Does Dayton listen to his stat guys?On the recommendation of a co-worker, I listened to Dayton Moore's interview yesterday morning on the Border Patrol. There are a lot of things there that I could pick apart, but I've already said my piece on the Betancourt trade. I do, however, want to respond to Dayton's comments about defensive statistics. First off, he claimed to not "understand" the newer metrics. Some have taken that to mean that these new-fangled stat thingies are over Moore's head. That's simply not the case. Look, Dayton Moore is an extremely smart individual. I have had multiple extended conversations with him, with no one else in the room and off the record. I can and will vouch for his intelligence and, to paraphrase Bobby Knight, Moore forgets more about baseball every day than I will probably ever know. But even smart people have holes in their knowledge and it's about time that Dayton Moore recognizes his shortcomings as a big-league general manager. And I still believe that he can become a very good one. He may be already -- until we know how his drafts have panned out, we won't know for sure.
Lest you think I'm contradicting myself here, let me reiterate that just because I still believe in Moore's potential doesn't mean that I am now defending moves that I have previously criticized. I'm certainly not backtracking on my condemnation of the Yuniesky Betancourt deal. I have a 99% certainty that Betancourt will never pan out to be an above-average big-league shortstop. Yes, the numbers are sometimes wrong, or at least misleading when read out of context. But they are rarely that wrong, no matter how you spin the context wheel.
Moore clearly does not have an adequate grasp of the statistical side of the game. It's not a question of intelligence or comprehension -- it's a question of philosophy. He was reared in the baseball community to function in a certain way and even though he openly invites new ideas and opinions in his organization, I am certain that he does not give the objective side of the game the weight it deserves. He said in the aforementioned interview that he has two sabermetricians on staff. I don't know who these people are. Really, I don't. Several e-mailers have asked me that question. A couple of have even accused me of being one of them. (To which I say again: I am a writer who has a fondness for and who uses a lot of statistics. I am not a statistician, sabermetrician or any other kind of -ician.)
Having stat guys on your staff is fine, but that and 75 cents will get you a candy bar if you don't believe what they tell you. Either his stat people are woefully incompetent or Moore isn't giving the statistical side of the game its due. Otherwise, there is no way in hell he makes the Betancourt trade. As Rany Jazeryli has pointed out, there are probably 10 shortstops in Class AAA right now better than Betancourt. If you're willing to part with a quality prospect like Dan Cortes, then surely you could have landed one of those. That's a stopgap solution that makes sense and costs you zero in terms of payroll flexibility. (This of course assumes that the Royals soured on Cortes as a prospect.)
Besides, having two sabermetricians is not enough. The Royals should have a fully-staffed statistical research and analysis department. There should be at least four people in that department: one specialist each in hitting, pitching and fielding. Plus one supervisor that not only directs the tasks of his underlings, but represents and translates the findings of the staff at internal meetings with Moore and his staff. He's got to be an aggressive sort, willing to go toe-to-toe with the so-called baseball lifers.
Anyway, back to Moore's comments about defensive statistics. He expressed concern about the shortcomings of the metrics, but those shortcomings are overblown. He mentioned positioning (twice), speed of the batted ball and where pitchers throw the ball. The first and the last of those items is true. The two best metrics out there right now (UZR and Plus/Minus), don't account for these things. The second item is accounted for.
On positioning -- I find it hard to believe that it varies all that much from team to team. Because URZ and Plus/Minus measure players relative to each other, any errors related to positioning would be present for all players. And as for pitch location .... he's saying that when a pitcher misses his location, then it crosses up the defense. I just don't buy that as a significant shortcoming in defensive analysis. For one, it flies in the face of what research has told us about how much control pitchers really have over batted balls in play.
Baseball Info Solutions has a staff of video analysts whose job is to methodically chart every single batted ball in every single big-league game. No scout puts that much time and effort into evaluating defense. Are these systems absolutely perfect? No, but they are as good as we can get right now given available technology and they are giving us better information on defense than at any point in the history of baseball. It's virtually impossible that advanced defensive analysis is wrong about Yuniesky Betancourt. There is a consensus among all the different systems that says he's among the worst, if not the worst, defensive shortstop in the game. And he is trending downward. To declare Betancourt as a plus defender simply is not within the margin of error for these systems.
Someone should have convinced Moore of that fact.
I doubt this organization cares one iota what you, me or any other fan or blogger thinks. Glass doesn't care to the point that he doesn't show up to games in his own park, most likely because he doesn't want to hear the inevitable grief he would/should endure for putting this franchise in this mess to begin with. This situation is almost impossible to fix even WITH money. But it ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT be fixed without money. Glass got his millions in stadium upgrades and promptly disappeared. I still, for the life of me, can not understand how this local media can't see through this snakeoil salesman.
Anyway, I digress. the answer to your question on why he doesn't have a crew of statiticians is simple and the answer to why so many other things about this organization are in disaray. Money (or lack thereof). However, Moore should have had the foresight to demand this component when he negotiated his deal with Glass. You appear to be correct that Moore simply does not put as much stock in this component as he should. I don't get wrapped up in the statistics but having an engineering background, I completely acknowledge its worth in evaluation of talent (especially on the Major League level). Hopefully this episode will convince Moore that more effort needs to be applied in this area. I am rooting for Moore to succeed because I do believe he's on the right track. However, I have grave doubts, with David Glass's leadership, that Moore will survive to see the fruits of his labor.