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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Freddie Freeman's Defense


Julien Benjamin, Atlanta, May 18, 2013


A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to discuss the topic of Freddie Freeman's defense with the average, non-statistically inclined Braves fans, and came to the realization that many believe that he's a gold glove caliber first baseman. While I like Freeman, I disagree with this, using both the sabermetric numbers, and visual scouting, by watching him in games, be it in person, or on TV. I have come to the following conclusion:

Freddie Freeman is not a GG first baseman, due to a lack of range, and not enough extraordinary catches to overcome that.

How did I come up with this? Well, from visual scouting, I see that due to his height, Freeman has trouble moving to his right to get to balls between him and Uggla. Neither guy has much range in the hole on that side, which is why we see a lot of balls get thru the right side. Now, onto the real fun, the sabermetric angle.....

Freeman vs. Other 1B

You have to keep 2 things in mind: the frequency with which different skills are applied and the fact that players are compared to their peer group (other MLB 1Bs, in this situation).

Let’s agree to say Freeman is really great at “scoops”. FanGraphs shows some evidence for this. He’s made 106 scoops since the start of the 2011 season, which is tied for 2nd with Eric Hosmer of the Royals in the MLB behind Carlos Peña (who has 126!). The average, decent MLB starting 1B (calculated from players who averaged 850 innings or more a year), in that many innings, would have made 78. Freeman is thus 35% better than average, but we’re just talking 12 extra scoops per season—not really all that many.


Now let’s look at the number of plays he’s made on balls “in his zone,” a stat also provided by FanGraphs. Freeman has made 301 (successful) fielding plays the past two years. However, that’s out of 404 balls hit in his zone, meaning he’s only converted 74.5% into outs. The MLB average is 79.5%, which works out to 321 plays per that many opportunities. So Freeman is worth -9 plays per year. So Freeman is “only” about 7% worse than average, but because there are so many more fielding chances than “scoop” chances (about 4 to 1), he’s losing more value from range than he’s gaining from scoops.
In all, Freeman adds 12 extra scoops per season, but takes away 9 plays in his zone, for a total of +3 total “plays” above average. As far as his ability to “make some great diving stops and keep the ball in front of him,” literally every major league 1B can do that. That's what they're trained to do. Rarely, if ever, do 1B let balls fly past them into their dugouts or roll down the RF line.


That’s a very simplistic analysis, ignoring many factors, but you can see how a player could rate poorly overall in these metrics even if he has good hands (which I think Freeman does). A fielding chance is ~4 times more common than a scoop chance, so even a small deficiency in range can more than outweigh a player’s other defensive abilities. Range may be less important at 1B than most other positions, but it’s still the single most important fielding skill, and by a wide margin.


I don’t think Freeman is a terrible fielder, but instead believe that he's close to average. But if we’re all in agreement that he has poor range, there’s not really any chance that he could be above average overall, no matter how good he is at the other aspects of fielding. The most likely scenario is that he’s somewhat below average, with poor range partially but not entirely offset by other factors.


Hope that helps .


P.S. If you want me to take a look at some former GG winners, shoot me a tweet @bravesfanjulien
Next upcoming story, if all goes as planned, will be a story about the struggles of BJ, Heyward, and the rotation; who to worry about?