Rob Neyer on Dunn, Burrell, Ramirez and the importance of defense

Check out this great read from Rob Neyer at espn.com, where he writes about the increasing availability of reliable defensive statistics for player evaluation. A couple snippets:

"Dunn, like Ramirez and Burrell, is a pretty lousy outfielder (though not as lousy as them, yet). All of these guys are worth a great deal of money. But while Ramirez might be a $25 million hitter, he is not a $25 million baseball player because he gives away a bunch of runs when he's in the outfield. Same goes for Burrell, a $12 million hitter but an $8 million player"

Here is my favorite line:

"According to BP, Burrell over the last two seasons has been 15 runs worse than average per season. It's such a fundamental thing but is so often ignored: all those plays lead to runs allowed, and those runs count, too. Doesn't mean he's not a good and valuable player. Does mean that if you ignore his defense when you're figuring out how much he's worth, you're going to overshoot by a big chunk of change "

The prevention of runs is just as important as the scoring of runs. It's a pretty basic concept that I think many fans (and GM's apparently) fail to grasp. Defense is a big reason why Carlos Beltran would possibly be worth about $30 million a year as a free agent this offseason. Defense is why Manny Ramirez is certainly not worth $25 million a year.