Dave Winfield's Fielding

[AstrosFan]

In his original Win Shares book, Bill James gave Winfield a fielding grade of D or D+, based on WS analysis. Baseball Prospectus has Winfield at 109 runs below average. WAR puts him at 91 runs below, and about a -9.8 defensive WAR. There seems to be a consensus in the most popular metrics that Winfield was a bad fielder, and yet he won seven gold gloves. Was Winfield vastly overrated, and the voters kept whiffing, or are there things that could account for such a large difference between perspective and data?

[GiambiJuice]

Dave Winfield: The Derek Jeter of the outfield?

[Dude Paskert]

Winfield always struck me as a great athlete who looked clumsy and unsure of himself in the outfield. Bill James seems to have some sort of personal dislike for Winfield (maybe a bit like Hornsby) and claimed that Dave always played deep because he liked to make flashy plays at the fence, like catching potential HR balls. I don't remember anything like that, but Winfield moved a lot like Bo Jackson in the outfield...a few seconds of indecision followed by a mad dash. I was watching a playoff game with a bunch of friends when a sinking liner was hit to Winfield, who jogged in on it for a bit, then switched to top speed very quickly, stopped, and then lunged for the catch while staggering like Frankenstein. I yelled out, "Great catch!", and a friend replied, "That was terrible, he made an easy play into an adventure." I knew he was right and told him that I meant it took great athleticism to actually catch the ball after approaching it as poorly as Winfield did.
That's one isolated play, but fits in with my memory of Winfield. He was also famous for having a really awkward looking swing and throwing his bat all the time...looked kind of clumsy at the plate. He did look beautiful when he unleashed that arm, though. I admired him as a youngster much as I admired Dave Kingman, both tremendous physical specimens who seemed to try to overpower the game in different ways (Nolan Ryan kind of fits that bill, too).

[AstrosFan]

Winfield always struck me as a great athlete who looked clumsy and unsure of himself in the outfield. Bill James seems to have some sort of personal dislike for Winfield (maybe a bit like Hornsby) and claimed that Dave always played deep because he liked to make flashy plays at the fence, like catching potential HR balls.

Although he may have disliked Winfield, this is not evidence it is true. It is just an observation. And James's poor grade stems entirely from Win Shares. It has nothing to do with his personal feelings about Winfield. You probably aren't suggesting otherwise, but I thought I'd reiterate the point.

I don't remember anything like that, but Winfield moved a lot like Bo Jackson in the outfield...a few seconds of indecision followed by a mad dash. I was watching a playoff game with a bunch of friends when a sinking liner was hit to Winfield, who jogged in on it for a bit, then switched to top speed very quickly, stopped, and then lunged for the catch while staggering like Frankenstein. I yelled out, "Great catch!", and a friend replied, "That was terrible, he made an easy play into an adventure." I knew he was right and told him that I meant it took great athleticism to actually catch the ball after approaching it as poorly as Winfield did.
That's one isolated play, but fits in with my memory of Winfield. He was also famous for having a really awkward looking swing and throwing his bat all the time...looked kind of clumsy at the plate. He did look beatiful when he unleashed that arm, though. I admired him as a youngster much as I admired Dave Kingman, both tremendous physical specimens who seemed to try to overpower the game in different ways (Nolan Ryan kind of fits that bill, too).

Except when he was killing birds.

Total Zone seems to have a similar perspective - poor range, but good at holding runners, at least early in his career. I remember when Winfield chose to go in the Hall as a Padre. Fans were ticked, because they wanted Tony Gwynn to be the first Padre. It was hilarious.

[leewileyfan]

Here's how I have Dave Winfield rated defensively over the bulk of his career. There are one or two observations I'd like to make before listing the numbers:

-In parts of 74, 78. 80, 81, 83 and 84, he was started in CF. That hardly argues a case for an inept corner outfielder.
-Ratings I provide totally ignore CF performance, focusing as nearly as possible on position played. When Winfield played only some combination of LF and RF, I merge them as "OF" in calculating the rating.
-Sometimes, a player who is flashy and full of eye-catching "form" in playing the OF, is less effective than his seemingly clumsy teammate, who is actually a better fielder.
-Rating is NOT fielding percentage. Ratings are calculated by position-specific conversion formulas. The results resemble fielding percentage, for the sake of familiarity.

My basis for calculating defense runs saved or lost is Player X. He is a model, ALWAYS about 8+ 10 defense runs below MLB average at any position, in any season. For LF and RF, Player X is at .925. During Winfield's career, corner OF averaged about .950. The defense runs numbers provided are comapred to MLB corner OF AVERAGE.

Winfield's Defense:

1973: first season, too few games
1974: [.960] = +5 DR
1975: [.963] = +5 DR
1976: [.983] = +13 DR
1977: [.978] = +11 DR
1978: [.968] = +8 DR
1979: [.979] = +11 DR
1980: [.945] = -2 DR
1981: [.921] = -10 DR
1982: [.967] = +7 DR
1983: [.934] = -6 DR
1984: [.961] = +5 DR
1985: [.969] = +8 DR
1986: [.964] = +6 DR
1987: [.933] = -6 DR
1988: [.945] = -4 DR
1989: out for season due to back injury
1990: [.923] = -11DR
1991: [.938] = -5 DR

Raw sum of the +/- DR puts Winfield at about +35 DR. I have not adjusted for playing time; but a fair estimate would be that 70%-75% of his playing time was in corner OF positions; so the net DR value would be about [35 * .75] = +26.25 DR.

My interpretation of this is that Winfield was decidedly above average over his peak years as a corner OF, with injury and age conspiring to lessen his career rating to moderately above average.

[Dude Paskert]

Although he may have disliked Winfield, this is not evidence it is true. It is just an observation. And James's poor grade stems entirely from Win Shares. It has nothing to do with his personal feelings about Winfield. You probably aren't suggesting otherwise, but I thought I'd reiterate the point.

Point taken...I think that James said there were small subjective grading factors in the original WS formula that he'd use for tweaking, but doubt they had much of an impact. I just wanted to bring up James' suggestion that Winfield did not position himself well with the caveat that he also did not seem to like him. James took great umbrage at Winfield telling the world he was going for a batting title in '84 (his teammate Mattingly beat him), saying that Dave should do what helped the team most instead of concentrating on a personal goal. I think that Winfield should have been thinking batting title every year, because '84 was one of his best seasons!

[AstrosFan]

Point taken...I think that James said there were small subjective grading factors in the original WS formula that he'd use for tweaking, but doubt they had much of an impact.

I think you're thinking of his player rankings, which included career WS, best three seasons, best five consecutive, WS/162, a linear LQ adjustment (I forget the formula, but the more recent the season, the better the league), and a subjective adjustment. The ratings I am referring to come from the book where he detailed the formula. For example, minus the subjective adjustment, Rogers Hornsby ranks first among second basemen. But James has him third. Clearly a subjective downgrade. James says it has nothing to do with his personal feelings about Hornsby. Yeah, right.

I just wanted to bring up James' suggestion that Winfield did not position himself well with the caveat that he also did not seem to like him. James took great umbrage at Winfield telling the world he was going for a batting title in '84 (his teammate Mattingly beat him), saying that Dave should do what helped the team most instead of concentrating on a personal goal. I think that Winfield should have been thinking batting title every year, because '84 was one of his best seasons!

I think there was someone who accused Tony Gwynn of being more focused on his hitting success than on winning.

[BigRon]

I'll echo many of Dude's comments. Winfield was clearly an outstanding athlete, but not at all an intuitive outfielder. He seemed to use his physical talent to "outrun" many of his mistakes in judgements. he did have an outstanding arm- I saw him a fair amount but not enough to make any judgements about how well he used his arm, e.g. hitting/missing cutoff men. My purely observational rating of Winfield would place him at about a C+/B- as a corner outfielder. Like many players, he played better defensively during his peak years, but was less impressive both early and late in his career. I doubt that he really was deserving of most of his Gold Gloves. But, that's not really surprising. The most deserving player only wins a Gold glove about half the time.

[leewileyfan]

Having reviewed MLB defense over the period 1901 to present, I don't believe it is rash to take Gold Glove Awards with a grain [several grains] of salt.

There is too much pattern of repetition, along with an unmistakable trend where "late" awards seem to have been made from a [We owed him one] attitude.

Then too, Gold Glove Awards are very much CF orientated; and one can make a reasonable defense of that approach from the range demand of CF over the corner OF positions.

In a position-centered awards atmosphere, Winfield would have earned at least three or four awards. Even given the bias that exists, one or two would not have been surprising.

[Jar of Flies]

We discussed Winfield's D on a recent thread, but placing here in case we google in the future.

Some discussion on why Tom Thress sees Dave's defensive value as significantly ahead of other systems.

52. Kiko Sakata Posted: September 14, 2019 at 12:22 AM (#5879081)
Bleed, be careful what you wish for. Sorry if this is long and rambling (and ultimately not terribly relevant as Dave Winfield is, I believe, already comfortably enshrined in every relevant Hall).

The difference between Baseball-Reference and me is pretty much all on defense. For his career, BB-Ref has Winfield at -91 Rfield; I have him at +1.3 net wins (so, say 13 runs) - a gap of about 10.5 wins (give or take).

So, why do I like Winfield's fielding so much more than BB-Ref (and others)? First, let me say, it seems a little weird to defend the proposition that a 7-time Gold Glove winner was not a terrible fielder. But here we are.

I think that BB-Ref and I essentially agree about the shape of his career - he was above average in the 1970s, but stuck around for a long time and was pretty bad by the end of his outfielding days. Which seems pretty reasonable.

I think that I end up thinking he was better in the 1970s and less bad in the 1980s (and 1990s) - perhaps moreso the former. Here's what I have by year (net wins) vs. BB-Ref (Rfield). I went ahead and multiplied my net wins times 10 to put the numbers on the same scale.

Season Net Wins(*10) Rfield Difference
1974 + 9 - 2 + 7
1975 +15 + 2 +13
1976 +16 + 9 + 7
1977 + 9 + 9 -
1978 - 0 - 9 + 9
1979 + 7 +12 - 5
1980 + 8 - 6 +14
1981 - 4 - 7 + 3
1982 - 6 - 7 + 1
1983 - 6 -18 +12
1984 - 4 - 6 + 2
1985 + 7 - 1 + 8
1986 - 1 + 0 - 1
1987 - 4 - 9 + 5
1988 - 8 -10 + 2
-
1990 -15 -22 + 7
1991 - 8 -18 +10

That leaves out his partial rookie season (56 games) and his last four seasons when he was primarily a DH.

The biggest difference is 1980, so maybe let's start there. That was Winfield's last season in San Diego and Winfield's second Gold Glove season. I think he was very good, if not quite as good as he was from 1974-76. BB-Ref thinks he was bad - although not quite as bad as he had been in 1978 or as bad as he would become for most of the rest of his career.

In 1980, Winfield led NL right fielders in defensive games (154), assists (17), and double plays (4). He was fourth in putouts (242) and third in fielding percentage (.985). He had a range factor (RF/9) of 1.95 vs. a league RF/9 of 2.06. So that's not great. The assists and the DP's help, although Winfield did play more games in RF than anybody else, so having the most assists and DPs could partly just be due to playing time.

At its core, wins are plays made - i.e., putouts and assists; losses are plays not made - i.e., hits allowed on balls in play (that could reasonably have been fielded by Winfield - when he's in RF, he's not getting dinged for infield singles to third base). The 1980 San Diego Padres were almost exactly league average at turning balls in play into outs (what BB-Ref calls DefEff) - the Padres were at .699 vs. a lg avg. of .700.

Bill James, in his Win Shares book, pointed out that you can infer a team's ground ball vs. fly ball tendencies by looking at their assists, and the 1980 Padres were 2nd in the NL in assists (2,012 vs. a lg avg of 1,862). So that's something like 150 more ground-ball outs than a typical team would have made. On the other hand, the Padres only had 728 K vs. a lg avg of 821. Adding those together, that's 2,740 vs. 2,683, so maybe 60 fewer fly outs than you'd expect? That's not a lot - less than 0.4 plays per game, but Winfield's range factor was only .11 below average, so those numbers seem fairly consistent to me.

Put it all together and it seems reasonable to view Winfield as more or less average at converting balls in play into outs - what I call Component 5. And, indeed, in 1980, I have Dave Winfield's Component 5 record at 2.9 - 3.0, a .496 win percentage. Seems reasonable enough to me.

So where does his +8 in the above table come from? Components 6, 8, and 9. In RF, he's +2 runs in Component 6 (holding hits to singles instead of doubles and triples), +3 runs in Component 8 (baserunner outs - those league-leading assists), and +6 runs in Component 9 (baserunner advancement) (he also played a bit of CF, at which he was below average by one run or so). In all 3 cases, 1980 was one of Winfield's top 2 or 3 seasons (in RF). Going back to traditional stats, Winfield's 17 RF assists and 20 total OF assists in 1980 were both career highs.

As for Component 6, the Padres tied for the NL lead in doubles allowed (270) and tied for 6th in triples allowed (41), which doesn't seem great. I can only guess that most of them were hit to LF and CF rather than RF (Jerry Mumphrey and Gene Richards were both under .500 in Component 6 in 1980).

In 1975 and 1976, when I have Winfield a combined 20 runs better than BB-Ref, Winfield had range factors of 2.25 and 2.36 vs. league averages of 2.03 and 2.15. In 1975, the Padres were 2nd in the NL in assists; in 1976, they were 3rd. So Winfield was well above average in making plays despite apparently playing behind ground-ball heavy pitching staffs.

As for the late-career numbers, I suspect that's what I call a difference in valuation not evaluation - as a general rule, my fielding numbers are less extreme than BB-Ref's, so I'm far less likely to see anybody as -18 or -22.

[Bothrops Atrox]

Are TZ, DRA, and FRAA NOT encompassing components 6,8, and 9?

[JR Hart]

I saw Wingield play for 3 different sesons in San Diego. In 78, with addition of Oscar Gamble in 1978, Wifield played a lot CF. Late in games, Winfield would move to RF, and Darrell Thomas would go into CF. In 79 and 80, Winfield played RF.

My impression was that he played pretty well. He certainly had a good arm, as did Thomas. Thomas made basket catches ala Willie Mays..

[layson27]

Are TZ, DRA, and FRAA NOT encompassing components 6,8, and 9?

IMO for pre-1950 players definitely not, after that I'm not sure, but kind of doubt it.