Manny being Manny? How about being used correctly?

I am not here to write cheesy jokes about Manny Ramirez on defense. That ship has sailed. In fact, that ship may have gone Magellan on us and circumnavigated the globe by now. Instead, I would prefer to consider some possible solutions to the Boston conundrum of having two elite hitters who happen to fit best in the DH slot of the lineup. Is Manny bad enough that the team would be better off playing David Ortiz in the field? There is no quick answer to that question, but by looking at the chain of events involved, we may be able to come to a conclusion.

First of all, I will investigate the prevailing arguments that have kept Manny in the field for years, butchering more balls than a connoisseur of rocky mountain oysters. Even though Chris Dial’s advanced, Zone Rating-based defensive metrics say that Manny costs his team over 30 runs a year in the field, even Dial offers the caveat that Fenway Park confounds any fielding data for leftfielders. Others say that Fenway is the perfect place to hide Manny, since his wandering routes have less ground to cover in front of the Monster than in a normal stadium. These advocates do not necessarily defend Manny’s defense, but say that the park itself marginalizes his glove’s impact to an acceptable degree. Still others believe that Manny has some redeeming value- either from a deceptively strong arm, slowly improving defensive instincts, or results that belie his aesthetically taxing style.

Considering any and all of these arguments, I think it is conceivable that Dial’s numbers unfairly condemn Manny, specifically his -32 runs against average in only 123 games in 2006. Perhaps Dial does not adequately account for the defensive value added by Manny’s arm, which is worth about four runs over the course of the year, according to recent research by John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted (actually The Hardball Times, but that’s less exciting). Maybe Fenway makes him look another five or ten runs worse, although other leftfielders have not had the same tragic results in that context. Wily Mo Pena got some playing time in left last year, and he looks close to average by David Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range- he has some strange splits moving to his extreme left or right on line drives, but without nearly the deviation on fly balls that we see in Manny’s graph.

I’m willing to go down to 20 runs a year that Manny takes off of the board. If his 150 game averages say that he costs the team 42 runs, then I think conceding that half of his failures are tied up in unexplained variance is more than generous enough. Still, I want to appease Manny’s apologists to make a point, so I’ll round down for the sake of making an argument. Thus, Manny costs the team 20 runs against average in left every year, meaning that the fact that David Ortiz does not play in the field effectually costs the team those two wins worth of run differential. If Ortiz could handle the field, even marginally, one could pretty easily justify the switch with Manny.

These moves would not occur in a vacuum, of course. Specifically, Manny moving to DH would flip Wily Mo Pena into the starting lineup, probably with J.D. Drew staying in center and Coco Crisp in right. Crisp and Pena could conceivably switch to optimize their defensive value- a sort of flexibility the team does not currently possess, but I will evaluate only their ability as if Pena directly replaces Ramirez. With Ortiz in the lineup, the Sox would be able to trade either Kevin Youkilis or Mike Lowell. Since Youkilis has more good years ahead of him, less contract leverage, and did not recently have a season that made him look completely dead in the water, I suspect that one of the numerous Lowell rumors would most likely come to fruition.

As a result, there would be four differences to consider: Pena versus Ramirez defensively, Youkilis versus Lowell defensively (at third), Ortiz versus Youkilis defensively (at first), and Pena versus Lowell offensively.

The first tradeoff is the one that ought to be a no-brainer. Scouts do not like Pena as is, but agree that he has the athletic tools to grow into a better defender. As I mentioned earlier, Pinto’s model shows some good things and some bad for Pena, basically reflecting the notion that he has strong athletic ability and needs to learn to take better routes to the ball. Comparatively, Ramirez holds a lifetime .755 Zone Rating- the stat on which Dial’s numbers rely- compared to .763 for Pena in only 27 starts in left. Out of left, Pena has much better ratings, .866 in center, .825 in right. I initially assumed that Fenway was responsible for the deficit, but I notice that he actually has a better ZR in Fenway’s left field than he did in left while playing in Cincinnati. Pena will probably grow into leftfield, he may never be exceptional, though he will probably save the team at least 15 runs against what they get out of Ramirez.

The sacrifice for this gain comes at the infield corners, where both Ortiz and Youkilis figure to be worse than what the team played at those positions last season. Much debate surrounds Ortiz’s ability to play in the field, though he need not be any great shakes to do better than Ramirez. Consider for a moment that the worst fielding firstbasemen in the AL last year- Paul Konerko and Jason Giambi- cost a grand total of 8 runs apiece over the course of the season. Certainly, Ortiz could be as bad as either one, but if Richie Sexson can handle the field without destroying his team, then I think Ortiz could do so as well. The .791 career ZR for Ortiz has remained quite stable from season to season in his limited playing time, and it is not quite as solid as the .826 posted by Youkilis last season. On the other hand, .791 mirrors the ZR for Sexson almost exactly over the last two years, and considering that Dial pegged Youkilis as a nearly neutral fielder last year, Ortiz would probably cost the team something around 5 runs over the course of a year, maybe 7 or 8 if things got really bad. That statistic does not speak to Ortiz being a good fielder; it speaks to the fact that firstbasemen do not do nearly the damage that certain leftfielders do. Sure, Ortiz would run a higher injury risk, but he could still DH from time to time to get rest, and Manny would benefit from the extra rest- a relevant concern considering his recent injury history and advancing age.

At third, Youkilis has a limited track record that is almost identical to Lowell’s career line. Lowell spiked last year, posting a very strong .811 ZR and adding 14 defensive runs according to Dial. Certainly, Lowell had a phenomenal year at third, but this case asks for future projection rather than past performance, and nothing in Lowell’s performance record hints at the notion that he could repeat his performance from 2006. His previous career best ZR was .786, and his career average is .769. Youkilis, at .776 for his career, looks like a pretty fair bet to approximate Lowell’s 2007 defensive value. Again, for the sake of concession, I will say that Lowell has a 5 run advantage. The ledger so far: Red Sox gain 2 runs by extremely conservative projections, up to 10 by more liberal ones.

And that does not include the offensive projection, nor the opportunity cost involved with dealing Lowell. The PECOTA forecasts from Baseball Prospectus remove most of the guesswork from projecting player performance, and putting Pena in Lowell’s lineup spot looks pretty good. Pena’s 12.7 VORP narrowly ekes out Lowell’s 10.0, though his playing time projection (about 100 fewer PAs) indicates room for four or five more runs. Factor in Lowell’s 26% collapse rate and Pena’s 57% improvement rate, and the decision becomes a very simple one.

Finally, the seven or eight runs that the Sox would get in return for playing Ortiz in the field instead of Ramirez may be enough to make the switch, but considering the swag that Lowell could fetch sweetens the pot even more. With players like Javier Lopez and Julian Tavarez fighting for the last few spots in the bullpen, any above-average reliever could very easily add another ten runs to the equation in the Red Sox favor, since Lowell would not longer be an essential piece of the puzzle. Altogether, the most conservative estimate would put the Sox at a net gain of at least one win, while a reasonable person could conclude that they could gain two or more wins. With the price teams in the AL East are paying for marginal wins these days, gaining two wins by reshuffling the current roster would be quite the bargain.