Posted by Bill Baer on Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 1:55 am

As a devoted fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, I am very much enjoying the hot start to the 2009 season for Raul Ibanez. He’s been incredible at the plate and much better than expected in the field. According to FanGraphs, he’s one of only two players in all of Major League Baseball (Evan Longoria being the other) — and the only National Leaguer — that is at 2 Wins Above Replacement or higher.

When Ibanez was signed by new Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr., the outrage was widespread and loud. Back in December, I wrote:

…I think most thinking human beings recognize that it was an illogical signing at best. The differences between Ibanez and Pat Burrell are few, but those few all point to Burrell being the better option.

Eric Seidman of FanGraphs wrote:

…Ibanez is five years older than Burrell and this just makes no sense. Assuming Raul loses 0.25 wins each year, he would be a 0.5 WAR player by the time this contract ends, commanding something like $3-4 mil at fair market value and earning over double that figure. If Burrell were to lose the same 0.25 wins, he would go from 1.70 to 1.45 to 1.20, a total of 4.35 compred to Raul’s 2.25.

The other issue many in the Phillies blogosphere bring up is the fact that Ibanez is a Type A free agent, meaning the Mariners will receive the team’s first round draft pick this year.

Yes, Ibanez has been very good this season on both sides of the coin, so to speak. But let’s not forget that we’re barely into the second month of the season. We need to wait for a decent sample size before we can draw any legitimate conclusions.

Ibanez will regress as the season goes on. Why? First, he has a .352 BABIP. Not terribly higher than average, but he’s still been more fortunate on balls in play. Oh, and he’s also been fortunate on fly balls, as 25% of them have gone for home runs, more than twice the normal rate of around 10-12%. As such, he has a .351 ISO. To put that in perspective, the MLB leader in ISO last season was Albert Pujols at .296. Raul Ibanez is simply not in the same stratosphere as Albert Pujols.

Ibanez has been a plus defensively, which has so far gone against the predictions of just about everyone who’s looked at any sort of Sabermetric defensive statistics. After a 2007 UZR/150 of -23.4 and a 2008 UZR/150 of -10.4, it’s at a positive 31.4 this season. However, he racked up an average of over 1,200 defensive innings in ‘07 and ‘08, and has only played over 200 innings so far this season. Again, small sample size.

The reason why I’m addressing this is because Jeff Passan has written an intriguing article about Ibanez and the seeming contradiction between the current reality and what the stat guys all predicted. There are a lot of things I don’t like about the article, most of them having to do with the quotes from Ibanez and Amaro, but I also feel like Passan’s motive for writing the article is a big “Suck it!” to anyone who is a fan of Sabermetrics. That’s not to say that Sabermetricians don’t, from time to time, do the same thing to non-stat-heads, but both parties’ behavior, when it occurs, is not justifiable.

Not too long ago, talking airhead Rush Limbaugh was in some hot water for saying that he hopes that the Obama administration fails because their ideas largely differ from his own. Instead of saying, “While we may disagree, I want what’s best for my country even if that means implementing your ideas and seeing them succeed,” Limbaugh was more concerned with the success of his ideology.

I see the same thing happening with the Sabermetrics vs. Traditional stats/Scouting debate. It’s really not about who’s right or who’s wrong; it should be about finding the most logical, objective, consistently accurate method of analyzing players and teams. Sometimes, Sabermetrics do the job very well. Other times, you need a scout to pinpoint something. So far, no one ideology has proven itself worthy of a monopoly.

With that said, let’s jump into Passan’s article. I’m going to FJM it since it’s the most efficient way to sort through the mess. Article quotes will be in bold, my comments will follow in normal typeface.

If anyone knows the power of perception, it is Ibanez, the Philadelphia Phillies’ new left fielder. He signed with the reigning champions this offseason for $31.5 million over three years. The contract turned sore thumb for the Phillies when Bobby Abreu got $5 million for one year and Pat Burrell $16 million for two. Ibanez turned up on almost every worst-contract compendium this offseason. Executives questioned the wisdom of giving a 36-year-old guaranteed money until the cusp of his 40th birthday.

There’s little Ibanez can do in his first season to justify the contract. Sure, he could OPS+ 170 and perhaps save a couple babies from a burning building, but other than that, the contract was illogical and we’ll have to wait out at least two of the three seasons before passing judgment. Certainly, we’ll have to wait more than the first five weeks.

Here’s a quick list of reasons why the Ibanez contract was ill-advised:

• Signing Ibanez at the time he was signed set the market value on all-hit, no-field outfielders that also includes Pat Burrell and Adam Dunn. In other words, by making the first move, the Phillies were guaranteeing that they would be overpaying for his services, and Ibanez was clearly not the most valuable of the bunch.
• Ibanez was a Type A free agent, meaning the Phillies had to give up a first round draft pick. Coupled with the fact that Burrell was a Type A free agent and the Phillies declined to offer him arbitration, two first round draft picks were lost in the process.
• The difference between Ibanez and his comparables (Burrell, Dunn) were minimal at best. Hindsight is 20/20 but it would have been better to have signed Burrell or Dunn at the price for which they signed Ibanez. They’re all comparably bad fielders and all are above-average hitters.
• Ibanez is left-handed in an already lefty-heavy Phillies lineup. Burrell’s departure meant that Jayson Werth became the de facto right-handed bat needed to break up Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Ibanez to deter other teams from abusing LOOGY match-ups.
• Ibanez was born on June 6, 1972, meaning that in about a month, he will be 37 years old with two and a half years left on his contract. He’ll be nearly 40 when the Phillies are done owing him money, regardless of how well or how poorly he plays, and regardless of how much time he spends on the disabled list (not that I’m implying that Ibanez is an injury liability — it’s just that he’s relatively old).

…his fielding prowess has shocked scouts and sabermetricians alike. Baseball men have noticed Ibanez making plays on balls that dropped in front of him in the past, and the most advanced defensive metrics available rate Ibanez among the best outfielders in the game.

The Ibanez carriage will turn into a pumpkin. There’s a reason why people took the time to create animated GIFs of Ibanez’s defensive gaffes, which you can see by clicking here and going down to comment #17.

I’d imagine that moving from spacious Safeco Field to the shallow left field in Citizens Bank Park has done wonders to his defensive statistics as well, although I’m fairly sure UZR takes park factors into account. Yes, Ibanez has been good but he will regress. If David Eckstein started hitting for power all of a sudden, would you just assume that he got better with the bat, or would you conclude that it’s just a fluke because he’s never shown the propensity to consistently hit for power before?

Until the sample size is larger, we have no choice but to be skeptical and to hold out for more information. I hate to keep throwing the “sample size” claim out there, but it’s really necessary.

All of which leads to the question: Has Ibanez, whose fielding caused plenty an eye roll in Seattle the last five seasons, really gotten that much better over the course of one offseason?

“What do you think?” he said. “I don’t want to get into this because I’ve been advised not to. But those ratings are flawed. There are factors that aren’t considered. Velocity of ball. Trajectory of ball. The people around you and their range and if they have priority over you. There’s a place for a lot of numbers. But just like scouting’s not the end-all, be-all, neither are numbers.”

No one has said that defensive statistics are “the end-all, be-all” nor that defensive statistics are perfect or near-perfect. There’s certainly a lot more that can be done to improve the statistics and great minds are at work every day trying to do just that.

In fact, John Dewan (of The Fielding Bible fame) has been getting more and more intricate with his fielding metrics with each passing season. I have rarely seen vast disagreement with any of his ratings. They pass the smell test with flying colors. The factors Ibanez cites, such as velocity and trajectory, are factors that are either already factored in or are being planned on being incorporated in the near future. Hit Tracker Online already logs that stuff for home runs, so it couldn’t be too much more work to log it for regular fly balls.

The problem with these criticisms is that they’re so black and white. Sabermetrics can and will improve with every passing day. It will never be perfect, but the goal is to get as close to it as possible, and there are a lot of great minds working long hours to push further along.

Ultimate Zone Rating, the metric created by sabermetricians Mitchel Lichtman, says Ibanez has saved nearly six runs for the Phillies this season, the most in the major leagues aside from Milwaukee center fielder Mike Cameron. In the past two seasons combined, UZR had Ibanez’s defense accounting for 32 runs lost.

One of these things is not like the other.

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Sorry to go all Sesame Street on you, but I couldn’t resist. Let’s just do a rough calculation here. I threw all of Raul Ibanez’s left field UZR/150 statistics into Excel. From 2003 to 2008, Ibanez had an average UZR/150 of -4.45 with a standard deviation of 11.54.

According to the empirical rule, 99% of our data in a normal distribution will fall between plus and minus three standard deviations of the mean. Three standard deviations above Ibanez’s mean of -4.45 would put us at a UZR/150 of 30.17. His 31.4 UZR/150 so far this season is above that, meaning that, for the sake of this argument, it is a clear outlier way, way above the mean. It is a statistical aberration that likely won’t continue to last.

When the Phillies signed Ibanez, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said they considered Ibanez an average defender, perhaps a tick below average. Never did they bother with statistics that claimed Ibanez among the game’s worst fielders.

“I do not buy numbers defensively. At all,” Amaro said. “I look at fielding percentage. But that other business? I don’t buy it a lick. I think defense is subjective. You know, if you watch a guy, whether he has range or not. You can’t study a guy’s routes to the ball by the numbers. It doesn’t happen.

“We subscribe to what our guys see with their eyes, especially when it comes to defense.”

The cognitive dissonance is amazing here, really.

I gave and still give Amaro a large amount of credit for the way he handled the difficult off-season in his rookie GM season. He handled eight arbitration cases rather flawlessly and made three small win-win trades, with the only controversy coming with the Ibanez signing (and later on, it is presumed that he pressured the Phillies coaching staff to give Chan Ho Park the #5 spot in the starting rotation, but that is neither here nor there).

That said, this is just embarrassing to read. It’s one thing to say that you value scouting over poring through spreadsheets of numbers — there’s nothing wrong with believing that.

However, when you are getting paid a lot of money to handle a $130+ million payroll with a team that just won a World Championship, you had better be open-minded or you’ll end up with a squad reminiscent of the late-’90’s Phillies.

Amaro says he doesn’t buy defensive numbers “at all,” then says he looks at fielding percentage. It’s hypocritical first of all, and why would you look at fielding percentage and fielding percentage alone? It just doesn’t make sense. He has all of these tools at his arsenal and he can make a phone call to almost anyone he wants if he doesn’t understand all of it. Hell, he has to have someone on the Phillies upper management payroll who knows something about defensive Sabermetrics.

Secondly, how is defense wholly subjective? I understand that one person’s line drive is another person’s lazy fly ball, but with some general criteria, we can efficiently discriminate between various types of batted balls. Additionally, thanks to computers, cameras, and a host of other technological tools at our disposal, we can objectively compile scientific data about a batted ball, such as the trajectory and velocity of the ball. Pitch F/X does this rather masterfully. Hit Tracker Online does a great job as well. It’s not like this is bunk science.

And thirdly, regarding the “see with theirs eyes” comment: isn’t it rather arrogant to flatly assume that mostly-objective Sabermetric defensive measures are bunk, and that the eyes of scouts are akin to those of the bald eagle? There’s a reason why eyewitness accounts are regarded lightly in trials. Our eyes (and other sensory organs) deceive us… frequently. Ever see a seasoned veteran outfielder make a bad read on a fly ball? They are fallible human beings. What makes a scout’s eyes so amazing that they cannot be lied to?

At the end of Passan’s article, he finally gives a mea culpa:

Almost certainly Ibanez can’t keep his pace offensively. He is prone to torrid stretches (each of the last two Augusts, for example) and horrid slumps (like July ’07). His defense is another question.

Thanks… for wasting your time writing this article in which you contradict yourself at the very end and for wasting our time for driving us around in a circle.

I don’t mean to rag on Passan, as he’s been one of the few consistently Saber-friendly writers around. It just seems like his sole motivation was to discredit defensive Sabermetrics under the guise of praising Ibanez. While, to my knowledge, there haven’t been any comprehensive studies on the subject, the brief analyses have pointed to Sabermetric-friendly predictions consistently out-performing their “watch the game” counterparts.

The problem is simply a lack of open-mindedness. Both Sabermetricians and “scouts” can coexist peacefully with their own perception of the great game of baseball. This isn’t Israel vs. Palestine. Sabermetrics has its strengths and weaknesses, and so does simply observing the game with your eyes. Human beings are flawed. To illustrate that point, I will leave you with a quote from Jeff Francoeur:

If on-base percentage is so important, then why don’t they put it up on the scoreboard?