In the first inning of today’s game, 2 outs, Carlos Quentin singles up the middle, just a bit to the left of the 2nd base bag. Len immediately said as Edmonds is picking it up, “it got past Theriot.” The funny thing about it was that It was about a good 1 to 2 seconds after the ball got into the outfield that Ryan Theriot came into the screen. The replay showed Theriot to be 4.5 steps away from making the play. Why am I mentioning this? Because saying “it got past” somebody implies that the fielder was in the vicinity and maybe, just maybe, would make the play if it happened again. But that’s not what happened on this play.
Saying “it got past Theriot” on that grounder would have been the same thing as Len saying “it got over the left fielder’s head” on a ball hit 575 into left field. Like when Glenallen Hill hit one on the roof across the street. “It got over the left fielder’s head.” It didn’t get past Theriot. He was nowhere near it. Not even in the screen. Maybe not in the same area code. I don’t know. I couldn’t see him for awhile. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t even within Ryan Theriot diving range (RTDR), which is any ball hit within 37 feet of him. Any chance to get some dirt on his uniform is usually not missed by our scrappy little shortstop. So the fact it wasn’t even in RTDR makes Len’s statement just plain silly. Do home runs also get past Ryan Theriot?
Speaking of Ryan Theriot and defense, or, if you will, Ryan Theriot and fill in the blank because what he’s doing ain’t defense. I’m sorry if I initially implied he did play defense. Won’t happen again.
As of today, Ryan Theriot ranks 12th out of 20 qualified shortstops(ESPN has 20) in Range Factor and dead last in Zone Rating. These are pretty basic defensive stats and have been improved upon quite a bit.
RZR (Revised Zone Rating) is a pretty good defensive stat. Theriot ranks 16th out of 22 (THT has 22) in RZR at .817. Since RZR only covers a specific zone and some players make many plays out of the zone, we have OOZ (Out of Zone), which counts the numbers of plays made outside the zone. Theriot ranks 21st out of 22 in OOZ with only 13 plays. Average is about 22.
On June 8th, Colin took this same data (it’s changed somewhat over 2 weeks of course), but created a plus/minus system of plays made above or below average and then converted it to runs. Theriot’s RZR at the time was .822 so he’s gotten worse in the last 2 weeks and he had made 13 OOZ plays as of June 8th, which he still has today. His defense has gotten worse.
When Colin published his data, he was more than 3 plays worse than average for in zone plays, 6.5 below average in OOZ plays, and total plays combined -9.68 above the average shortstop. Knowing what we know about the value of the out, in specific run value terms, Colin then calculated Runs in +/- fashion as well. Theriot was -7.29 runs above average. Ballpark guess at this point would put him at about -8.00 runs, perhaps a bit more. So he’s essentially on pace to cost this team about 18 runs on defense. EIGHTEEN!!!!
Earlier in the week, one of my favorites, Wrigleyville23, argued that we should ban ”a triple short of the cycle” from our vocabulary. It’s now my turn to propose we ban “it got past Theriot.”
Lots of shit gets past Theriot. We don’t need to point it out every time. In fact, I think we should just assume it always gets past Theriot and highlight when it doesn’t. “It didn’t get past Theriot. Holy shit! Did you see that Bob? It didn’t get past Theriot. Wake the fuck up. You may never see this again.”
Sadly, what likely to follow that is the following: “The runner beat the throw from Theriot.” We’ll work on that one later. One thing at a time.
1. — Jun 21, 2008 @ 03:20 PM
wow, two slams on theriot in one day, you’re gonna piss some crazies off.