Inspired by the folks over at Beyond the Box Score, I thought I would throw up a graph today. Using the numbers at Fangraphs, here are the win values by season for five Pirate starters who have been in the majors for at least a few years now. These numbers include both offense and defense, and account for positional difficulty.
Please note that catcher defense is not included, which would affect Ryan Doumit’s value a bit. Off the top of my head, I think John Dewan valued Doumit at -2 runs (or -0.2 wins) in 2008 in his most recent volume of The Fielding Bible. I have not gone through his methodology yet, but keep that in mind.
I included the 2005-2008 seasons.
After a quick glance at this graph, I had a few thoughts.
As seen in yesterday’s game (or was it Wed?….I’ve been on travel for work), he can suddenly lose control. If not for that latter problem, I’d LOVE to see him in Pgh. Otherwise, he seems highly unreliable because of that.
Yeah, I would agree that Doumit is worse than -2. I am looking forward to reading Dewann’s methods of determining catcher defensive value. I think he uses an adjusted CERA and adjusted SB/CS numbers. I haven’t had a chance to look at it closely yet.
Good point about trends. We probably won’t see McLouth and Doumit turning into 10-win players by 2011.
Good stuff, Matt. From what I’ve seen, Doumit is more in the -5 to -10 run range as a defensive catcher.
Also, I’d like to discourage looking at trends (like McLouth will continue to get better) to predict the future and instead look at a an average of the past few seasons and adjust for age.