beckdawg
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So, a lot is made of Heyward and how people over value his defense. I had a general idea of how fWAR was calculated but I never dived fully into it and I thought this would be a fun reason to do so. I'm using fWAR specifically and that's important to note because it differs from bWAR. If you're curious as to the differences between the two they can be found here. Simply put though, I don't like bWAR(baseball reference) because you have cases like Darwin Barney in 2012 where fWAR gave him 2.4 and bWAR gave him 4.6. 2 WAR is generally considered around an average player. Put in more concrete terms, bWAR said Barney was the #31 hitter(just behind Prince Fielder) in 2012 while fWAR put him as the #85 hitter. So, think you can see why i'm a bit dubious on bWAR.
Before we begin I am going to link this image. This is the complicated diagram as to how they come up with fWAR. Think the best way to look at this is by talking about it functionally with parts. There's really 6 main components, Batting, Base Running, Replacement, League, Positional and Fielding. For the sake of all this I'm going to ignore Replacement as it's really not that interesting. It's essentially just what a AAA player would give you. I'm also going to ignore League. In essence they are just normalizing the various parts for NL/AL so that you care comparing apples to apples. And finally, I'm also going to ignore Positional as it's just a way for adjusting defensive value for a position because obviously a good CF has far more value than a good LF. That plus, all 3 of those aren't really things that change player to player based on skill. Basically, if you play the same number of innings(defense) and PAs(offense) at the same position they should as far as I'm aware be identical.
Since defense is the name of the game here, let's start with Fielding. It also happens to be one of the easier to understand. For non-catchers, this is simply UZR. For catcher's it's rSB which represents runs above average you save in the run game and RPP which represents the runs above average you save blocking pitches. Framing isn't a part which I suppose could be an argument that fWAR undervalues C's but that's sort of outside this discussion. UZR for those who are curious is described in detail here. The short version is basically it measures balls that are in a players zone that they get to as well as balls outside their zone. The fewer issues they have in their zone the better. The more plays they make outside their zone the better. As this pertains to Heyward, last season he had an URZ of 20.2 meaning that this stat thinks he saved 20.2 runs more than an average RF. He also had an UZR of 2.3 in CF. Another way of measuring is defensive runs saved or DRS. That puts him at 22 and 2 respectively. So, there's some variation in the various defensive measures but they are both within range.
Now, how does that factor into WAR? Well the last step is converting runs both saved defensively and produced offensively into WAR. This is done by dividing them by the runs/win factor. Rule of thumb is that's around 10 but year to year that can vary slightly depending on a number of factors. For the sake of this exercise, I'm just going to use 2015 numbers. And in 2015, the r/win was 9.5. So, with all of that we can calculate exactly how much of Heyward's value was in his defense. To get there you add Positional(-6.2) to Fielding(22.6) or 16.4 and divide that by 9.5 and you come up with basically 1.73.
The second area I want to look at is base running. That's essentially made up of 4 numbers. SB and CS become wSB which is your runs produced by stolen bases/caught stealing above average. You also have UBR and wGDP. The wGDP is just runs produced(or not produced) by grounding into a double play above average. UBR is likewise just a measure of your base running above average. In other words, your ability to take an extra base on a hit and such. Those four pieces tie into base running runs. Last season, Heyward had a 3.1 UBR, 0.8 wGDP, and 3.1 wSB. This gave him a base running runs of 7.0. Or put another way, he was decently good at extending hits an extra base and stealing. That gives us a WAR of 0.74.
The last component is batting. It's far more complicated as there's more components. So, I'm going to be slightly more generic in my description here. The first main component is wOBA which weighted on base average. Rather than spend a ton of time talking about that here I'll just link this for those who care how it's calculated. Suffice to say it's basically an attempt to balance OBP. With wOBA you feed that with a wOBA scale and league wOBA which becomes wRAA or weighted runs above average. Again to save time here's a more detailed way of how that's calculated. With wRAA, that feeds into batting runs with park factors, league runs/plate appearance, and AL/NL non-pitcher wRC/PA. In the case of Heyward, he had a batting runs of 14.6 which when calculated in WAR is 1.5 WAR.
So, how does this all this factor into Heyward. Fangraphs gave Heyward a fWAR of 6.0. The breakdown of where that comes from are the following
Batting runs - 1.5 WAR
Base running - 0.74 WAR
Replacement level(20 runs per 600 PAs) - 1.87 WAR
League - 0.12 WAR
Positional adjustment - negative 0.65 WAR
Fielding - 2.38 WAR
Or put another way, even without Heyward's defense fangraphs would have him at a 3.58 fWAR player. On his offense(hitting plus base running) alone fangraphs has Heyward as the #29 hitter one spot ahead of David Ortiz. The obvious question is why the hell that is for someone who looks like a meh offensive player. I could get down to the nitty gritty numbers but that's not all that interesting. The shorter version is this. Heyward has a wOBA of .346 and Ortiz a wOBA of .379. This gave each batting runs of 14.6 for Heyward vs Ortiz's 26.7. However, Ortiz' has a negative base running of -5.2 and Heywards 7.0.
Now, whether or not you agree is obviously open for debate. Are Heyward's 23 steals and better base running overall enough to offset the difference of 24 HRs and 48 RBIs? I've always felt this isn't really the right question to ask because Heyward has a different job as a hitter than Ortiz does. It's a bit like comparing Derek Jeter to Arod. Jeter never hit more than 24 HRs and never drove in more than 102 runs. In fact, he was only over 80 RBI's 3 times(97 in 2006, 102 in 1999, and 84 in 1998). Jeter average roughly 19 HRs a season. However, I don't think any one would argue that Jeter wasn't a key member of all of those Yankee championship teams with his bat. And from 22-25 Heyward has actually hit more HR than Jeter.
Ultimately, my take away here is Heyward is pretty good at most things and great defensively. That means he racks up a lot of value quietly.
Before we begin I am going to link this image. This is the complicated diagram as to how they come up with fWAR. Think the best way to look at this is by talking about it functionally with parts. There's really 6 main components, Batting, Base Running, Replacement, League, Positional and Fielding. For the sake of all this I'm going to ignore Replacement as it's really not that interesting. It's essentially just what a AAA player would give you. I'm also going to ignore League. In essence they are just normalizing the various parts for NL/AL so that you care comparing apples to apples. And finally, I'm also going to ignore Positional as it's just a way for adjusting defensive value for a position because obviously a good CF has far more value than a good LF. That plus, all 3 of those aren't really things that change player to player based on skill. Basically, if you play the same number of innings(defense) and PAs(offense) at the same position they should as far as I'm aware be identical.
Since defense is the name of the game here, let's start with Fielding. It also happens to be one of the easier to understand. For non-catchers, this is simply UZR. For catcher's it's rSB which represents runs above average you save in the run game and RPP which represents the runs above average you save blocking pitches. Framing isn't a part which I suppose could be an argument that fWAR undervalues C's but that's sort of outside this discussion. UZR for those who are curious is described in detail here. The short version is basically it measures balls that are in a players zone that they get to as well as balls outside their zone. The fewer issues they have in their zone the better. The more plays they make outside their zone the better. As this pertains to Heyward, last season he had an URZ of 20.2 meaning that this stat thinks he saved 20.2 runs more than an average RF. He also had an UZR of 2.3 in CF. Another way of measuring is defensive runs saved or DRS. That puts him at 22 and 2 respectively. So, there's some variation in the various defensive measures but they are both within range.
Now, how does that factor into WAR? Well the last step is converting runs both saved defensively and produced offensively into WAR. This is done by dividing them by the runs/win factor. Rule of thumb is that's around 10 but year to year that can vary slightly depending on a number of factors. For the sake of this exercise, I'm just going to use 2015 numbers. And in 2015, the r/win was 9.5. So, with all of that we can calculate exactly how much of Heyward's value was in his defense. To get there you add Positional(-6.2) to Fielding(22.6) or 16.4 and divide that by 9.5 and you come up with basically 1.73.
The second area I want to look at is base running. That's essentially made up of 4 numbers. SB and CS become wSB which is your runs produced by stolen bases/caught stealing above average. You also have UBR and wGDP. The wGDP is just runs produced(or not produced) by grounding into a double play above average. UBR is likewise just a measure of your base running above average. In other words, your ability to take an extra base on a hit and such. Those four pieces tie into base running runs. Last season, Heyward had a 3.1 UBR, 0.8 wGDP, and 3.1 wSB. This gave him a base running runs of 7.0. Or put another way, he was decently good at extending hits an extra base and stealing. That gives us a WAR of 0.74.
The last component is batting. It's far more complicated as there's more components. So, I'm going to be slightly more generic in my description here. The first main component is wOBA which weighted on base average. Rather than spend a ton of time talking about that here I'll just link this for those who care how it's calculated. Suffice to say it's basically an attempt to balance OBP. With wOBA you feed that with a wOBA scale and league wOBA which becomes wRAA or weighted runs above average. Again to save time here's a more detailed way of how that's calculated. With wRAA, that feeds into batting runs with park factors, league runs/plate appearance, and AL/NL non-pitcher wRC/PA. In the case of Heyward, he had a batting runs of 14.6 which when calculated in WAR is 1.5 WAR.
So, how does this all this factor into Heyward. Fangraphs gave Heyward a fWAR of 6.0. The breakdown of where that comes from are the following
Batting runs - 1.5 WAR
Base running - 0.74 WAR
Replacement level(20 runs per 600 PAs) - 1.87 WAR
League - 0.12 WAR
Positional adjustment - negative 0.65 WAR
Fielding - 2.38 WAR
Or put another way, even without Heyward's defense fangraphs would have him at a 3.58 fWAR player. On his offense(hitting plus base running) alone fangraphs has Heyward as the #29 hitter one spot ahead of David Ortiz. The obvious question is why the hell that is for someone who looks like a meh offensive player. I could get down to the nitty gritty numbers but that's not all that interesting. The shorter version is this. Heyward has a wOBA of .346 and Ortiz a wOBA of .379. This gave each batting runs of 14.6 for Heyward vs Ortiz's 26.7. However, Ortiz' has a negative base running of -5.2 and Heywards 7.0.
Now, whether or not you agree is obviously open for debate. Are Heyward's 23 steals and better base running overall enough to offset the difference of 24 HRs and 48 RBIs? I've always felt this isn't really the right question to ask because Heyward has a different job as a hitter than Ortiz does. It's a bit like comparing Derek Jeter to Arod. Jeter never hit more than 24 HRs and never drove in more than 102 runs. In fact, he was only over 80 RBI's 3 times(97 in 2006, 102 in 1999, and 84 in 1998). Jeter average roughly 19 HRs a season. However, I don't think any one would argue that Jeter wasn't a key member of all of those Yankee championship teams with his bat. And from 22-25 Heyward has actually hit more HR than Jeter.
Ultimately, my take away here is Heyward is pretty good at most things and great defensively. That means he racks up a lot of value quietly.
I personally think Theo and Jed are just trying to drive up Heyward's value to make someone overpay for him. I'm ok if we sign him (if the contract is at least a little reasonable) and I'm ok if we don't. If we don't I wouldn't mind seeing Fowler back. He could lead off when Zobrist didn't.
