原文连结:http://ppt.cc/ADQH Positional Versatility and the Zobrist Fallacy Sometimes we’re taught to value the wrong things. Usually this happens because, at some point prior, our elders didn’t know any better. An idea gets ingrained into our culture and passed down from generation to generation without ever really being questioned. Certain contrarians and rabble rousers try to shake things up, but they’re almost always shouted down. There is this thing—some fact or idea—that we know to be true, and it leads to all sorts of other conclusions about related matters. This is why RBI and wins remain so popular in baseball. There was a time when they were the best stats we had, and changing your values when new information comes around is a challenge for many people. We sometimes call this inertial reasoning. But this isn’t about RBI or wins. I’ll spare you that diatribe. This is about something else entirely. It’s about the way our conception of what a player ought to be leads us to look down upon one of the most unique and impressive players in baseball. This is a story about Ben Zobrist and what it means to be a great player. 我们常被一些错误观念误导，因为许多旧的观念一代一代传下来并没有受到甚麽质疑。 例如胜投和RBI依然在棒球界盛行是因为在过去那是最好的评估工具，而人们不愿意轻易 改变价值观。本文将藉由Ben Zobrist的例子来告诉你为何他是很好的选手。 The well-educated but unobsessed baseball fan likely knows two things about Zobrist. First, he plays a lot of different positions for the Rays. Second, people like me won’t shut up about how Zobrist is so underrated. That’s the book on Zobrist. He’s a super-utility guy whom a small army of baseball nerds seem to think is the second coming of Stan Musial. You might even been aware of the fact that Wins Above Replacement (WAR) seems to adore Zobrist. Lots of WAR skeptics like to point to that and use it as an example of WAR’s imperfections, its flaws. WAR doesn’t work because it says Ben Zobrist is about as good as Miguel Cabrera and Robinson Cano. That’s the message. This is something that just cannot be so. WAR is new. It requires a mix of math and subjectivity, and you can’t calculate it with two swipes on a keyboard. So when it tells you something you don’t believe, you dismiss it. Mock it.Forget it. This formula says Ben Zobrist is one of the five best players in baseball. What a joke. 大部分球迷对於Ben Zobrist的印象大概就两个。1.他在光芒守过许多位置 2.许多人一 直强调他被低估了。 这也是Ben Zobrist有趣的地方，他是个多守位野手；而从WAR的 角度看他简直是强爆惹，他的WAR值和Miguel Cabrera差不多，当然许多人认为这就是 WAR的缺陷所在，Ben Zobrist怎麽可能和Miguel Cabrera一样强?! WAR告诉我们Ben Zobrist是最好的五名棒球选手之一? 真是笑话!! Let’s start at the end, though. WAR loves Zobrist. From 2009 to 2012, Zobrist ranked second to Cabrera with 24.3 WAR to Cabrera’s 24.9. From 2009 to 2013, Zobrist trailed only Cabrera and teammate Evan Longoria. He became a full-time player in 2009 and since then, WAR says he’s been the second-most valuable position player in the entire sport. Zobrist从2009~2012的WAR是24.3仅次於Cabrera的24.9。至2013年为止WAR说他是 全美第二有价值的棒球员。 Zobrist has a .270 batting average during that time and fewer than 100 home runs. He’s nowhere near Cabrera’s equal at the plate, but his baserunning and defense are superior. That’s typically the case with WAR. Most basic analysis is about hitting and gives lip service to the rest of the game. We went over this again and against both times we fought over Mike Trout and Cabrera. Zobrist2009~2012的打击率.270 全垒打少於100，很明显和Cabrera没得比。他只有跑垒 和守备优於Cabrera，然而这就是WAR试图说明的棒球员除了攻击以外其他方面的贡献。 But it’s more than that for Zobrist, because he doesn’t have a loud defensive game. He’s not making amazing plays in center or making throws like Andrelton Simmons. Zobrist plays a bunch of positions and plays them well. No one really argues that he’s a poor defender, but he’s not considered outstanding, either. It’s not so much that defense outweighs hitting in this example. It’s that there’s a perception that a guy who plays all over the diamond cannot possibly be good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the game’s premier slugger. Even the skeptic can watch Ozzie Smith play defense and realize that it’s possible for him to make up for his weaker bat. But the skeptic can’t see a guy who doesn’t even have a permanent position as being capable of providing that type of value. Don’t blame the skeptic here. He’s a product of his culture and of the language he was taught. 他的守备只能算不错，他的例子也不是说明守备比攻击更重要，Zobrist的亮点在於 他几乎场上每个位置能守。 One certainly could make the case that Zobrist is underrated simply because he ’s a well-rounded player without one defining tool. That’s probably true to some extent, but I’d contend that Zobrist is primarily underrated relative to other such players because of his most impressive skill. Ben Zobrist can play average or better defense at every position—with the possible exception of catcher—and Joe Maddon makes the most of that wonderful skill. During his career, Zobrist has played more than 4,000 innings at second base, more than 1,700 frames at shortstop, over 2,000 innings in right field, and about 500 innings apiece among left field, center field, first base, and third base. Zobrist isn’t underrated because he’s a good-at-everything, great-at-nothing player. Zobrist is underrated because pretty much every player in baseball who is asked to play four or five positions during the course of a season qualifies as a backup. Just look at this list of players who played 50 or more innings at three different positions in 2013: Ben Zobrist二垒守超过4000局、游击超过1700局、右外野超过2000局、左中外野一垒三垒 加起来超过500局。Ben Zobrist被低估不是因为他是全能守位的野手，而是在我们的观念 之中，流浪在各个守位的野手不就是个替补吗。 以下是2013年在超过三个守位守超过50局的野手: Player WAR Played LF/CF/RF Only Ben Zobrist 5.4 Chris Denorfia 3.9 X Bryce Harper 3.8 X Andre Ethier 2.9 X Allen Craig 2.5 Mark Trumbo 2.5 Martin Prado 2.4 Josh Hamilton 2.0 X Brandon Moss 1.9 Daniel Nava 1.8 Nick Punto 1.8 Curtis Granderson 1.4 X Kelly Johnson 1.2 Rajai Davis 1.2 X Michael Saunders 1.2 X Ichiro Suzuki 1.1 X Shane Robinson 0.9 X Jordan Schafer 0.9 X Charlie Blackmon 0.8 X Eric Young 0.7 X Ed Lucas 0.7 Jeff Bianchi 0.7 Emilio Bonifacio 0.6 Dustin Ackley 0.6 Joaquin Arias 0.6 Willie Bloomquist 0.5 Chris Young 0.5 X Justin Turner 0.5 Jeff Baker 0.4 Clete Thomas 0.4 X Ramiro Pena 0.4 Kyle Blanks 0.3 Mike Aviles 0.3 Ramon Santiago 0.2 Freddy Galvis 0.1 Wilkin Ramirez 0.1 X Darin Ruf 0.1 Mark DeRosa 0.1 Don Kelly 0.0 Logan Forsythe 0.0 Alex Presley -0.1 X Trevor Crowe -0.1 X Logan Schafer -0.1 X Collin Cowgill -0.2 X Sam Fuld -0.3 X Daniel Descalso -0.3 Chris Coghlan -0.5 X Roger Bernadina -0.6 X Alexi Amarista -0.8 Skip Schumaker -1.0 Jerry Hairston -1.3 Michael Morse -1.5 Jeff Keppinger -1.5 Maicer Izturis -2.2 It’s Zobrist and mostly a bunch of guys you might find on the waiver wire. There are a few other good players in there, but almost every player who is asked to move around the diamond is something less than a solid regular, and this list counts left field and right field as different positions. Of the 54 players on this list, 22 of them only played the three different outfield spots, and you have to get down to Martin Prado at 2.4 WAR before you find a player whom you might consider a “utility” guy. The average WAR of the group, including Zobrist, is 0.7. The fact that Zobrist moves around must mean he isn’t good enough to hold down one position, right? 和Zobrist排在一起的是一票让渡名单水准的野手，这份名单已经将左外和右外视为不同 守位，54人中有22人只是在三个外野守位轮流守。而我们从Zobrist一路往下看到Martin Prado才让我们感觉到这是个工具人。这群人的WAR平均是0.7，而Zobrist是5.4。 This belief is what I call the “Zobrist Fallacy.” It’s perfectly understandable, as an automatic response, to see a player rotating around the field during the course of the season and assume he’s the team’s 10th man. He’s the best substitute, so he plays whatever position is open due to injuries or days off. This is how players like Don Kelly make their living. Our conception of a utility player is someone who is good enough defensively to handle multiple positions but not good enough offensively to start at any of them. They’re useful because you can usually avoid carrying extra bench players for emergencies and can replace them with guys who are valuable pinch hitters or platoon bats. 我们对工具人的印象就是守备足够胜任多重守位，但攻击不足站稳先发。 Plenty of major leaguers fit this description. They’re guys you like having around, and their role calls on them to play a variety of positions over the course of a season. They’re baseball duct tape. But we get lost with players like Zobrist because he is capable of that kind of versatility while also featuring a well-above-average bat. He breaks the mold a little. 我们存有这种观念就会忽略Zobrist这种超级工具人。 In baseball, defensive flexibility is something you learn when your bat won’ t keep you in the lineup. It’s a matter of survival for many players rather than true cause and effect. Guys who can play multiple positions aren’t inherently bad, but most of them learn to play multiple positions because it’ s the only way they can be good enough. Which bring us to Zobrist. Zobrist’s bat is good enough to start anywhere. His 126 wRC+ since 2009 would be well above average anywhere on the diamond. The baseball instruction manual tells us to put players at the best defensive position they can handle if their bats are good enough to be in the lineup at all. If Miguel Cabrera could play shortstop well, he’d be a shortstop. 在攻击优先的棒球观念中，工具人不是不够好，这是他们唯一能生存的办法。但Zobrist 证明他不管守哪个位子火力都足以担任先发。自2009年起他的wRC+是126。 From a value perspective, this makes sense in the abstract. This isn’t one of those silly baseball traditions that won’t die. You want a player to provide as much value as possible and he will do so by playing his innings at the most difficult possible defensive position. Anyone who doesn’t do that isn’t maximizing his value. The immediate realization, however, is that teams have to fill out an entire lineup, so a team with Troy Tulowitzki and Andrelton Simmons couldn’t have two players at short. One would move to third or second or center field. You wouldn’t be maximizing Tulowitzki’s value if you put him at third, but he could handle third just fine, and it would help the team overall. So people don’t knock Zobrist simply because he doesn’t play shortstop when the Rays have a better defensive shortstop on the roster. They knock him because it appears as if the team has a better shortstop, second baseman, and right fielder on the roster, and Zobrist is just finding his way into the lineup by plugging whichever hole is open that day. And that’s simply not true. 由於棒球守备位置的关系，各守位火力最大化一直都是教练最烦恼的问题，Zobrist这种 不管守哪火力都可以最大化的球员是稀有且珍贵的。 Zobrist is one of the Rays’ stars. Maddon builds the lineup around him. Zobrist is a utility player because he’s special, not because he needs to do it to survive. If you take the time to really think about it, you know that Zobrist isn’t the Rays 10th-best player. But the fact that you associate his most recognizable skill with guys who can barely stay above replacement level leads you to psychologically undervalue him when comparing him to the game’s best players. Only a couple of players have been more productive major league players during the last six seasons, but if you tell people Zobrist is a star and WAR thinks he’s great, there’s pushback. And that pushback is all in our heads. If you think about it dispassionately, you know that a player with a 126 wRC+ who plays good defense and gets 600 or more plate appearances is crazy valuable whether he plays right field or shortstop. There’s a difference between those two, maybe around a win, but both are All-Star type players or better. But when we see it with our own eyes, it’s tough to break the well-ingrained conditioning. Great players don ’t move around the diamond. They just don’t. Zobrist对光芒队的重要性不言可喻 Maddon可以用他随意安排打线。 WAR说Zobrist是明星球员但我们不相信，因为明星球员不可能到处换守位。 There’s a very human origin and baseball origin to this way of thinking. From a simple perspective, it’s hard to switch between multiple positions and play them well. We’re pretty confident as analysts that a good shortstop could become a good outfielder, but asking a young player to learn both at the major league level and switch between the two at a moment’s notice is hard. The outfield isn’t harder than shortstop, but it’s absolutely a challenge no matter how talented the player may be. It takes time to master a position. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to bring a talented hitter up and bounce him around the diamond. It would take his energy away from learning to hit a big-league slider, and it might make him worse at both positions. In other words, the actual development of versatility is challenging. That’s problem one. 我们都相信一个好的游击手也能成为好的外野手，但若要一个年轻选手学习两个以上 大联盟等级的守备位置是很困难的。没人会要求潜力股以学习多重守位为目标。这可能 会影响他在打击方面的发展。 Problem two is a product of problem one. In baseball, we develop and scout talent without much concern for need at the major league level. If you have to pick a position for a player, you pick it when he’s first coming up, and you move him off the position when he proves he can’t handle it or the team runs into a road block in the big leagues. Since it’s difficult to play multiple positions, you find positions for your top prospects to succeed, and you develop them there. Essentially, you scout players based on the most difficult position they can handle. If you’re watching a 20-year-old kid at Double-A with the potential to hit 30 home runs with some decent on-base skill, you care about getting him to the big leagues. If he can play third, he’ll play third. If he can’t play third, he’ll learn left. His bat is getting him to the show, and his glove is just keeping him from slowing that down. On the other side, if you’re watching a superlative defender, you’re not going to move him off the position and try others, because his presence at that position is why you want hiem at all. Simmons didn’t get to Atlanta because he was setting the world on fire at the plate. He got there because of the runs he can save on defense. You only shift to honing the utility craft when either of those avenues fail. If you aren’t good enough to hit in the big leagues, you might be good enough to fill a bench role, but that requires that you can cover a few positions. Or if your bat is okay, but your defense isn’t good enough for you to start at a premium defensive position, you might find yourself unable to break in as a starter at an offense-first position. At the development stage, you become a utility player when becoming a starter fails. In talking with a few people who cover the player development world, that’s the message that comes through. Utility players, or guys who play all over the diamond, do so because they didn’t project as someone who could play every day at the MLB level. 球探在看新秀时，也是先看棒子。球员本来守哪就守哪，如果棒子可以上大联盟；本来 是个三垒手那就守三垒，三垒不行就左外。总是以棒子优先。能守甚麽位置不是优先考量 靠守备上大联盟的人代表他们在棒子竞争中输了。 When I asked our Marc Hulet what he means when he uses the term “utility player” in a scouting report, he said that it means the player’s “ offensive skills project as replacement level or worse, but that they’re athletic enough to handle multiple positions.” Another FanGraphs and Hardball Times contributor, Nathaniel Stoltz, told me that utility players “have interesting skills, and they don’t have a fatal flaw that would leave them totally helpless in the bigs, but they don’t fall neatly into any position on the field in terms of their skill set. One prerequisite for a utility tag, of course, is the player’s ability (or projected ability) to man several positions. In most instances, that includes at least one up-the-middle spot (seems like [four-corner] types are pretty rare nowadays).” Stoltz went on to say that a utility guy is “either deficient enough on one side of the ball to give you pause running him out there every day, or he’s just fairly bland all-around and, therefore, doesn’t seem like the sort of guy worth going out of your way to write into the lineup card regularly.” Mark Anderson, who writes for Baseball Prospectus and TigsTown, puts it like this: “Utility players have an MLB tool that holds them at the level, or the collection of their tools warrants more than an org player projection…in Tigers terms, think Ramon Santiago’s peak (glove as the carrying tool) or Shane Halter (never embarrassed himself in any capacity at his peak), respectively.” Built into all of these characterizations is the idea that utility players are good enough to be useful members of a 25-man roster but not good enough that you would want them to start for your team. This won’t come as a shock to anyone, but seeing their descriptions is important. When you call someone a utility player, or project they have a utility future, you’re acknowledging a lack of potential. There are many players in professional baseball who fit this description. They ’re common, and we’re very aware of their existence. Just go back up and look at that list. We have a good grasp on what it means to be a utility player. Given that there are countless examples, we end up developing a very fixed relationship between players who play multiple positions and players who aren’t great by major league standards. It’s almost a perfect relationship, truth be told. If you take the time to really sit down and think, you know this isn’t a guarantee. But as your subtle opinions develop and the lack of counterexamples emerge, your brain accepts this conventional wisdom. 这里是一些人对工具人的看法 大概就是"攻击能力在让渡球员水准，但运动能力可以负担 多守位" "没有致命缺点让他们在面对大联盟对手时显得无助，但能力不足以先发" 大概就是工具人能力足够摆在25人名单内，但不用抱太多期望。一般人对工具人的联想 就是"潜力不足"。 Which brings us back to Zobrist. Over the last six years, he ranks second in WAR, and even if you use WAR as a general guide, he’s easily been one of the ten best position players in the game during that time. He has a well above-average bat. He runs the bases very well. He’s an extremely valuable defender. Zobrist isn’t just a good player who stands above other players who play multiple positions; he stands above just about everyone. Zobrist is versatile. He’s not a utility player by the common meaning of the word. He has everything you need to be a major league starter at any position and the added ability to handle many positions at a moment’s notice. Sixty qualified players have posted a 120 wRC+ or better since 2009. Zobrist ranks seventh in BsR (base running runs) among them and first in DEF (fielding and positional runs). Think Chase Utley and Evan Longoria as comparables. Zobrist绝对不是潜力不足，他打击很行，跑垒很行，守备很行，守哪都很行，他具有 所有成为大联盟先发球员的条件，从打击、跑垒、守备方面拿他和Evan Longoria、 Chase Utley比较的话... BEN ZOBRIST COMPARABLES Name PA wRC+ Bsr Off Def WAR Ben Zobrist 3869 126 16.3 133.7 70.1 34.7 Evan Longoria 3533 131 6.8 135.0 67.4 33.4 Chase Utley 3133 123 26.5 113.0 57.1 27.9 Utley and Longoria are underrated in their own right for providing a lot of value in aspects of the game other than at the plate, but imagine taking one of those players and being able to use him at every position. Which leads us to one final question: Why is versatility so valuable? If we put Zobrist at shortstop or second base and let him play, he’d still be plenty valuable. Baseball dorks would still consider him one of the best dozen players over the last few seasons. Right? Yes, but it’s more than that. Zobrist’s versatility makes the Rays better because he gives them the option to run any number of rotating platoons across multiple positions. He’s a switch hitter who can play basically every position. The Rays can gather their best nine hitters for any given matchup, and the fact that they have Zobrist and his versatility allows them to be less concerned about needing the other eight to cover a specific set of positions. It’s also a huge benefit when dealing with injuries. The Rays almost always can replace an injured player with their next-best player because Zobrist can shift positions to accommodate. He’s the best insurance policy money can buy. 从比较表可以看出Zobrist的价值。他也增加光芒调度的灵活性。 I’ve always had a fascination with versatility in baseball. When you’re in little league, you’re either the kid who wants to play shortstop or you’re the kid who tells the coach you’ll play anywhere. I was the latter. There aren’t really any other players like Zobrist right now, or at least any players who have done what he does for an extended period of time. Chone Figgins comes to mind, but he had only two high-quality offensive seasons. In 2013, Prado is about the closest thing we have, and he’s an average major league rather than a down-ballot MVP. Our conception of utility players leads us to relay a utility tag onto players who play all over the diamond. As a result, we think less of those guys who play multiple positions than we probably should, even if they’re much better than a 25th man. Most of the time, that doesn’t have serious consequences. In Zobrist’s case, though, it leads us to miss a star and question a method of player evaluation (WAR), because it doesn’t feel like Zobrist should be so well regarded. Versatility should be celebrated. It’s a valuable skill we don’t properly appreciate because the number of players who use versatility to move from good to great is tiny compared to the number of players who use it to move from career minor leaguer to bench player. Looking down on versatile players is like looking down on buffets just because buffets typically don’t offer high-quality food. But buffets could offer high quality good. Some rare ones do. That’s Ben Zobrist. He has all of the skills you need to succeed at any major league position and the ability to play almost any of them. Zobrist isn’t the reason WAR is flawed; he’s the reason it’s important. If not for the existence WAR, even more people would undervalue one of the best players of the last several years. Zobrist would be a great player if he were anchored to second base, but the fact that he’s not makes him even more valuable to the Rays despite the fact that though our brains have been programmed to think otherwise. 这就凸显了多功能性的重要性了，我们过去认为多功能性就是什麽都会一点，什麽都不精 这明显地低估了Zobrist。我们觉得buffets就是什麽都有，但都不怎麽样。事实上也有 高级的buffets；什麽都有，什麽都好。Zobrist的存在不是证明WAR有缺陷；相反的， 他证明为何WAR很重要，如果没有WAR我们很可能低估了一个过去几年最好的棒球选手。 --

※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc), 来自: 114.46.74.104 ※ 文章网址: http://webptt.com/cn.aspx?n=bbs/MLB/M.1415869541.A.91D.html ※ genie2:转录至看板 Rays 11/14 06:40