DUNN vs Langerhans...

Excellent defense with a bat that’s even within sniffing distance of league average is a big deal, moreso at a cheap (CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP) cost. That’s why.

I agree his offense is below average. But his defense is outstanding. Dunn is the reverse. That is my point! And they play the same position.

WAR weighs defense heavily, and Langerhans has way better D than Dunn, which I think was the point Brian was making. Looking at stuff we can measure, Dunn doesn’t seem like such a bargain. Now, it may be that having Dunn in the lineup helps everyone else (in addition to his own hitting), but that’s hard to quantify.

You can’t look at defense only, but saying Dunn got us 28 extra runs isn’t useful unless you look at how many he’s cost us in the field. If you look at UZR, he’s cost us almost 22 runs this season compared to a league-average OF (replacement-level is assumed to be a league-average fielder). Dunn’s only netted us 7-8 runs, which is less than one win above replacement.

Good offense wins games, but bad defense loses games. You can’t look at either one in isolation, but it’s interesting to look at the matchup of Great Defender/Terrible Hitter versus Terrible Defender/Great Hitter. A team made up of the first kind of player loses a bunch of 2-1 games, while a team made up of the second kind loses a bunch of 10-8 games. What’s the right mix? (Aside from, “have players who are good at both,” duh…)

I think this starts getting at a more interesting question: how much does one player effect how the rest of the team plays? We all talk about “lineup protection” or “holes in the lineup” where a good/bad hitter means people around him in the lineup see better/worse pitches. This hints that you can’t just measure each player individually and add ‘em up. Maybe they all help each other (or hurt each other) a little bit, although I don’t know how you’d figure that out. Something similar might be true for defense, although I’m less sure how that would work. Anyhow, it’s already clear that the “add up individual values” approach fails with the 2009 Nats—as another commenter put it, “They’re less than the sum of their parts.”

in fact it has worsened to -23.4

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=319&position=OF#fielding

look all the way to the bottom where they combine all is fielding in the value catagory. That is a runs number. also look at RAR that is combined runs verses a replacement player. He is 6.6 so far this season making his WIns above Replacement only .6 right now.

Guys who lack confidence nibble. Guys who don’t don’t. If you lack confidence in your ability to pitch to contact and still get outs, then you will try harder to strike guys out and consequently walk more. You will also have many more pitches per batter and much shorter outings per start. For a pitcher, knowing they can’t hit you well, really knowing the hitters can’t hit you well, is everything! You see nearly everyone in MLB is very talented and highly skilled. In my view, and I doubt I am alone, the primary thing that seperates great from good, or good from bad is all mental. Mental is just another way of saying confidence. Greg Maddux threw no pitches anyone considered ungodly, but he believed in the nucleous of his every cell that he could make anyone swing at whatever he wanted them to swing at. I think he proved that he was right. Daniel Cabrera has always been thought of as having great ‘stuff’ and he could on a good day beat 100 MPH on the gun early in his career, but he has never believed in is soul that he could get anyone out consistantly, so he couldn’t. I think that in part goes back to the awful defensive teams the Orioles played during his early seasons in the game. After a few hundred or so hits were made off his bad defense behind him, his brain decided it was his fault, and he lost the ability to pitch to contact with confidence. Once that was lost, he tried really hard to find other ways to get guys out, got all confused and after a few seasons he became what we saw this season. Confidence is everything!