In Defense of Dee Doubters
A Stat nerd pleads his case
The history of the Miami Marlins is built upon controversy. The ball park deal, the fire sale, Ozzie’s Castro comments, and countless roster moves have split the fan base into squabbling camps. It’s hard to think of a player that embodies that spirit more than Dee Gordon. Ever since he joined the roster analytic trusting fans, and their more traditional brethren have been at each other’s throats over his value. I am one of those more analytical fans, and I’d like to write a little bit about why, as Dee would say, I am a hater.
First off, there is no part to this that is in any way personal. I don’t know Dee from Adam but everything I’ve heard about his personality has been overwhelmingly positive.
Secondly, the problems with his game that I am about to describe are not necessarily his fault. Advanced Stats in many ways are cold and heartless, they exist primarily to judge players, not to help them. If I were to explain to Dee the problems with his game, and he hypothetically acknowledged them, he would be able to do very little about it. This is because advanced stats are geared primarily towards GMs. Player focused stats are beginning to creep into the market, but for now they, are small and underdeveloped. And now with no more ado the problems with Dee Gordon the baseball player.
- He doesn’t hit for any power.
You probably want to yell at me right now but just give me a second. There are two main ways to produce value at the plate, you can either hit for power or get on base at a high clip. The great players do both, but for a mortal to be considered productive doing just one is sufficient. Gordon has hit nine home-runs over 2317 plate appearances, his career .ISO (SLG% minus AVG%) is .075. To put that into perspective, a good comparison for Dee at his best is teammate Ichiro. The future Hall of Famer has a career .ISO of .091, a significant improvement even after being dragged down by his anemic few seasons. All that being said, lacking power matters but by itself isn’t the end of the world, the truly big issue is how it impacts Dee’s ability to get on base.
2. He never walks.
If you aren’t going to hit for power and you want to be valuable as a hitter, you have to be an on base guy. Unfortunately without power, pitchers aren’t afraid to come in the zone, even on hitters counts. In 2015 (2016 provides too small a sample size for any analysis) 47.0% of all pitches thrown to Gordon were in the strike zone, the 20th highest rate in the majors. In addition, he swung at 50.5% which was 34th among hitters. All of this compounds to stick Dee with a 4.8% career walk rate, 3.8% in 2015. As I said earlier, there probably isn’t much Dee can do to change this, if he became more patient and worked deeper counts odds are it would only result in more strikeouts. It’s unfortunate, but even with his talent for contact hitting, a walk rate that low puts a serious cap on his value. Going back to 2015 for example we can see that even though he led the National League in Batting average, he fell all the way to 17th in .OBP, the stat that really matters.
3. He gets caught stealing far too often.
Dee Gordon’s speed is what he’s known for, to quote an Adam Sandler movie “he’s so fast he makes fast people look not fast”. The problem is his speed on the base paths seems to be more exciting than actually valuable. Again, going back to 2015, Dee led the majors in stolen bases with 58. On the flip side he also was the MLB leader in being caught stealing with 20, that makes for a success rate of 74.35%. Statistically if a player succeeds on less than 76% of stolen base attempts, they are hurting their team’s probability of winning. I don’t know exactly why he gets caught so often, it likely has something to do with his ability to read the pitcher. Base stealing has a lot more to do with instinct than one would think. In 2013, Jose Molina stole 11 bases and was only caught twice. It is possible that Dee is just running too often and would benefit from Donny being more liberally giving the red light, but until then, his running is not a true part of his value. At least in terms of stealing, he’s still fast enough to be a good overall base runner by taking extra bases on hits.
All of those complaints aside, Dee Gordon has been a productive player while on the field for the Marlins. In 2015, his best season, he produced 4.7 WAR, well above the usual league average of 2.0. In 2016, despite limited time, he seemed on pace to eclipse 2.0 for the third straight season. He does this through a combination of high batting average on balls in play (BABIP) where his speed is a contributing factor, and exceptional defense at second base. Both of those skill sets are difficult to sustain, and both tend to age very poorly, but until they actually do, he’s a valuable player to have on the team.
I hope that goes some way to clarifying the statistical communities problem with Dee Gordon. As a group, we are all about probability and a skill set like Dee’s is never likely to be productive. Still, he’s beaten the odds to this point and I hope he continues to do so, but beating the odds does not change them.
