Pasta Diving

A lot of the MVP award comes down to the question of Derek Jeter’s defense. The Baseball Prospectus claims that his defense has improved from wretched to average, and if that’s the case then I think he was unquestionably been the MVP. But. I’ve never been very compelled by explanations of the BP defensive methodology. So what do the other numbers say? I don’t have my Hardball Times annual yet, so I can’t check John Dewan’s numbers. But Dave Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range has him as one of the worst defensive shortstops in baseball. Win Shares has him as a poor shortstop (remember that WS is a counting stat. There’s no adjustment for playing time and you get credit for just showing up at short, but Jeter ranks about even with Bobby Crosby–who played 96 games.) Zone Rating ranks him as a terrible shortstop. So, basically, I don’t buy the Prospectus numbers. Every metric showed Jeter as a bad shortstop before 2004, and it’s very unusual for a player to suddenly show vastly improved range at his age. I see him play a lot, of course, and if he’s added a lot of range it’s not visible to the naked eye. And no other metric picks up what the BP one does. The overwhelmingly likely conclusion is that the BP numbers are anomalous, and Jeter is still the good-hit no-range shortstop he’s always been.

So the more I think about it, the more I think I was wrong to say that Jeter was probably screwed in the MVP vote. We just don’t know enough about measuring defense to be sure, but if I had a vote today I’d vote Mauer #1, Jeter #2. It’s not like he can be that broken up about losing anyway.