Crisp not the answer for Fenway’s centerfield
January 28, 2006 4 Comments
Taking a page from my co-writer’s handbook, let’s look at the Red Sox acquisition in a defensive light.
For those of you not clued in to the latest from the Hot Stove League, the Red Sox shipped away Andy Marte (?!), Kelly Shoppach, Guillermo Mota, money and a PTBNL to the Cleveland Indians for Josh Bard, David Riske, and Coco Crisp.
While trading Andy Marte may go down in the annals of Sox trade lore along the lines of the 1988 trade of Curt Schilling and Brady Anderson for Mike Boddicker, Crisp is the real catch for the Sox. The 26-year-old switch hitter will assume the leadoff spot in the lineup and the hole in centerfield both left vacant by Johnny Damon’s defection.
I have my doubts about Crisp as a lead-off hitter. While still young and improving, his on-base percentage has stalled out at .345. Furthermore, what I like to call his ISOBP (Isolated On-Base Percentage, which crudely substracts BA from OBP), has been in the .045 to .047 range over the last two seasons. In other words, if Crisp hitters .280 instead of .300, his OBP may drop to as low as .325, and the Sox need a leadoff hitter getting on base more frequently than that.
His offense, however, is neither here nor there. Proponents will point to his increase in doubles from 2004 to 2005 while opponents may not that he hit just 1 more home run in 118 more plate apperances. Plus, no one knows how he’ll respond to the pressures of Fenway.
Rather, I want to look at this trade from a defensive perspective using Gassko’s Range stat. The Red Sox clearly picked up Crisp in order to stick him into Fenway’s vast centerfield. How will he fare there?
On first glance, it seems as though Crisp may be a good fit for Boston. After all, he was one of the stand-out fielders under Gassko’s system. As a left fielder, he came in at 34 fielding runs above average under the Range system. That’s absolutely stellar.
However – and this is a big however – left field is not center field. In 2005, Crisp spent most of his time in leftfield. In 2004, he spent most of his time in centerfield, and the numbers tell a different story. That season, he was among the worst fielders at his position, netting a -20. While Crisp placed even with four other players, only Bernie Williams was worse in centerfield in 2004. That’s sure to resonant poorly with Red Sox fans.
So now, heading into a 2006 season following Front Office turmoil and a huge roster shakeup, the Red Sox are going to be relying on poor fielding centerfielder to anchor their outfield defense. They are also relying on a hitter whose OBP is closely tied to his batting average. And all of this landed in Boston at the cost of Andy Marte, Baseball America’s Number 1 prospect in the Red Sox organization. I can’t help but think Theo and Co. could have done better.
Ben,
My take is that the Red Sox’s net result here is trading Edgar Renteria for $39 million (the money they didn’t give Damon minus the money they gave the Braves and Indians). So basically, in the end, they got a year of Renteria for free.
Crisp projects to be just about average in CF. Remember, there’s always going to be some sampling error with any metric, so it’s likely that he’s neither a -20 fielder, no a +34. That’s just how he performed in 2004 and 2005.
I wonder a couple things: first, how park factors will affect his previous season and this upcoming season. I don’t know much about Cleveland’s park, except that it’s a big-time pitcher’s park.
Second, how player factors will affect the defense stats. If you’ve got a guy like Sizemore in center, you might get waved off of a lot of balls that he gets to but a lot of other CFs might have let their LF grab instead. In Fenway, playing between an injury-hampered Trot and a clueless Manny, Coco is going to have to do a lot more work, and might end up getting credit for getting to a lot of balls that could have gone to either LF or CF, that he just takes since he’s better.
Lastly… going back to the park factors, Crisp is moving from Cleveland to Boston. That, plus his age, will boost his numbers. He could change nothing at all and still end up around .360 or .365 OBP (would likely be a .315 BA, given his walk rate – both of which are where Damon was last year), with significantly more power too.
Ben,
In moving from Cleveland to Boston, Coco could benefit from the following:
1. The change in run environment. In 2005, his home/away splits were:
Home: .275 BA, .319 OB, .409 SLG
Away: .323 BA, .370 OB, .518 SLG
Too, while he’s a switch-hitter and not a pure left-handed batter, he is moving to park that has been generous to left-handed hitters.
2. Crisp’s G/F ratio of 1.35 is close to the AL average; in short, he doesn’t pound the ground, and in light of hs slightly-less than league average rate of .10 homeruns/flyballs (2005 league average was .12), he could conceivably improve on his homeruns, solely through the benefits of changes in home-park run environment and divisional foe run environments (for instance, substituting Toronto & Baltimore for Minnesota & KC).
3. American League offensive performance as a whole turned downward from 2004 to 2005, BA dropping 7 points, OB dropping 13 points, and SLG dropping 17 points). Crisp, however, increased in all three categories (admittedly, his walk rate dropped).
4. He turned 26 on November 1. He’s the right age to improve.
Even if we prudently dampen expectations of 2006 being an All Systems Go year for The Man Named Cereal, we can reasonably expect something similar to 2005, including an OB of .350…which is statistically insignificant from Johnny Damon’s career OB. Damon, of course, is 6 years older, recently saw his best BA in five years, and experienced an alarming drop in his walk rate (players tend to retain or increase walk rate at this age).
First of all, UZR has Crisp at +9 in 04 and +7 in 02 (per 150 games) in CF. So he appears to be the very good CF’er that you would expect given his exceptional (in UZR as well) defensive metrics in LF.
Second of all, and most importantly, while there are probably some players who are excellent corner outfielders yet poor CF’ers, the general rule is that you can take a player’s defensive prowess at the corner outfield positions and merely adjust them downward (to account for better competition) to estimate their prowess in CF. In fact, if a player is good enough at the corners, his defensive rating would actually increase (not including the competition) given more opportunities in CF.
In any case, it is methodologically unsound to take a player’s rating at one position and ignore his rating at another position in order to estimate his true or expected rating at one of those postions (the one you are not ignoring). IOW, it makes no sense (it is incorrect) to take Crisp’s rating in CF and ignore his rating in LF in order to estimate his true or expected rating (in 06) in CF.
That is because his rating in CF is merely a sample of his true talent in CF and thus subject to unlimited sample error. The way to mitigate this sample error is to use data at other defensive positions. The fact that he is so “plus” in LF suggests (strongly) that he was “unlucky” in his CF rating (Gassko’s Range at least – as I said, his UZR in CF has been very good). In fact, the fact that his UZR in CF has been good (UZR trumps Range) really suggests that his “Range” rating in CF was a “fluke.”
This is the same principal with home/road and platoon splits. Of you want to estimate how a player will do versus a RHP you don’t just look at how he did in the past versus RHP. You look at how he did versus RHP and LHP, you estimate his true platoon ratio, and then you apply that to his overall stats. Ditto for home/road splits.
So the bottom line is that Crisp is likely to be an above average defender in CF, given his UZR’s at all positions. I think that Boston uses a very good advanced defensive metric similar to UZR and I am sure that their results support this notion.
Given that he is average or a little above offensively for a CF’er, he is a great pick-up for Boston indeed, atlhough I am unsure of the impact of trading the prospects they did.