This article, in my humble opinion, stinks. The very idea that you can measure
fiedling abiltiy by statistics has always been debatable at best. Clearly this
writer has gone out of his way to try to prove that manny hurts his team, and I
dont' think he does a very good job of it. Whatever...Ted Williams wasn't a
great fielder, either :-)

Ciao,
Angelica

Lynne <lynne@...> wrote:
Hi All,

Here's another sportswriter with a strong dislike for Manny. Haters! :)

Lynne

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The 86-year Curse of the Bambino ended when the Boston Red Sox won the
2004 World Series. But as long as the American League's best
right-handed hitter plays left field in Fenway Park, the team's fans
will continue to moan about Manny being Manny.

Manny Ramírez is, of course, the Red Sox' most accomplished slugger
and their biggest headache, equally known for his prodigious
production at the plate and his misadventures in the field and on the
basepaths. When Fenway denizens dismiss a muffed fly ball or a botched
rundown as Manny being Manny, they mean that they have learned to
tolerate his foibles in return for his offensive output. But just how
much do Ramírez's weaknesses subtract from his one outstanding
strength? His bat may be worth his $20 million salary, but is the
whole package?

Measuring fielding with numbers has always been a difficult task. The
most traditional statistic, fielding percentage, is dependent on the
whims of official scorers and does not account for a player's range,
while total plays made per game is a product of the number of balls
hit to a fielder.

Accurate numerical evaluations of defense only became possible in
1987, when Stats Inc. began sending observers to every game to record
the location and speed of every batted ball.

This play-by-play (P.B.P.) information made it possible to measure
fielding ability much more precisely, by comparing the rates that
players at the same position fielded various types of balls — say soft
pop-ups to right-center field or ground-ball smashes down the
third-base line. By adding up a fielder's performance relative to his
peers on every type of play, analysts can produce fairly reliable
statistical measures of defense.

All of today's best P.B.P. systems agree that Ramírez is the worst
defensive left fielder in baseball, and by a comfortable margin. This
holds true even after accounting for the effect of the Green Monster
wall in left field.

"Manny is at the far end of the as-bad-as-you-can-get-in-the-field
spectrum," said Mitchel Lichtman, who designed one highly regarded
P.B.P. defensive statistic called ultimate zone rating, and who
consulted for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2004 to 2006.

But the experts differ vastly on just how much a single bad left
fielder can hurt a team.

At one extreme, the most conservative estimates suggest that Ramírez's
outfield play last season, when compared with an average left
fielder's, cost the Red Sox 13 runs. That's not good, but not bad
enough to make him meaningfully worse than elite corner outfielders
like the Angels' Vladimir Guerrero, the Yankees' Bobby Abreu and the
Pirates' Jason Bay.

By contrast, Lichtman's system says Ramírez was 32 runs below average
last year, which would make him one of the game's most overrated and
overpaid players. If he was actually that awful, he was no more
valuable than the Mariners' Raúl Ibáńez, the Blue Jays' Reed Johnson
or the Angels' Juan Rivera.

The truth most likely lies in the middle: the average of the P.B.P.
systems' results for Ramírez is 15 to 20 runs below average. That's
enough to take a significant bite out of his value. If his hitting
begins to deteriorate this season (he turns 35 in May), and his base
running remains poor (subtracting another two runs or so), he is
likely to be worth about as much in 2007 as Oakland's up-and-coming
Nick Swisher. In other words, an All-Star, but not a franchise player,
and certainly not worth anywhere near his $20 million salary.

So how can Boston minimize the damage from Ramírez's fielding? One
approach would be to assemble a ground-ball pitching staff, which
would result in fewer balls being hit to him. But Curt Schilling and
Josh Beckett surrender lots of fly balls.

The other solution would be to move Ramírez to designated hitter. That
would require switching the incumbent D.H., David Ortiz, to first
base. Ortiz is even less mobile than Ramírez, and given his
corpulence, the demands of playing the field may substantially
increase his risk of injury. It would also entail moving the current
first baseman, Kevin Youkilis, to left field (which he might not play
any better than Ramírez) or to third base (which would then require
Boston to trade its current third baseman, Mike Lowell, for a left
fielder).

That said, Ortiz does play first base competently in interleague
games. And according to Lichtman, no first baseman, no matter how bad,
could consistently gift Red Sox opponents half as many runs with his
glove as Ramírez does. Moreover, as Ramírez ages, his fielding is
likely to get worse.

Even if Boston's fans are willing to live with another year of Manny
being Manny, the team's fly-ball pitchers may be forced to revolt.

Source: Dan Rosenheck / nytimes.com






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