Tyler Flowers and LOB Stats

[chitownsportsfan]

2014 Alexei was rated 11th out of 22 qualified shortstops defensively by Fangraphs, and with a .713 OPS and roughly average baserunning he was worth 3.1 WAR. Castro was 13th defensively (though a pretty decent gap from Alexei) and had a .777 OPS and 2.8 WAR, but he was terrible on the basepaths. Using this as a rough baseline the theoretical season above should definitely be above 3 WAR.

 

Thanks for running the numbers. I think we'll all be thrilled if Anderson comes close to his ceiling. Guys like him don't come along too often.

[Y2Jimmy0]

Flowers should play only to catch Sale or when Geo physically can't go. Soto is so much better and it's inexcusable to sit him so much in favor of Flowers.

 

 

Soto is a better hitter. That's it though.

[Knackattack]

Soto is a better hitter. That's it though.

Some one posted that Flowers pitch framing turns like 1.89 balls into strikes per game and Soto's turns 1.09 balls into strikes. So you're playing Flowers for his pitch framing when he turns 1 extra ball a game into a fcking strike over Soto while Soto has a .818 OPS and 1.5 WAR for Flowers .608 OPS and -0.1 WAR.

[southsider2k5]

Some one posted that Flowers pitch framing turns like 1.89 balls into strikes per game and Soto's turns 1.09 balls into strikes. So you're playing Flowers for his pitch framing when he turns 1 extra ball a game into a fcking strike over Soto while Soto has a .818 OPS and 1.5 WAR for Flowers .608 OPS and -0.1 WAR.

 

It isn't just framing. It is all of the defensive components, including pitch calling.

 

And I am sure if you took and boiled it down the same way for offensive stats, it would look remarkably similar. For example, Soto's .248 average vs Flowers .217 average means Soto gets 0.09 (based on 3.1 PA/G) hits per game more than Tyler. Looks really small when you present it that way, versus looking at it as almost 50% more.

[Knackattack]

It isn't just framing. It is all of the defensive components, including pitch calling.

 

And I am sure if you took and boiled it down the same way for offensive stats, it would look remarkably similar. For example, Soto's .248 average vs Flowers .217 average means Soto gets 0.09 (based on 3.1 PA/G) hits per game more than Tyler. Looks really small when you present it that way, versus looking at it as almost 50% more.

Soto's OBP is nearly .100 points higher, if you use his HR/PA conversion over the same amounts of AB's as Flowers he projects for 14 HR at this point, and on Fangraphs he is rated higher defensively, which matches the eye test for me as well. Tyler's lateral movement is horrible whereas Soto can be fairly quick behind the plate. Not to mention literally all of the WAR produced by Sox catchers comes from Soto, Flowers is negative.

 

It should at least be a strict platoon where Soto catches vs lefties.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Knackattack

[Jake]

It is not fair to assume that Soto would necessarily keep up his production if playing more frequently, being exposed to less favorable matchups, etc. I think Soto has played well enough that if he was physically more able to play every day, he'd probably be getting more playing time

[southsider2k5]

Soto's OBP is nearly .100 points higher, if you use his HR/PA conversion over the same amounts of AB's as Flowers he projects for 14 HR at this point, and on Fangraphs he is rated higher defensively, which matches the eye test for me as well. Tyler's lateral movement is horrible whereas Soto can be fairly quick behind the plate. Not to mention literally all of the WAR produced by Sox catchers comes from Soto, Flowers is negative.

 

Like I said, if you take a whole picture view, versus just picking out one stat and trying to represent it in the worst possible way you get different results.

 

It is also worth pointing out that things like pitch framing and calling have zero analytics behind them right now, and they for sure aren't included in WAR. If nothing else the fact that the best pitchers on the staff are pretty much exclusively throwing to Flowers has some value to it.

 

You just can't throw out OPS and one stat on pitch framing and declare Soto better. If Soto really had that kind of value, he wouldn't have been a left over for a minor league deal with as bad as the catching situation is around baseball right now.

 

I think honestly the reason he has had a good year is Robin has found him good spots to get him into games in addition to his regular turns with Samardjiza.

[southsider2k5]

It is not fair to assume that Soto would necessarily keep up his production if playing more frequently, being exposed to less favorable matchups, etc. I think Soto has played well enough that if he was physically more able to play every day, he'd probably be getting more playing time

 

Especially because his history tells us that this year is probably a fluke or a product of being used in better match ups. Pick one.

[Knackattack]

Especially because his history tells us that this year is probably a fluke or a product of being used in better match ups. Pick one.

His line is pretty much on par with his career batting averages

[southsider2k5]

His line is pretty much on par with his career batting averages

 

He hasn't put up an OPS/OPS+ this high since 2010.

[Eminor3rd]

Some one posted that Flowers pitch framing turns like 1.89 balls into strikes per game and Soto's turns 1.09 balls into strikes. So you're playing Flowers for his pitch framing when he turns 1 extra ball a game into a fcking strike over Soto while Soto has a .818 OPS and 1.5 WAR for Flowers .608 OPS and -0.1 WAR.

 

The problem with this is that there are a ton of independent variables NOT being controlled here. For example: who is pitching? How much credit does the pitcher get? Who is the umpire and what type of strikezone did that umpire have? Sale's control > Samardzija's control, so should Flowers get credit for Sale's ability to dot the corner, while Soto suffers from Samardzija's lack thereof? If the umpire is calling outside strikes one night and the pitcher notices it, proceeds to pound the area off the outside corner all night and gets rewarded, is it really the catcher framing? Or, perhaps better put, how MUCH of it is the catcher framing?

 

This is a burdgeoning field for sabermetrics, but it's still very much the great frontier. The research so far has done a great job of quantifying the overall impact of a ball turned strike (and it's bigger than most previously expected), but we're almost literally still at square one when it comes to assigning credit for that impact.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Eminor3rd