I don’t know about you, but I think I’m officially tried of hearing about Manny Ramirez and the Giants. It’s been one of the hotter topics of late on the Internet and Giants websites. We’ve even talked a little about what Manny would bring to the Giants here on BCB. There’s been a lot of good discussion regarding the merits of Ramirez. How much will he cost? Should the Giants even be considering him? Will he jive with the Bonds-less GAMER clubhouse? How bad is his defense? Will he be motivated enough to play in San Francisco? And so on and so forth.
Since most of these topics have been covered here — or elsewhere — I’m not going to delve back into them today. Instead, I wanted to present a quick graph comparing the value of Fred Lewis vs Manny and some other remaining free agent left fielders. The Giants would be a better team with Ramirez in left field but I feel that the average fan, and maybe the media, is expecting a Ramirez acquisition to push this team into 90 wins territory.
Much like the previous post when we compared Fred Lewis to Manny, when everything is added up the difference between Lewis and Ramirez in 2009 is about +22 runs. Making the difference between them about +2.2 wins. After you adjust for the playing time, it drops closer to an even +2 wins. The difference between Fred Lewis and Adam Dunn/Bobby Abreu is too marginal to entertain.
In the WAR projections we have the ’09 Giants projected at an 82-83 win team. An addition of Ramirez — without any other roster changes or re-working Lewis back into some sort of playing role — would push the team to a projection of 84-85 wins. A push of two wins for a fringe team looking to get into the playoffs is big, but I think if you polled the average fan and asked him how many wins he or she thought Manny would add to the team, they’d expect much more than just two wins. But, make no mistake, two wins is a significant improvement for a team like the Giants.
And that might be my biggest gripe with the idea of Manny Ramirez. It’s not so much the player that we might be getting, it’s the disconnect between reality and the expectations of fans and the media. The idea of having to read potential Bruce Jenkins columns on ‘Why Can’t the Giants Win With Manny?’ is enough to make me want to run into a wall, Aaron Rowand GAMER-style. I think until anything actually happens, I’m going to shut off my brain to all things Ramirez.
Have pitchers and catchers reported yet?
Hey Chris, I’m new to your blog but kudos for the great analysis.
Can you help me understand something – where in your player comparisons do you factor in the improvement the player would have on the guys around him in the line-up? e.g does Manny’s projected +2 wins include how Bengie’s numbers would change? Thanks.
Simple solution, Chris: don’t read Bruce Jenkins. I’ve been Jenkins-free for months now, and there’s a new spring to my step, food tastes better, the ball flies off my bat, etc. etc.
JerryG, as far as I know there isn’t any evidence that players have an affect on the other guys in the lineup. It is possible it exists, but if so, it is lost in the noise and likely dwarfed by the players own contributions.
Jerry,
Welcome to the site. Marcello beat me to the punch, the theory of lineup protection isn’t one that’s really shown up in the numbers yet. I’ve got a really hard time buying into it.
I like your word choice – “protection” – though I, personally, believe line up protection exists. What think Jerry is asking about is, for like of a better word, “amplification”. That I don’t think exists.
Aurilia’s great 2001 season in front of Bonds is an example. Richie was always very good at turning on a fast ball and batting in front of Bonds that year increased the times pitchers would throw them and decreased (or protected) him for the pitcher chooseing to throwing other stuff he was not so adept at hitting. (Of course a 320 OBP from the combo of Benard & Murray in spot in the line up ahead of him probably help encourage the pitcher to be more aggressive as well.) Bonds presence would change the pitchers view of his options in the games current run state but it was entirely up to Aurila and his skills to convert those opportunities.
This is crazy talk. And it more or less sums up my frustration with a narrow sabermetrics viewpoint.
Just because you can’t quantify something does not mean it doesn’t exist!!!
Just because no metric has yet been devised to measure “amplification” or “line-up protection” or whatever you want to call it, does not mean that such a metric won’t one day be devised.
The Dodgers scored a half-run more per game with Manny last year than they did without Manny. Clearly there was some kind of “amplifying” force at play, since Manny alone did not directly account for all of those runs.
So was it just coincidence? Did Kent, Loney, and Martin just all happen to get hot precisely when Manny arrived? If yes, doesn’t that fly in the face of common sense?
At the very least you have to CONSIDER that Manny’s presence on the Dodger’s had a causal relationship to the increased production of the rest of the lineup. To just blindly ignore that possibility is foolish. I’m not even saying you have to ultimately reach the conclusion that Manny “amplified” the production of Loney and Kent and Martin, etc. But you have to consider it.
Don’t you?
Sabermetrics is an incredibly useful tool, don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to slander statistical analysis. But it does have its blind spots. Let’s not forget that.
And no, I’m not sticking up for Bruce Jenkins. And no, I’m not trivializing how significant +2 wins would be. I just happen to think that Manny is much bigger than these numbers suggest.
@MrLomez,
I think we had a similar discussion in the other Manny thread.
I never said it totally didn’t exist, just that no one has proven it — keyword — yet. For now, I liken it to something like the “game calling” skill that sportswriters and other people have tried to stick on catchers for years now. It just hasn’t show up in the numbers. And, as Marcello said above, it’s not that it doesn’t exist at all, but that it’s impact is so small, that it’s been undetectable. What Manny does himself — hitting and fielding — is going to be important than any unseen effect that he may or may not have on hitters around him just by being there.
And, on the flipside, just because you can’t quantify something yet, doesn’t mean it does exist.
Did Jeff Kent’s mustache give him home run hitting power? I can’t quantify if it did or didn’t. (unless we shaved it off or something.)
Is it a coincidence? Probably. Or maybe it’s not and Manny gave some undetectable boost to the guys around him. Does that fly in the face of common sense? In my opinion, not at all. Wacky things can happen in 180 ABs. In ’01, over 140 ABs, Neifi Perez hit: .348/.373/.526 what does that mean? Nothing really.
And on a skill-level Kent and Loney both have the skills to hit well in 180 ABs. But we don’t know and you don’t know either. Here’s my problem with saying that “Kent, Martin, Loney, etc. hit better once Manny arrived, therefore truth!”
Manny played with the Dodgers for all of 53 games. That’s a blip in a seasons worth of data. Also, if the Manny effect helped Kent and Loney (Martin actually hit .246/.367/.330 while Manny was with the team), why didn’t it help Juan Pierre? Or Casey Blake?
If we’re going to credit Manny for the successes, should we also ding him for the guys that didn’t hit any better? In fact, shouldn’t Juan Pierre be the perfect example of hitter that should get a boost from Manny? Why didn’t he hit better?
I didn’t blindly ignore anything. I said it’s been undetectable and no one has found any value in the idea of lineup protection … yet. If Bill James writes a study tomorrow on a theory of lineup protection that supports you’re argument, I’ll gladly read it.
I had no idea this would be such a controversial topic when I put my 2 cents in. Now I feel I should ask for clarification. If “protection” was not demonstratable then why does Tango go through were to place the best OBP bats in line up? He is using one game tool available (OBP) that he can scientifically prove effects games states to increase the odds of an order’s success (or decrease its failure rate sense this is baseball). How is decreasing failure rate not a protective move, were am I reading things wrong here?
Hey Dave,
Link me to the Tango piece if you’ve got it. If you’re talking about where to place your hitters because of their OBP, I can’t find much fault with that.
What I’m arguing against is that Hitter A is going to make Hitter B demonstrably better just by merely hitting in the same lineup.
J.C. Bradbury of Sabernomics did an interesting piece on the theory of protection his book — ie: if Bonds is on deck and I’m hitting, I’ll reap the benefits — and he found that:
Link – http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2004/09/the-protection-externality-it-doesnt-exist/
It also has some corollary links to a few other studies. And a brief FAQ from David Marcasco on protection can be found here:
http://www.baseball1.com/faqs/protection-faq.html
Chris thanks for the Links.
And yes I was referring to The Book were Tango was advocating batters based on OBP. I have to wonder if a lot of this is because we (fans) don’t have an accepted definition to what protection is. And over the years announcers tend to abuse the word to infer a lot of things.
Nice rebuttal. Well done. I think you make some good points. The fact that we’re dealing with just 53 games is definitely an issue here, as is the fact that save for the most extreme cases, “amplification” is all but undetectable.
We’re also in agreement on your point that: “Just because you can’t quantify something yet, doesn’t mean it does exist.” I don’t think I ever tried to argue the contrary.
My point, all along, was not that Manny DID amplify the production of other Dodgers hitters last year (i.e. – I never once “yelled TRUTH”), but that it is possible. AND, secondarily, it’s insanely foolish for people to dismiss such a possibility simply because “amplification” is something that in normal circumstances is statistically irrelevant. Manny on the Dodger’s last year very well could’ve been an outlier.
Here’s what we know: Manny’s presence on the Dodgers coincided with a significant amplification of the production of the Dodger’s lineup as a whole, production that increased beyond the effects that Manny could’ve accounted for on his own. Right?
We have three explanations:
1) Manny’s mere presence improved the hitting of those around him. Whether because those players were pitched to differently, OR Manny induced some kind of psychological effect, or a combination of both. I happen to think the psychological effect is what sabermetricians are most blind to, but I’ll get to that later.
2) A handful of key Dodger players coincidentally got hot right as Manny arrived.
3) Some other outside force was at work that had nothing to do with Manny, like a new HGH shipment arrived in the clubhouse.
Any of those are possible. So, why is there reason to believe proposition 1 when there is almost no data that supports the theory of “amplification”?
Were Dodger’s hitters pitched to more favorably because of Manny, and therefore hit better? Maybe. For now, I’ll grant you that this is where I think sabermetricians are correct in dismissing “amplification” as statistically insignificant (most of the time). This is where sabermetrics is good.
Did Dodger’s hitters benefit from a positive psychological effect upon Manny’s arrival? This is where sabermetrics is BAD. Bradbury himself – in your quote above – invokes the “effort hypothesis,” which is a strictly psychological claim, so before you go dismissing this as pseudo-science, know that psychology has already been brought into the argument.
So what of it? Sports-psychology is a super-complex and often vague subject. But we know psychology is a HUGE part of physical performance, especially in baseball. Otherwise great relievers clam-up when they’re promoted to closer. Rick Ankiel forgets how to throw a strike. Hanley Ramirez can’t produce if he’s out of the lead-up spot. Hitters bury themselves in 30 game funks and can’t pull their heads out of their asses. Etc. A baseball player’s performance is often largely independent of his physical talents. Agreed?
So Manny comes to the Dodgers in August. The Dojo’s are a ways back of the D-backs. Their outfield situation is a mess with both Pierre and Jones eating AB’s off the plate of more productive players. Kent is funking. Loney is playing average. You get the idea. Then Manny comes along and completely reverses their malaise. Is it power of personality? Is it leadership by example? Did he uncover a hitch in Loney’s swing? Or maybe there was just a general excitement in the air. Maybe these guys – since they’re are human just like everyone else – reacted to the renewed possibility of making a push for the playoffs. They loosened up. Started to have fun. Refocused. Whatever the precise explanation, I would suggest that Manny’s mere presence, yes, did have an amplifying effect on the performance of those around him. I don’t think that’s such an outrageous claim.
As for why some guys reacted differently than others, well I feel stupid saying something so obvious, but, everyone is different. Juan Pierre started 13 games once Manny arrived. Sticking with a psychological analysis, getting platooned like that can be pretty damaging.
In any event, I think the salient question is, can that psychological effect be duplicated? Is it something that Manny can be counted on to deliver to, say, the Giants, or was Manny just the catalyst to jump-start a mechanism that was already in place?
I won’t pretend to have an answer to those questions. But I will standby my argument that Manny, at least last year with the Dodgers, amplified the production of that team as a whole.
Holy shit. I just wrote way too much.
@MrLomez
Sports psychology really isn’t my bag — that’s probably pretty obvious — so I won’t attempt to try and explain things from that vantage point.
I think you did a good job in laying out your case. But, you’re totally right in there is a huge bunch of “We just don’t know” flying around in this type of discussion.
And this:
I definitely agree with. Which makes me wonder, if you want to award Manny for his influence on the Dodgers, OK, for the sake of argument, I’ll concede that point. But how helpful is this idea of “amplification (or protection, or whatever you want to call it) if it A) might not work with every team B) we really have no idea how it works and C) we can’t really measure what impact it’s having — if it’s having any impact at all?
At that point, it irks me I guess. I still think you get 98% of your meat-and-potatoes from what each player actually is doing in measurable ways. Ie: hitting, fielding, baserunning, etc. The other 2% (which I’m guessing you might argue is more than 2%) of value being created by intangible type stuff is dwarfed in comparison.
I really think that intangible type stuff has some value, but it’s probably pretty small and not as important as individual player skills. If we put Manny Ramirez in a lineup full of Kevin Frandsens, outside of Manny’s actual on field production, how much would he add to the team? I tend to think the Kevin Frandsens are going to produce pretty close to what their skill-level dictates regardless of who else is on the team.
Hey, well all do it. And at least you did it in an intelligent and well-mannered way. It’s a change of pace from most Internet baseball discussion. Maybe next time you can add a few OMG WTF R U DOING SABEZ!!!1
A couple other factoids to account for before according Manny freak of nature status that improves a whole line up more then is raw numbers would do alone.
Jaun Pierre 283 PA’s producing a 299 OBP in the #1 hole. The vast bulk all of these were before Manny arrived. After Manny most of #1 hole time was Kemp (203 PA with a 360 OBP last year in that spot) or Martin (93 PA with 375 OBP hitting first). That’s a real significant improvement in a key spot of the order.
Jones and his 256 OBP came to the plate 14 times after Manny arrived. Jones had 224 PA’s before Manny arrived and produced a gaudy 489 OBP in 223 PA’s. So basically they replaced Jones with Manny which gained them 233 points in OBP.
Between both things The Bums improved their OBP by 294 points.
Now I am not the satiation enough to find and apply the correct formula’s but to even consider giving Manny a nod for special powers throughout the lineup I would think we have to show the production of the Dodger line up as a whole significantly out strips the production form a line that kind of OBP improvement in 2 locations. I suspect the numbers would not support giving that nod.
If MR has a significant affect on the players around him, shouldn’t we expect the Red Sox to have experienced a significant drop off in team-wide offensive production after he left?
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