little argumentative value.

David Wright is a good defender with great range. Ryan Braun is a terrible defender with horrific range. I don't see why people keep comparing the two.

[TooLiveBrew]

Because some think that 'Braun stunk it up and severely hurt the Brewers with his defense' is a subjective statement that's still up in the air. Looking at how many of his E's came around to score is a way to evaluate our pitchers, not Braun. Just like how saying, 'Fielder hit a lot of 1-R HRs in 2007 - he just can't hit the 3-run HR' is ridiculous.

[Gopher74]

If it was just the errors I could buy Braun improving but his range was also terrible last year. If Braun improved as much as Weeks has since he came up, Braun would still be the worst 3B in all of baseball... and Weeks is still in the bottom 5 at 2B. Add in Fielder being slightly below average and things are pretty ugly.

His "range" was terrible in large part due to the number of errors he makes. That's going to make his Range Factor very poor.

 

[sbrylski]

If it was just the errors I could buy Braun improving but his range was also terrible last year. If Braun improved as much as Weeks has since he came up, Braun would still be the worst 3B in all of baseball... and Weeks is still in the bottom 5 at 2B. Add in Fielder being slightly below average and things are pretty ugly.

His "range" was terrible in large part due to the number of errors he makes. That's going to make his Range Factor very poor.

 

There's a lot of things that make RF poor. I don't think that's to what Ennder was referring.

Braun doesn't get to enough balls, and when he does he often boots them or overthrows.

[dadofandrew]

Range factor is all but meaningless. It only measures how many chances you get, which is 90% influenced by your pitching staff.

[homer]

Is there any adequate defensive statistic though? Even errors are subjective in many cases. All defensive stats have their flaws, but the fact that Braun was pretty much dead last in nearly all defensive metrics pretty much settles the debate about his worth in '07 as a defender.

[endaround]

Ender said range, not range factor. Meaning Braun not only can't throw that well, he doesn't get to as many balls as an average defender.

[Gopher74]

Ender said range, not range factor. Meaning Braun not only can't throw that well, he doesn't get to as many balls as an average defender.

Right, and I assumed he was using RF to make his point. A point by the way, I don't agree with.

 

I believe that Braun has very good "range" in terms of being able to get to a ball. Clearly he's a terrible defender overall. There's absolutely no question there. But, and I've had this debate before, I don't value fielding stats at all. As one of the last posters pointed out, none of them are very helpful.

 

But Braun definitely can get to a lot of balls. Heck, he can get to too many for his own good at times. He stole several balls from Hardy last year that would have likely been outs, but since he's moving toward 2nd base, and Hardy's charging, he can't make the throw. Well, that and the fact that he's just plain awful at making any throw from 3rd. But how many times did he do that? How many times did he go back on foul territory for a ball?

 

So I'm not arguing that in any way he's a good defender. I'm simply saying that he can reach more balls than most. He can't do all that much with them when he reaches them, but that's another story.

[Gopher74]

Range factor is all but meaningless. It only measures how many chances you get, which is 90% influenced by your pitching staff.

Absolutely agree. It kills me when people use these to rate Barry Bonds as a superior OF'er than Tori Hunter(obviously an exaggeration).

 

As homer said, all defensive statistics are flawed. You can use them as a jumping off point, you can use them to compare a player from year to year, and even that's flawed.

 

[endaround]

No Braun can't get to a lot of balls. He only got to 21 balls out of his zone, which means he's terrible at that part too. He might not be the worst there, given Lowell got to only 27 in 350 more innings, but he isn't good.

[Fatter than Joey]

No Braun can't get to a lot of balls.

 

I remember someone posted a scouting evaluation of Braun this last year -- and he was terrible in "range" (not range factor or some stat).

 

I think the only defensive attribute he ranked well on -- was speed -- which isn't that critical at 3b.

 

Speed does not translate into range at 3b. (generally speaking)

[Gopher74]

No Braun can't get to a lot of balls. He only got to 21 balls out of his zone, which means he's terrible at that part too. He might not be the worst there, given Lowell got to only 27 in 350 more innings, but he isn't good.

I put almost zero stuck into that type of stat. First of all, how many balls he gets to out of his zone is entirely Dependant upon how many balls get hit his way.

Second, if he doesn't make an out, then he didn't "get to" a ball out of his zone, although he technically got to the ball, he just couldn't convert it.

And third, you're using a sample size that's not even a full year.

 

I just put absolutely no stock in defensive stats as they're completely flawed IMO.