The wizard of Oz
 

I just recently got Lee's Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia and decided to put it to use. I was wondering what effect defense has on a pitchers era, and also about how much Ozzie Smith's defence helped his pitchers. So I decided to figure out the pitching stats for pitchers that pitched with Ozzie Smith in the field and also somewhere else. So, I divided each pitcher's stats into either with ozzie or without ozzie categories. Then I added up the totals of wins, losses, innings, runs, and earned runs. Since Ozzie played only half of the season in the seasons from 94-96 I discounted any pitching stats for a St. Louis pitcher during those years since it didn't fit in either category. I think the results speak for themselves. This took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Without ozzie- 3766 wins, 3887 losses, 64196.6 innings, 30978 runs allowed, 27222 earned runs

This yields 4.343 runs per nine innings and 3.816 earned runs per nine innigs.

With ozzie- 1279 wins, 1254 losses, 27160.7 innings pitched, 10224 runs allowed, 9172 earned runs

This yeilds 3.388 runs per nine innings and 3.039 earned runs per nine innings pitched.

With this information i think it is safe to say that Ozzie saved his team ATLEAST 100 runs per season over the average shortstop. I hope the big stick no defense lovers will finally realize the prowess of the Great OZ.

Oh, no! Not ANOTHER Ozzie thread....haven't we beaten that into submission??

This is kinda new - don't think we've had one just about Ozzie, by himself. Usually, it's been v. Omar or as part of a group of questionable HOFers.

Interesting methodology. Maybe what you really measured was Tommy Herr's contributions. Just kidding.

Haha, I know thats a joke, but I did think about the defensive contributions of his teamates, but I figured that Ozzie's career was long enough to play with many different players and he also played for the padres for four years.

i think with that kind of sample size, while you may not be making precise measurements, it's safe to say his defense saved his teams MANY MANY runs over the replacement players...

The Wizard of Oz
 

My reading of the statistical evidence is that Ozzie saved 25 to 30 runs a year compared to the average defensive shortstop (compared to having Dave Kingman or Cecil Fielder play shortstop, Oz probably saved 100 or more runs per year, but that comparison would be the same as not having anyone cover the position). Ozzie was, predicated mostly on his defensive ability, a HOF player - one who should have gotten in on his 4th or 5th time on the ballot. I doubt that anyone in his right mind would have accepted Ozzie in exchange for Jim Rice, Ron Santo or Ted Simmons, three players who should have been admitted long before even thinking about admitting Ozzie

I don't see how ,if you take those stats to be indicative of Ozzie's defensive contributions, you come up with 25 to 30 runs per year. The difference in runs per game for pitchers playing without ozzie and when they played with ozzie was .955. Multiply that by 160 games you get 152.8 runs. Now that seems like a higher number than what he actually saved, but it does show that it was atleast around 100 runs a season.

Did you account or control for other variables?

well the only thing that changed was whether or not the pitcher was pitching with ozzie. Granted there could be luck factors that influence the stats one way or another, such as the teams around ozzie during his playing times in san diego and st. louis being exceptional defensively during his entire career, or the pitching coaches being exceptional, or just good luck, but I think the pool of years was big enough though to eliminate mostly those factors.

That's not valid at all. There are way too many factors in changing parks, leagues and supporting cast. Even using the 1977 Padres vs. the 1978 Padres isn't valid.

Case in point: Randy Jones in 1977 was injured most of the year, and like most pitchers tried to pitch through it. He recovered in 1978. That's not a function of Billy Almon vs. Ozzie, that's soley a function of Randy Jones' health.

Bob Owchinko and Bob Shirley were rookie starters in 1977 thrown to the fire for the first time. You'd expect them to be better in 1978, and Owchinko was. Shirley was not, relative to the league. Roger Craig was the manager in 1978 and he's good with pitchers.

They also decided to stop screwing around with D'Acquisto as a starter and moved him to the pen, and he improved greatly when that happened.

And the league ERA decreased from 3.56 to 3.33.

In fact, the range for shortstops on the Padres in 1977 was better than 1978.

This is great. It's like a peer review in an academic journal. If anything can make it out of this forum unscathed, it will be safe for public consumption.

So long as we all keep it civil. I've been involved on both sides of peer reviews, and :atd: (the picture, not the "agree to disagree" part) was often a better image of the process.

I agree with the fact that players can get better or worse independent of the defense. But as there are also players that were brought in that played better than before, there are also aging veterans that were brought in that were on the decline of their career that just could not pitch as well as they had done earlier, eg Rollie Fingers or Rick Wise or Dan Quisenberry or Eric Rasmussen, or young players that start their career with Ozzie then move elsewhere to pitch well, eg Mike Armstrong. So, with equal defence, these pitchers' stats should cumulatively be about equal.

And, yes, the league ERA changed, but each year stats where taken from both pitchers with ozzie and without, and so the league era difference would not be a factor, because both the stats are taken over the same time period.

If you move a pitcher from the NL to AL (or vice versa) in that era, there's a significant difference in ERA. Trotting Gaylord over from Texas to San Diego helped Gaylord a great deal, beacuse the offense declined AND the league ERA was much lower in the NL.

A fly ball pitcher won't get the same benefit as a ground ball pitcher.

What are the "with / withouts" for say Garry Templeton, or Larry Bowa, or Shawon Dunston?

Do you pin the improvement of the '79 Pirates pitching over '78 on Tim Foli? How about the better pitching results of the '88 Expos. Did Luis Rivera cause those runs to be saved?

I just can't buy that Ozzie affected 100 runs or more in a season. I think it is more like 20 or 30.

And with that, let's move it along....