The Other Fifteen

Consider this a lark with data; I wouldn't consider the conclusions definitive, or even necessarily meaningful. It's at least thought provoking.

First, I cobbled together a fascimile of a zone rating system based upon the work of Sean Smith on TotalZone. Let me be clear here: my zone rating system is probably the worst zone rating system in existence. If you want a Zone Rating system based on Retrosheet data, TotalZone or SFR are vastly superior; UZR and PMR are better still. And my system - let's call it SZR, for "Stupid Zone Rating" - only rates shortstops, making it even more, well, stupid. Or "special," if you're worried about hurting its feelings.

Here's how it works:

1. Shortstops are given credit every time they record an out or fielder's choice on a ground ball.
2. An "opportunity" to make a play is assigned for errors, and half of all ground ball singles hit to left and center field.

Stupid Zone Rating is simply Outs divided by Outs plus Opportunities.

So why invent the worst possible zone rating system? Because it lets me play around with the data a bit. In this specific case, what I wanted to know was simple. Aramis Ramirez had easily the best defensive season of his career last season. He also missed no small amount of playing time, which gives us a healthy amount of "non-Aramis" opportunities to compare to.

What I was curious about was, did A-Ram's big defensive season have an effect on the Cubs shortstops?

The average SZR of a shortstop from 2004-2007 was .766. During that time, the average SZR of Cubs shortstops when Ramirez didn't play was .801; when Ramirez played, the average SZR of Cubs shortstops was .761.

Now, we'll drill down to 2007. When Ramirez played in 2007, Cubs shortstops averaged a .762 SZR; when Ramirez was out of the lineup, the Cubs averaged a .797 SZR.

I have to go to my actual paying job now, so I'll leave figuring out what that data means as an exercise to the reader. The full spreadsheet is available to peruse.

(The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.)

Labels: Aramis Ramirez, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Defense, Mark DeRosa, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot

I'll admit that I don't know, but I'm going to try to find out. Hopefully the fans at BCB (who, I'll admit, generally pay more attention to how much someone hustles than I do) will help me track this as well as possible.

I'm also going to throw this open to fans of other teams - if you're willing to keep track of this with enough data for me to track the data at season's end, I'll go ahead and look at it for you as well. If a bunch of Red Sox fans want to know how much it hurts to have Manny being Manny, let me know how often he does it and I'll figure it out for you.

Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramirez, Baseball, Chicago Cubs

Apparently, in this post-Michael Vick era, we not only have a steroids scandal in baseball, but a cockfighting scandal. It all started when a video of Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal engaging in cockfighting surfaced on the Internet. Well, apparently now it's the Cubs' problem, too:

Chicago Cubs third baseman Aramis Ramírez is prominently featured in a recent issue of a Dominican cockfighting magazine, En La Traba, in which he is pictured with several roosters that he raises for fighting. Of roosters, he said in the magazine, “When I’m in the Dominican Republic, I’m dedicated entirely to them.”

...

Jason Carr, a Cubs spokesman, said the team did not know that Ramírez was associated with cockfighter in the Dominican Republic. He said Ramírez could not be reached until he reports for spring training in Arizona on Feb. 18.

(Hat tip: Wrigleyville23.)

Well, it wasn't exactly like Ramirez was subtle about it. En La Traba has a website, with Ramirez prominently featured on the front page:

My best attempt at a translation, with some help from Google:

ARAMIS RAMIREZ: In the major leagues of roosters
"I do not think there is a balance between baseball and roosters. The two sports are good. I do not think that one has more fans than the other - the Dominican Republic has as many cockfighters as baseball players."

I can picture this being a distraction going into spring training. Unlike with Michael Vick, cockfighting in the Dominican Republic is not illegal, so there's little reason to think anything more than a public apology will come of it.

Labels: Aramis Ramirez, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Cockfighting