Sorry, but there are simply some things you can't breakdown and answer with statistics. While 10 games is probably an exaggeration, I've definitely seen J.T. Snow make a fair share of "game saving" plays, and whether they happen in the 5th, 7th, or 9th inning doesn't matter. Remember, there is no way to quantify the momentum that can be gained by a huge defensive play.

As much as I love baseball for its stats, some of this over-analysis is starting to make me feel like an old-school scout.

Right. There's no way of quantifying it. So people like Omar shouldn't do that. If he said, "We need to squeeze every run we can out of our defense, that's why we're going with a great glove like Doug's," I'd be fine with that. But Omar said something that's an opinion stated as a fact. And there's no way he can back up the fact.

Couldn't you at least attempt to quantify it by marking down every time a great play is made by Snow and then trying to find any variance in performance by the rest of the team afterward compared to expected performance? This isn't rocket surgery.

But if JT's great fielding saves 10 games, then why can't you just stock your team with the best fielders in baseball. 7 positions (not including P and C), that would be at least 70 games saved through great defense. Right?

And even if JT *DID* save 10 games through his defense, how many did he lose through his lack of offense? 10? 20?

Maybe, just maybe, Omar was simply exagerating, like we all do in conversation (i.e. "he's as big as a house"), not knowing some cyber-stat-geek was going to run his off the cuff remarks through a stat-geek ringer to try to make him look stupid. You want to impress us - turn off the computer, close your latest version of the Bill James Handbook, and WATCH every single game Snow played in last year and then tell us how many games he did or did not save.

I agree with Crusty, at least the first part. How would you like it if someone took you to take everytime you said, "I've done that a million times."?

Actually, I though of doing that with Thome's plays. Figure out when they occured, go to MLB.com and rewatch those games to see if they really were difficult plays.

Crusty, even if you watched every single game that JT played I doubt you would be able to tell me, ACCURATELY, how many games he saved.

Okay Sabernar, fair enough, but simply looking at the numbers is even worse. The numbers should be used as a tool not an end in and of themselves. The title of this post is "Sometimes I wonder how people get to be general managers of clubs." We'll put the arrogance of that statement aside for now and just presume that a GM should rely on the findings and conclusions made here at this website to field the best possible defensive team. It would be a biazzaro world of defense, where Kevin Millar gets the nod at first base over Doug Minky and Mirrabeli gets the nod behind the dish over Pudge. Yes, your eyes can fool you. So can blindly looking at numbers on a page. Which leads to my point from before. If you want to use numbers - great - fine - knock you and your abacus out. But at the very least use them as a tool to aid in what you watch.

By the way David, I love your site whether I agree with what you say or not.

In defense of JT Snow's offense... just check out his numbers from last season, especially after the break (he had one of the highest OPS's in all of baseball during the last few months). I guess that knee surgery really did the trick.

If he were exagerating he would have used a higher number or a statement that seems more rediculous to people unfamiliar with win shares. This is just like when my dad said that Andy Petite's pick-off move saved 2 runs per game. He really believed it. Minaya was clearly not using hyperbole. He just doesn't have nay idea how to weigh the relative values of baseball skills. Name-calling doesn't change that fact.

"He just doesn't have nay idea how to weigh the relative values of baseball skills."

You're kidding right. You realize you are talking about a man that has spent nearly his entire life in baseball, most of which judging talent. This is a man that fought through what many believe to be inherrent racism in the upper echelons of MLB to become its first Latin GM. Yet, Billy "the God" Bean has some less than sincere things to say about him in Moneyball and because he doesn't carry around a lap top to fact-check every thing he says, he has "no idea how to weigh the relative values of baseball skills." That's just laughable.

Minyana probably overvalues some qualities and undervalues others--and this is probably a direct result of his MANY years of baseball experience. Rather than speaing objectively and accurately, he shot off his unquantifiable "10 games" comment on the basis what? His subjective experience? The point of using defensive statistics and range factors is to eliminate that type of reasoning. GMs who think objectively exploit GMs (especially rich ones like the Mets') who think subjectively. So I applaud the effort to objectively evaluate the "game-saving" defensive qualities of first basemen.

Having said that, I would take issue with two aspects of your study:

1) you overstate the importance of close games and late games. A great scoop or stop down the line in the first inning prevents runners from reaching base and scoring every bit as surely as it does in the eighth. We have no idea of whether the out made as the result of a fantastic play in the first shut the door to a huge, eight run inning. So imperfect as the reasoning underlying studying only close games is, I think that should be the only criteria applied to this study.

2) and you state so yourself. There's no way to quantify really great plays pulled out of the dirt from bad throws. There's no way to quantify great stretches made (a la the gargantuan Derek Lee) to beat runners by an eyelash to the bag. Since these play probably comprise most of what's playing on Minyana's mind when he considers "game-savers" we have to score those somehow if we want to speak accurately about the effect of a great-fielding first baseman--or if we want to know how to value such a player relative to others! Or if we want to talk about how many games they'll save. Or for that matter, if we want to ridicule the guy who talks about how many games they'll save.

I'd trade the JT Snow for the Giambi of 2001!

DG

Omar Manaya is not capable of intuitively weighing large amounts of complex data that he has observed over his lifetime and accurately assessing the relative value that each piece of that data contributes to an end without a systematic study of the subjet. Nobody is.

You could spend your whole life watching cannons fire. You could fight through a racist system to become the first latino cannon-firer. If Isaac newton doesn't figure out some physical laws that describe the motion of projectiles, you are simply not going to be able to tell where that cannon-ball is going to land. You might have an estimate; but if you don't know exactly how much drag force effects that canon-ball you might say things like "the thin air in the Alps will add 10 miles to the distance this cannon will fire." But the truth is, you don't know how to measure the relative effects of different forces on a cannon ball, because that sort of thing needs to be studied systematically.

By the way I am not talking about "judging atalent" I am talking about weighing the relative value of different talents when it comes to winning. It's just too complex for intuition and experience.