Defense Matters: A Use Case

Those who frequently use PennantChase.com have come to understand the game far better than the creator. I’ve learned that the only way I can compete is by studying those who have become great at the game. And one thing my studies have taught me is that defense matters far more than I realized.

I recently had a team in a highly competitive All-Time Greats league. This league (ATG 143) had some long-time great owners, including jamin, who’s one of the PC greats.

I typically do okay in this league. I usually sneak into the play-offs, or just miss them. I even won the 2054 championship (which, as of this writing, was four seasons ago).

For whatever reason, my last team in this league was getting destroyed. I focused my draft on getting an elite pitching staff, and wound up with three 94+ ranked starters:

Even my #4 and #5 were solid, with low H/9 numbers. In short, this was an impressive rotation for the All-Time Greats pool, and they even got to pitch in a large park.

But you’ll notice by the hash marks in the screen shot above, both Walsh and Greinke had to go on Slump Buster. We had a dismal start to the season.

You might be asking, how good was your lineup? It was pretty strong:

One important note: Manny Ramirez and his terrible defense started the season playing the outfield, and Jack Clark was my DH. Darin Erstad and his 4+ DWAR was not on my team.

Clark, by the way, was an effective hitter for me: He blasted 13 homers and knocked in 40 runs while posting a .331 OBP over 67 games. Those are great numbers for ATG leagues. Except… we were 29–38 after those 67 games.

We started the season looking okay — after a sluggish beginning, a five-game win streak had boosted us over .500 at 15–14, so I figured the ship had been righted and we were on our way to a competitive season.

But things got worse. We dropped to 19–21 and then 23–32 after 55 games. The facts were in: This was a bad team.

At this point, I decided it was worth making a drastic change. I picked up Erstad and put him into CF, and benched the slugging Clark. After making that move, my team went 61–34.

That’s right. From nine games under to 27 games over with a final record of 90–72, good enough for a wild card spot. We won the wild card game, and then gave a good scare to a team with over 100 wins, losing in the semi-finals in six games.

Okay, so how much of a difference did that one move really make?

Well, there’s no question the pitching staff got better. The team’s ERA before Erstad was 4.27, and dropped almost a full point to 3.33 in the games after he joined the lineup.

Erstad made 60 plus plays (meaning he stole 60 hits from the opposition) over 95 games. That’s nearly two plays every three games. In games where Erstad robbed a hit, my team won nearly 67% of the time. In games where Erstad robbed more than one hit (16 games) my team won 75% of the time.

Don’t forget, Manny Ramirez was removed from the field, where he had already made seven negative plays. So if you figure Manny would have likely made 10 more negative plays, the net positive was 70 plays over the last 95 games — and that doesn’t even factor in errors.

Okay, but, that alone can’t explain the turnaround, right?

True. My offensive woke up late in the season, even with the meager Erstad replacing the robust Clark. Erstad truly did suck at the plate, hitting just two homers and posting a .262 OBP. But the team as a whole scored 4.83 runs per game after Erstad joined the lineup, compared to 4.13 runs before he joined.

There’s no doubt the improved pitching and hitting contributed to the massive turnaround. But consider this: the pitching was so good in the final 95 games that the team only lost 11 times if my offensive scored at least three runs. In the first 67 games, we lost 20 times in games my offense scored three or more.

So I think the morale of the story is this: defensive definitely matters. Don’t be afraid to bench that slugger for a wizard with the glove.