About our pitching and defense

[Illinest]

I'm going to give props to Tim Williams for this. I think that he did a nice job with the article and there are some relationships that I was never quite able to put together.

There were some trends that I couldn't explain. Why does Neil usually seem to assemble a decent bullpen? Why do our pitchers often perform better than their FIP and why do they often seem to have low BABIP against?

I think that Tim might be on to something and in this case I'll happily promote his site.

Pirates Prospects » First Pitch: Are Jeanmar Gomez and Jeff Locke a Product of a Successful System?

As an aside to this - the article shows UZR rankings for our infield and it's nice to see that Walker and Alvarez are doing as well as they are. Barmes is also doing well and is surprisingly being dragged down by McDonald. Team defense is generally better than average at most positions.

 

[thecrow124]

I thought it was a good article, but calling it a system was a bit of a stretch for me. Most of the defensive players were not drafted and developed in our system, therefore how could it be a system. To me it is more of a philosophy that is being put into action.

However the general premise of the article though seemed pretty solid. There was a follow up article, where the wrtier went further in depth and came up with nothing conclusive to support nor negate what Tim wrote. I can't remember the site but it was a decent read as well.

 

[element1286]

Yea, I think calling it a system is a little much, Alvarez and Walker were not supposed to be good defensive players at their position.

I think they intentionally got Barmes for his defensive value, and I think Gaby Sanchez's defense was taken into consideration.

I think the pitching staff inducing ground balls is by design though. Getting guys who throw on a downward plane is definitely something that shows up in their drafting, and waiver wire pick ups.

All that said, very good writeup.

 

[HammerDown]