Did the Orioles Change J.J. Hardy?

J.J. Hardy created a minor stir the other day in an AP interview when he claimed that the Orioles told him to change his approach during his first batting practice session with the team last year.  During his time with the Minnesota Twins in 2010, the hitting coaches told him to focus on hitting line drives the other way instead of using his natural ability to pull the ball.  Jim Presley, the Orioles hitting coach apparently told him to re-focus on pulling the ball, hitting for power, and hitting homeruns.  Since it's pretty rare to hear about a player saying that the Orioles changed him for the better, I figured I'd check into the validity of Hardy's statement.

We know that Hardy hit much better in 2011 than in 2010.  His triple slash in 2010 was .268/.320/.394 with a .313 wOBA.  In 2011, he slashed .269/.310/.491 with a .343 wOBA.  So he slugged .100 points higher, gained .030 points of wOBA and also hit 30 homeruns compared to 6.  But did he get better because the Presley told him to pull the ball?  Or was it just a good year and him finally being healthy?

Here is a picture of his spray chart from 2010 to get a better idea of where he was hitting the ball.

The spray charts in this post come courtesy of the great site Texas Leaguers.  J.J.'s 2010 chart looks pretty evenly balanced with a lot of fly balls to center and right field, but not that many to left.  It looks like Hardy followed the directive he received from the Twins pretty closely except for the few homeruns that he did actually hit out to left.  Now, here's his spray chart from last summer with the Orioles.

The 2011 chart has many more hits to left field than either center or right.  Look at all of those homeruns that Hardy hit either to straight left field or right down the line in left.  Hardy actually hit 26 homeruns to left field last season, while only hitting 4 to center and none to right.  Homeruns are good, right?  I wonder why the Twins didn't want him to hit them.

While following the Twins suggestion during 2010, Hardy basically turned into a light hitting shortstop whose only value came from playing good defense.  On balls that he hit to left field in 2010, his ISO (isolated power) was .168.  He showed similar power to all fields as his ISO to center was .125 and .159 to right.  But look at what he did in 2011.  His ISO to left field was an absurd .443!  The easiest way to calculate ISO is to subtract a player's batting average from his slugging percentage.  Anything over .200 is great.  His marks to center and right were similar to 2010, .111 to center and .099 to right.  ISO is a good way to measure a hitter's raw power, and looking at Hardy's numbers it's clear that he had a lot of success pulling the ball in 2011.

It's not often that we hear about the Orioles changing players for the better.  But this is a clear case of the Orioles hitting coach looking at a player's approach and making a change to help him.  Hardy turned from an all defense shortstop in 2010 to one of the Orioles best hitter's in 2011 because of Presley telling him to pull the ball.  Hardy definitely got his career back on track in 2011 by following Presley's advice and even earned himself a 3 year extension from the Orioles for $22.25 million.  Let's just hope that he can carry over his success from last year into the upcoming 2012 season.

Dan Duquette on Defense

This is my first post ladies and gentlemen.  I will be primarily focusing on the Orioles but I may write about general baseball from time to time.  Everything I write about will have a sabermetric slant to it. I hope you enjoy my writing.

During this offseason, the show Clubhouse Confidential hosted by the great Brian Kenny on the MLB Network has quickly become a favorite of the sabermetrically inclined baseball fan.  Earlier this week, Dan Duquette, the GM of the Orioles was on the show to discuss the O's offseason and in particular his approach to advanced stats.  While the whole interview was extremely interesting for any fan and I'd recommend watching the whole thing here, the part that interested me the most was when Kenny asked Duquette what he thought was the biggest change in statistical analysis since his time as GM with the Expos in the early 1990's.  Duquette responded by saying the biggest change was in quantifying defensive statistics, and that he specifically likes John Dewan's Defensive  Runs Saved.

Defensive Runs Saved measures how many more or fewer plays a defender makes than league average and uses the compilation of the player's statistics to come to a final number of how many runs each player saves over the course of the season.  It is generally referred to as the plus/minus system.  After all of the plays are added up, a players's contributions are summarized in a nice round number.  Please follow the link for a more detailed explanation than I can provide here.

Since the General Manager of the Orioles claims to use the system, I figured I'd take a look at how the Orioles players fare to get a better idea of how the front office sees the players in terms of their defensive value.  The 3 O's players who are generally considered the best defenders are Adam Jones, Matt Wieters and J.J. Hardy.  Let's see if that holds up using DRS while looking at 3 years of data where possible.  Even the folks who created the various defensive statistics state that you can't make a determination on defense with less than 3 years of data.  The chart below gives some context to the numbers.

Defensive Ability	DRS
Gold Glove Caliber	+15
Great	+10
Above Average	+5
Average	0
Below Average	-5
Poor	-10
Awful	-15

Matt Wieters had a fantastic year with the glove behind the plate in 2011.  Donning the tools of ignorance, Wieters compiled a DRS of +14, which led the league for catchers by a considerable margin.  That total added about 1.5 wins of value to the team on defense alone.  And he's gotten better each year in the majors, starting with a -1 in 2009, following that with a +5 in 2010 and finally ending with the +14 we just talked about from last year. Wieters has also gotten better each year at throwing out runners.  Check out his percentage of runners caught stealing since his rookie year of 2009; it's pretty impressive.

2009 - 32%

2010 - 45%

2011 - 59%

Last summer, the Orioles traded Koji Uehara for Tommy Hunter and Chris Davis.  Since Chris Davis is projected to start at 1B this year, let's see how he fares in terms of DRS.  I'm only going to look at how he did at 1B since that is where he's projected to play this year, but it's safe to say he plays a below average 3B as well.  The last three years, the 26 year old has put up the following marks: -5, +1, -4.  Keep in mind that he hasn't been playing full seasons at 1B in the Texas Rangers loaded organization.  I think it's fair to say the Orioles projected first sacker this year is average to slightly below average at 1B.  If he's hitting for power, that's fine.  If not, he doesn't have his defense to rely on to provide value.  So he'll have to hit in order to keep his job.

It's impossible to know what the team is going to get out of Brian Roberts this year because of the concussion issues, but let's take a look at his defense if he does play.  Mired with injuries over the past 3 seasons, Brian compiled marks of -4, 0 and 1 over the last 3 years.  The 34 year old put up some great defensive seasons way back in 2003 and 2005, but it's safe to say his days of great defense are over.  The best we can hope for is average defense from the keystone position this year.

Shortstop J.J. Hardy was known for his good defense before he exploded for 30 homers last year.  In terms of DRS, he compiled a mark of +3 in 2011.  The two prior years were very similar.  It's safe to say that J.J. is still an above average shortstop but is no longer the gold glove caliber shortstop he was early in his career.  While he's hitting the way he did last year, he's an extremely valuable player.

Much has been made of Mark Reynolds' miserable defense at 3B last season.  According to DRS, the negative reaction was warranted.  He cost the team 29 runs more than an average third baseman.  That figure was more than twice the next worst third baseman.  However, there is a theory that players have off years in the field just like they have off years at the plate.  If there was ever a player who had a chance to test that theory, it would be Reynolds.  The two years prior, he was worth -3 and -6 runs below average.  Still not great, but not nearly the disaster we saw last season.  For the Orioles sake, let's hope that he had an off year and won't be this bad going forward.  If he is, I see a permanent move to 1B in his future.

Next time, we'll take a look at the outfielders.