Reflecting on the Value of Defense

[Michael W]

For several years people have been saying how we really needed Meadows in the line up for his defense.  Similarly, people talked about how Carpenter, Malloy, or Jones couldn't be counted on to play the outfield (Carpenter's bat finally shut that talk up with regard to him, but it took years).  This postseason really showed why that's nonsense.

I watched nearly every inning of the 8 post season games, and I don't recall a single play that Meadows made in centerfield that couldn't have been made by a marginal centerfielder.  This is not Meadows fault.  His defense was fine (except for the one error that probably didn't matter).  There just weren't any balls hit that way that were in the margin between a good and bad defender.  McKinstry playing out there would have made those plays.  Maybe I missed one, but there weren't many.

The issue is that the difference between a great defender and a mediocre one, at most positions, only comes into play infrequently.  You can measure it, and although the value of a great defensive shortstop is more significant, the value of great defensive outfielder is much less.  Not because there isn't a great difference in abilities, but because the plays that expose the difference are infrequent.  

Take this to the extreme.  The defensive difference between the best centerfielder in the majors (Raffaela), and, say, Riley Greene projected over a full season, is about 35 runs.  Thirty-five runs over 162 games is less than one run every 4 games.  

Meanwhile, what's not infrequent is the plate appearances.  The Tigers were starving for offense.  Despite being pinch-hit for a couple of times, Meadows still got 31 plate appearances -- and made 26 outs.  He posted a .305 OPS.  Admittedly, that's worse than you'd expect even from Meadows, but when you consider the improved pitching of the playoffs, it was clear he was going to be a sink.  The Tigers were scoring 2 runs per game, were dying  for a big hit, and Meadows was an automatic out 4 times per game.

Needless to say, there were plenty of ways to rejigger the lineup (Baez in CF with McKinstry at SS; or Greene in CF) to get another better hitter in the lineup.  

Your default lineup should always be your nine best hitters arrayed to cover the positions, and only substituting if you really cannot cover a position.  I hope this postseason served as a clear illustration of why - individual positional defense just doesn't matter that much, and hitting always matters.

Michael

[Peter Welch]

Was Riley Greene that bad defensively in CF?

Peter

On Oct 11, 2025, at 1:52 PM, Michael W <miw...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Michael W]

Depends what you mean by "that bad."   Being 35 runs worse, over 162 games, than the best CF in the universe is not quite, but almost, irrelevant.  He was -1 runs compared to average over his 100 or so innings, which is probably around -11 or -12 over a full season.  That would have made him one of the "worst" centerfielders (had he played the full season), which is another way to say that nobody who was trotted out there was really that bad.   

Michael

[Peter Welch]

That’s what I’m saying.  Was Greene so “bad” in CF that he needed to be moved to LF in favor of CFers who are weaker hitters (Meadows, Vierling, Perez, Baez, etc.) in CF?

Peter

On Oct 11, 2025, at 2:54 PM, Michael W <miw...@gmail.com> wrote:

Depends what you mean by "that bad."   Being 35 runs worse, over 162 games, than the best CF in the universe is not quite, but almost, irrelevant.  He was -1 runs compared to average over his 100 or so innings, which is probably around -11 or -12 over a full season.  That would have made him one of the "worst" centerfielders (had he played the full season), which is another way to say that nobody who was trotted out there was really that bad.   

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[Peter Welch]

Was there a fear that Greene might be more at risk of getting injured if he played CF regularly?

Peter 

On Oct 11, 2025, at 2:30 PM, Peter Welch <pw...@hotmail.com> wrote:

 Was Riley Greene that bad defensively in CF?

[Peter Welch]

I suppose in the 1st half this year when Baez was playing CF regularly he was hitting pretty well so it wasn’t a big offensive dropoff having Baez play CF.  It was when Meadows came back and he started playing CF regularly that there was a big offensive dropoff and maybe Greene should have gone back to CF instead to help the offense.  Baez started playing SS again more frequently after Meadows came back.  Maybe they should have left Baez in CF and called up McGonigle to play SS?  😁

Peter 

On Oct 11, 2025, at 3:18 PM, Peter Welch <pw...@hotmail.com> wrote:

 That’s what I’m saying.  Was Greene so “bad” in CF that he needed to be moved to LF in favor of CFers who are weaker hitters (Meadows, Vierling, Perez, Baez, etc.) in CF?

[Roger King]

Management seems to worry about Greene getting injured in CF as he tends to dive for a lot of balls etc.  

As much as I was happy to have Meadows out their defensively in a winner take all extra inning game vs someone else who hadn’t played the position in a while…I still think Michael is obviously correct here.  

Which begs the question why don’t Hinch & his team…who are the deep dive analytics guys… see this as well? Do they just overrate the importance of defense or is there anything else missing from the equation?

I keep landing on the idea that Hinch has this reputation for being willing to try anything, use all kinds of matchups and combinations, etc. but is actually deep down a pretty conventional manager whose “chess moves” are largely kind of old school/cliche decisions.

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[Tapu Shaikh]

On 10/11/25 19:52, Michael W wrote:
> Take this to the extreme.  The defensive difference between the best
> centerfielder in the majors (Raffaela), and, say, Riley Greene
> projected over a full season, is about 35 runs. Thirty-five runs over
> 162 games is less than one run every 4 games.

Maybe my information is out of date, but a difference of 35 wins seems
huge to me  I thought tens runs was equivalent to about a win, and that
a quarter of a run would make a big difference in the Pythagorean
winning percentage.

-Tapu

[Peter Welch]

Hinch kept hoping Meadows would resurrect his second-half hitting form of last year.  It never happened this year.  It's funny, though, that both times Meadows came off the IL this year had a good game in his first appearance and then it was downhill after that (he actually had a couple of good games after coming off the IL the second time in early September but completely nosedived after that).  Meadows got lucky for a couple of games after being activated and then all his weaknesses came out and were exploited by opposing pitchers.  Meadows has a lot of holes in his swing.  I'm not sure he has the ability to hit major league pitching consistently.

Meadows should have only been a late-game defensive replacement/pinch runner.  That's it.  Baez should probably have been in CF (or Greene if you wanted a more offense-oriented lineup), but the problem with this was who would play shortstop?  There was no decent SS option when Baez played CF unless you thought McKinstry could handle playing SS regularly (McKinstry's fielding stats at SS were bad this year).  Sweeney was terrible all season. 

The Tigers clearly weren't going to call up McGonigle this year so that left Baez as the only SS option.

This is where Sweeney having a terrible season really hurt.  Sweeney was supposed to play SS against righty pitching this year and at least be fairly competent, but he completely tanked after showing a little bit of promise as a rookie last year.

Meadows and Sweeney being non-factors this year (along with Vierling) compared to last year's second half were one of the reasons our offense declined in the 2^nd half and playoffs.

Peter

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From: Roger King <pnag...@pnagency.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2025 4:44 PM
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Subject: Re: Reflecting on the Value of Defense

 

[Michael W]

>   but a difference of 35 wins seems
> huge to me  I thought tens runs was equivalent to about a win, 

Good comment, I have a couple of thoughts:

First, the 10 runs = 1 win conversion is traditional, but it is controversial. There have even been arguments about it on this list, which is why I try to present data in runs not wins.  I would say 1 win seems like a ceiling value for 10 runs.

Having said that,  35 runs might be 3.5 wins, but the question is "compared to who?"  35 was compared to the best-of-the-best.  Compared to "an average major league centerfielder" it was more like 11 or 12 runs, or 1 win.  If we ask, "what's the defensive penalty for having Riley Greene in CF compared to an average centerfielder", then 1 win over 162 games sounds about right.  But when we talk about player-win values, we are usually talking about wins above *replacement* level.  Replacement level is well below average.  I don't have an easy way to calculate it, but seems like that couldn't be more than a few runs, or effectively zero wins impact.

Now all this is only talking about defense.  But the whole point is that offense counts of a lot.   As primarily a leftfielder, Greene's batting value was +22 runs (above replacement level).  If he had been a centerfielder, it would have been +30.5 runs (above replacement level).  

So runs above replacement level, Greene is worth about +30 in CF, net of offense and defense.   

One last thought. In Batting Runs Above Average, as a left fielder, Greene was only worth -1.  In other words, most leftfielders hit about as well as he did.  So a big part of the value of playing Greene in CF is that we could play a better hitter in LF as well.  You replace a Parker Meadows-type with a Kerry Carpenter-type in the lineup, and the defensive penalty is minor, but the offensive value is significant.   

Michael

[Tapu Shaikh]

On 10/13/25 20:57, Michael W wrote:
> Having said that,  35 runs might be 3.5 wins, but the question is
> "compared to who?"  35 was compared to the best-of-the-best.  Compared
> to "an average major league centerfielder" it was more like 11 or 12
> runs, or 1 win.  If we ask, "what's the defensive penalty for having
> Riley Greene in CF compared to an average centerfielder", then 1 win
> over 162 games sounds about right.  But when we talk about player-win
> values, we are usually talking about wins above *replacement* level.
> Replacement level is well below average.

I've had the same question about what "replacement level" means, but
it's harder to find wins above average stats.

That's why I brought up the expected Pythagorean win total.  If I plug
in the Tigers' runs for (758) and runs against (691), giving up 35 fewer
runs would result in 4.1 more wins, with jives with the 10 runs per win
rule of thumb.  The question in that case is whether the difference in
defense is worth the difference in offense (I don't know the offensive
stats of the top defensive CF you mentioned), which is a debate as old
as baseball.

The last time I had looked into the Pythagorean formula (last year?), I
had read that the best-fit exponent isn't exactly 2, so the simple
formula isn't perfect.  And a *long* time ago, when I first learned
about the Pythagorean formula here on this List, probably in the 1990s,
I had done a deep dive, calculating derivatives over runs for and runs
against.  I recall the conclusion was that, once you get beyond a
certain winning percentage, a small marginal gain in runs against made
more of a difference than the same gain in runs for.  (I probably have
the post on an external hard drive somewhere, in case I can't do
calculus anymore.)

I had played an old computer game where I put Rob Deer in CF to get his
bat in the lineup, and he was visibly bad.  I recall the team I was
playing had Devon White in CF, who moved more like a literal deer rather
than the namesake on the Tigers.  So while I tend to be flippant about
the value of defense, I see the merit.

-Tapu

[Michael W]

>  If I plug in the Tigers' runs for (758) and runs against (691), 

> giving up 35 fewer runs would result in 4.1 more wins, with jives 

> with the 10 runs per win rule of thumb. 

Sure, and that would be relevant if the question was "is Riley Greene a more valuable CF than Cedanne Rafaela".  (And then you'd have to continue and compare their relative offensive value). My bad for bringing up the extreme case.  I was trying to show the ceiling of the cost before I did the whole analysis, but apparently that was just confusing.

But if the question is what's the cost of playing Riley Greene in CF in general.  Then you plug in the "2 or 3 runs below replacement level" in to the Pythagorean formula, you get less than one win impact, which is what I wrote before.  And then you have to have consider his offensive value, and then you you're just rewriting my prior post :-)

>The question in that case is whether the difference in

>defense is worth the difference in offense

>which is a debate as old
> as baseball.

Well, that was the debate I was weighing in on.  How depressing that I have made no impact.

By the way, Baseball Reference does provide Runs Above Average stats, as well as Runs Above Replacement.  They are doing a bunch of adjustments, so you have to read a bit carefully to know what precisely they mean.

Michael

[Peter Welch]

Would an OF of Perez/Greene/Carpenter produced more runs than Greene/Meadows/Carpenter?

Peter

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Subject: Re: Reflecting on the Value of Defense

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[Jeffrey Withey]

I think the question is really how bad the defense has to be to overcome a big gain in offense. Obviously, a Delmon Young-type fielder is a big risk but if the other option is good field, no hit, who is really more worthy of playing time? I would take the player who provides more run scoring and sacrifice some defense, within reason. 

Jeff

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[Peter Welch]

If I were Hinch I would have given up on starting Meadows in CF and moved Greene to CF and started Jones/Perez in LF against either righties or lefties.

Peter

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[Roger King]

The problem with that is Perez actually hit worse than Meadows in the postseason, if you can believe it.  Battle of the Titans:

Meadows - .305 OPS

Perez - .263 OPS

If you move Baez to CF, then Sweeney probably has to play so that hurts the offense. 

My feeling all along was we could live with Meadows in CF as long as Hinch stuck him in the #9 spot in the order permanently. 

The bigger problem in the postseason was Perez and Keith getting so many at bats at the expense of Jones.

Keith was actually worse than Meadows & Perez coming in at a .243 OPS. He had 17 plate appearances in the heart of the Tigers order. And since he was only DH, there was absolutely no defensive contribution whatsoever.

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[Peter Welch]

Yes, Perez was horrible in the playoffs as well (apart from his clutch hit in game 4 of the Cleveland series).

I would have started Jones full-time at LF or DH in the playoffs and used Meadows as a late-inning defensive replacement and Perez as a pinch hitter.

Peter

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