A couple of days ago, I put together a look at how well premier free agents Manny Machado and Bryce Harper fit on all 30 teams. What I didn't get into was the question of which player I'd rather have.
Based on the tenor of discussions on the many Facebook message boards on which I lurk, the correct answer would be neither. Both are the epitome of the spoiled, lazy, modern player and would be cancers in the clubhouse of any team trying to win. At least that's what I keep reading. For whatever reason, people get very angry about things on social media.
There isn't a team in the majors that wouldn't take both Machado and Harper if it could afford to. They are that good. In fact, they are apparently good enough to generate widespread disdain, which is about as good a compliment as you can get.
So let's begin with that: If I'm running a team, I'd love to have either player as a foundation piece. There are 45 players in big league history to have generated at least 580 runs created through their age-25 season. That's Machado's career total, which happens to be seven more than Stan Musial at the same age. Harper has created 682 runs, which ranks 22nd on the 25-and-under leaderboard. He's ahead of players like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Rogers Hornsby, Tris Speaker and Lou Gehrig.
As David Schoenfield pointed out Thursday, these two are closely aligned in many ways:
Machado has a decent advantage in WAR based primarily on defensive value -- an advantage of 71 runs in Baseball-Reference.com's calculation of WAR, plus another 52 runs of advantage in positional value. Harper's 78-run edge in batting is completely erased by these adjustments.
I would rather have Harper. In a nutshell, I'd view it as a safer bet to invest in Harper's future edge as a hitter than Machado's edge as a fielder.
In the tale-of-the-tape comparison, I included hits, a category in which Machado owns an edge of 128 even though they've played essentially the same number of games. However, here is the difference in walks: Harper 585, Machado 296.
This is huge, and tells us a couple of things. One is how disciplined they are as hitters; two is how they are pitched to. But the bottom line is that the disparity means that even though Machado has slightly outhit Harper in terms of average (.282 to .279), Harper has a whopping edge in secondary average (.423 to .292). Give me the secondary-average guy every time. Also, Harper has a higher career isolated power mark (.233 to .204), evidence of the louder thunder he has off the bat.
The real gap between Harper and Machado as hitters is probably even greater than I've illustrated here because of venue. Other than Machado's half-season with the Dodgers, both players have played in one ballpark over the course of their respective careers. According to the latest three-year ballpark index figures in the Bill James Handbook, Camden Yards has inflated homers for righties by 14 percent, while Nationals Park has suppressed homers for lefties by 2 percent.
That's reflected in Harper and Machado's career home-road splits:
Harper's game has largely been unaffected by venue so far in his career, despite Nationals Park not being perfectly ideal for him. Machado, on the other hand, has gotten a considerable boost from playing at Camden Yards. That doesn't mean that he can't put up huge numbers anywhere, but this is another item that convinces me Harper is the safer bet.
In the best-fits analysis, I referred to some simple 10-year projections I looked at. And that's what they were: simple, using only typical career aging curves applied to each player. But of course players don't age in the same ways, so I looked up the 10-year projections from the PECOTA system at Baseball Prospectus. These were most recently released before the 2018 season. Anyway, they project Harper to generate 42.8 WARP from 2019 through the 2027 season; Machado is at 25.8.
Long-term projections like that have enormous error bars, but that's quite a gap. What that tells us is that players like Harper tend to age better than players like Machado, at least in the PECOTA view of the baseball universe. Again, these players are the same age and to date, BP gives Harper 35.5 WARP for his career and Machado 28.9. It's pretty close, yet it sees Harper as producing significantly more value going forward.
Again, if I'm in charge, I'm thrilled to land either Machado or Harper. But I'm more thrilled if it's Harper.
What the numbers say: Fielding
A lot of analysts like to point out that the Gold Glove selections have gotten better in recent years. I'd argue that it's a low bar, but it's clear that things have improved. Still, it's essential that we remain open to ideas how to improve the process.
A big problem with the awards these days is that in many ways they've been usurped by the Fielding Bible Awards, announced each year in the Bill James Handbook since 2006. While I'm sure that the Fielding Bible Awards remain much less known that the Gold Gloves, they've gained favor with contemporary analysts. It's not necessarily that the Fielding Bible Awards are always spot-on. It's more that they tend to have fewer glaring miscalculations.
Look, we all know that our ability to quantify defense remains a work in progress, though we've come a long way in that regard. That's especially true when it comes to publicly available data. There is no one defensive system that is always right, and any insight you can glean from good eyeball observation should be incorporated into our assessments.
The ironic thing with the Gold Glove Awards is that these days they do include an objective component, and the formula they use should be as close to airtight as we can currently get. The awards are based on voting by managers and coaches, but the ballots are then combined with the aforementioned formula.
Here's the exact wording from Rawlings, which sponsors the awards, on its website: Rawlings Gold Glove Awards are calculated based on a combination of managers/coaches and SABR.
The SABR formula is more or less a mash-up of five different systems of defensive analysis. According to Rawlings, it accounts for about 25 percent of the final count, depending on how many coaches vote. To me, the metric and the human votes should carry about equal weight. Anyway, here's a comparison of the 2018 honorees. I'm cheating a bit with the Fielding Bible winners -- its voting panel doesn't give separate awards per league, but it does provide a final vote count, so that's how I "picked" its winners.
The SABR metric and the Fielding Bible Awards align almost perfectly for the American League. The FBA voters gave shortstop to Andrelton Simmons, which is hard to argue with. As for Kevin Kiermaier, while he had enough innings to qualify for a Gold Glove, he was limited to 104 games and it's reasonable to hold that against him; the FBA voters did not. Jackie Bradley Jr. finished third at his position in the SABR formula, so he's not a bad choice. The National League side has many more discrepancies. In fact, the only consensus pick is Nick Ahmed at shortstop.
"It's at catcher that it's clear that what the metrics see and what the managers/coaches see are wildly out of whack. My assumption is that this comes down to how recently pitch framing -- a Jeff Mathis specialty -- has become such a valued commodity. But it might also be related to how different systems value that skill. Neither Yadier Molina nor Salvador Perez ranked in the top 10 of the FBA balloting. Molina, who was ranked 34th in strike zone runs above average (RszC) by baseball-reference.com, ranked sixth among NL catchers in the SABR formula. Perez was ranked second in the AL by SABR, but was 114th out of 117 in RszC."
One thing that is clear is that we still have a lot of work to do. If we want our defensive observations and evaluations to be taken seriously, we probably should at least be able to agree on something as fundamental as who the best defender is at a given position in a given year. Right now, we just can't make that claim.
Since you asked: The Giants
The San Francisco Giants introduced a new lead executive Wednesday when former Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi conducted a news conference in San Francisco. Mostly, it was a typical introductory affair. The questions weren't very challenging and Zaidi was evasive when it came to specifics. Which is all to be expected.
There was one revealing comment from Zaidi that certainly seems like a glimpse of what's to come in San Francisco. After lauding the culture of selflessness in San Francisco during the Brian Sabean years -- a trait the Dodgers certainly emphasized while building their depth-based rosters of recent vintage -- Zaidi said:
"I think more generally adding a little youth to the roster, a little more athleticism to kind of complement some of that culture of selflessness, that would be the ideal combination, where you have kind of the athleticism and a really positive team mindset."
A lack of collective athleticism is typical of an aging roster of course. The Giants' batting age last season, according to Baseball-Reference.com, was 29.8, just a hair behind the Mariners for the oldest group in the league. Of the 13 position players to get at least 200 plate appearances for San Francisco last season, none was under the age of 25. Ten of them were over 30.
If it had worked, that would be one thing, but the Giants ranked dead last in OPS+ (84). San Francisco was about as average defensively as average gets, so that wasn't nearly enough to compensate for the lack of offensive punch. One thing that should come with older position players is certainty -- the error bars on projecting established veterans are much lower than doing the same for pitchers. In other words, none of this should have been a surprise when last year's team was put together.
The other thing that age does to a roster is to rob it of upside. Teams like, say, the Braves might not project well, but there is a certain amount of variability that comes with injecting youth in a position-player group. You need talent, first and foremost. But beyond that, you want the capacity for growth. The Giants haven't had that for years. The end result is a bloated payroll and a dead end with the existing talent on hand.
That means Zaidi's task is a mighty one. Luckily for him, the Giants have the built-in advantages of a great playing venue, a robust and affluent fan base and a massive revenue base. Zaidi will have to sort out a complicated payroll system and get started on revamping the minor league operation.
The good news for Giants fans is that there might not be a rising executive better equipped to handle this challenge than Zaidi. The symptoms of the Giants' dissolution have been apparent for a couple of years now, and San Francisco didn't need new leadership to recognized them. Zaidi wasn't hired to point out the obvious; he was hired for the remedies he brings.
Give Zaidi a couple of years and the Giants will return to the elite before you know it.