Leon Landry's Athletic Defense
May 25, 2010
In 2005, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell ushered the term "heuristics" into wider parlance with the publication of Blink.
Getting past the intimidating entymology of the word*, a "heuristic" is basically a mental shortcut people use to make quick decisions. It's a way to help people free themselves from the perils of over-analysis by drawing from previously established rules of thumb.
* Legend has it the word is derived from Archimedes himself, who shouted "Heureka!" upon discovering the principle of displacement. "Heureka" has since been Americanized into the expression "Eureka!" which itself also a town in California perhaps most famous for being the birthplace of Ned Yost. Eureka, CA is also in Humboldt County, wherein incredibly good marijuana is grown. Or so we're told. For medicinal use only, of course.
So, what does all of this have to do with the MLB draft? Perhaps nothing at all. But one of the truly great and fun things about obsessing over the events that will begin to unfold the evening of June 7 is that despite everyone's best efforts to put a number on performance (scouting scales that run from 20-80, park and strength-of-schedule adjusted wOBAs that run to the 1000th decimal point), it is still a game played by people, and the measure of man is still largely expressed through stories. But that's also a dangerous thing, when the stories simply take over and become conventional wisdom.
Consider the case of Leon Landry's defense.
Exhibit A
HIGH SCHOOL
A talented three-sport athlete from Baker High School ... a three-time first-team all-district player as a pitcher and infielder ... also a four-year letterwinner in football as a quarterback, running back, wide receiver and defensive back ... captain of the Baker High basketball team in 2007 as a shooting guard.
Athletic! Raw talent!
Exhibit B
Landry was a three-sport star in high school that played running back, wide receiver, and defensive back in football, and was also the team captain on the basketball team as a guard. It’s not surprise that he is a superior overall athlete with an exciting tool set. Those tools are highlighted by his defense in centerfield, where he has excellent range and shows a knack for positioning himself and track down fly balls. His arm strength is below average, and rates as his only tool that isn’t considered a strength.
Athletic! Raw talent! Now, with excellent range.
Exhibit C
Athletic! Raw Talent! Excellent range. Now, with his own bonafide Web Gem.
It is with these preconceived notions, then, that we ran the most recent iteration of our play-by-play defensive ratings for college outfielders. And we were taken aback by what we saw:
Defensive Runs Above/Below Average
2008: -2.9
2009: -1.2
2010: -4
It's easy to settle into thinking about these kinds of numbers in terms of a 162 game MLB season, but of course they are not. Rather, those stats were put up over the course of ~50 games per season, and have already been regressed significantly to account for the smaller sample size, analytic techniques, and quality of data. But any way you slice it, they place Landry as the worst defender of any college center fielder considered a genuine prospect for this year's draft.
All of which, of course, is not to say that Landry will always have below average range in the outfield. Perhaps his undeniable natural athleticism will soon convert itself into demonstrated defensive proficiency.
Until that day, Landry's case is a great illustration of importance of objective data. If talent evaluators have preconceived notions about a player's raw athleticism, they'll see the web gem and play down the fact that maybe he took a bad route to the next fly ball hit his way, turning it into a double.
Heuristics are great when based on sufficient experience or data. But with amateur prospects, it's all too easy to let the story take over and form a shortcut long before it's warranted.