Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Alcides Escobar -- the people (of Kansas City) have spoken!

Among A.L. short stops, Brad Miller is having the best year in combined hitting/fielding. Bogaerts and Iglesias are both having better years than Escobar, too.

More than 600 million "votes" were cast this year, almost twice as many as the highest in past years (2008 or so). I suppose it's good PR, but even as a kid I thought voting the openers was stupid. OK, vote to get the guy in the game, but the openers should be the best, not the most popular.

Is Clown really complaining about fans' All-Star voting? Considering his ridiculous earlier posts showing his ignorance of Henry James, I'm not surprised. All-Star voting is for all fans, not just the well-informed. So anyone who knows baseball knows the voting will yield some poor results, without getting worked up about it. That's why the managers and players get to even it out by selecting. When they mess up is when to actually make a fuss.

Brad Miller? Hell I'm a Mariners fan and we don't even think he should be the starting SS for US. Taylor is better defensively

As an A.L. short stop, Miller is:

1st in total zone runs
3rd in range factor
5th in range factor per game
5th in double plays turned

AND as a hitter he has an OPS+ of 112 after 270 PA

Impressive numbers for sure. But either there is something wrong with this "zone rating" or I don't know what I'm looking at. I watch this team every day and to my eyes this is not a good defensive ballplayer. He can hit though

Miller is hardly an all-star shortstop. He is 6th in the league with an unimpressive .970 fielding percentage. He is 8th in the league in Out of Zone plays made. And is only 7th in ErrR (Error runs). So his defense has hardly been remarkable.

And you couple that with a dismal .240/.314/417 line (for a lowly .731 OPS) and you don't have an AL all-star SS.

STEVE F wrote:Impressive numbers for sure. But either there is something wrong with this "zone rating" or I don't know what I'm looking at.

The three "counting" stats are especially good, since he's a distant 10th in total innings as a shortstop. Range factor means he gets to a lot of batted balls, which might (and probably does) account for his fairly high error rate (only 7th among the top 10 innings-played SS in fielding pct. with 8 errors so far) -- he makes errors on balls other guys never reach at all, and which therefore go as singles not errors.

Next year's set should show him as a 2e20 or thereabouts.

ClowntimeIsOver wrote: -- he makes errors on balls other guys never reach at all, and which therefore go as singles not errors.

Actually, that's not really true. As I noted above, Miller is 8th in the league in Out of Zone plays made, so he is not actually getting to that many more balls than other shortstops. Also, Iglesias and Bogaerts have better fielding percentages than Miller. However, that didn't keep them from making less errors than Miller, whose errors did not mostly come from great range, but from barely above-average hands and footwork.

while I'm at it ...

although only third in RC/27 among AL SS (behind the aforementioned Bogaerts and Iglesias, neither of whom has better fielding stats), Miller ECLIPSES in Secondary Average ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_average ) :

1 Brad Miller .310
2 Marcus Semien .225
3 Asdrubal Cabrera .198
4 Xander Bogaerts .176
5 Elvis Andrus .175
6 Didi Gregorius .159
7 Jose Iglesias .151
8 Erick Aybar .133
9 Alcides Escobar .133
10 Alexei Ramirez .128

ClowntimeIsOver wrote:although only third in RC/27 among AL SS (behind the aforementioned Bogaerts and Iglesias, neither of whom has better fielding stats)

That's funny, Bogaerts and Iglesias both have superior fielding pcts to Miller's. They both have better UZR (ultimate zone) ratings better than Miller. They both have made less errors than Miller. They have better ErrR (error runs) ratings than Miller. They both have better Def. ratings than Miller. Bogaerts has a superior OoZ (out of zone) rating than Miller, and Iglesias has a better RangeRating than Miller.

So, I think it's safe to say Bogaerts and Iglesias have better fielding stats than Miller.

Miller ECLIPSES in Secondary Average ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_average )

And Miller may ECLIPSE in secondary average, but secondary average is just a compensatory stat to better evaluate what a player's batting average doesn't. It certainly doesn't override a player's poor OBP or slugging percentage, and--as I noted earlier--both of Miller's are poor, as he has an anemic line of .240/.314/417 line (for a lowly .731 OPS). When compared to Bogaert's line of .302/.339/.414 and Iglesias' of line of .323/.374/.384, it's clear those shortstops have been superior offensively as well.

So, despite his nice secondary average, Brad Miller is still not an all-star-caliber shortstop.