Was Adam Dunn’s Defense Really That Bad? | Baseball Bits 

If you want to see all the plays and their grades, I've put together a compilation here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S2AdOP1t9V8.html

Oh yess i aint working for another 20 minutes

"The best offensive season in MLB history below replacement level" Holy fk

I remember once you said you wouldn’t make a video about Dunn if it was just about “haha three true outcomes”. This topic is definitely more unique.

I'll never forget that a baseball writer once projected Adam Dunn to be a better rounded, longer lasting player than Albert Pujols after their debut seasons.

Weird thing about DRS is that poor defensive players on bad pitching teams will almost by-definition be worse than poor defensive players on good pitching teams. A ball hit towards Adam Dunn is worth negative DRS on average, but because Adam Dunn was on a last-place team the balls hit towards him had more men on base and fewer outs than if he was on a first-place pitching-dominant team. So odd to think that in a sport where offensive value is so minutely calculated independent of other players on the team that defensive value is SO dependent on the kinds of situations your pitcher puts you in.

My heart is still racing after Bailey whipped out his sword as a threat.

Adam Dunn was the perfect DH who was cursed to play his entire career in the NL when pitchers still had to hit

“Adam Dunn is the true three true outcomes player” - Jon Bois

Bailey I genuinely think that these videos are the best sport based videos on the entirety of RU-vid. Thanks for making baseball a little bit more enjoyable.

Making Adam Dunn play outfield with the original Citi Field dimensions is one of the crueler things I’ve seen in a baseball game.

S tier foolish baseball. Fun premise and Adam Dunn footage is entertaining to watch

I don’t know .. I feel like Foolish actively leveled up in front of our eyes with this vid. Deeply analytical yet action packed with a ton of situation specific footage .. which describes most Foolish vids, but this was next level.

I’m getting war flashbacks to 2011 Adam Dunn, 54 OPS+ and still getting some starts at 1B for the White Sox

I love this quote: "It's predicated on the fear of making a mistake, not the courage to make a play." A good defender will balance those out.

I've been an official scorer in professional baseball for 25 years and I will +1 to Bailey on how ridiculous the error is as a stat, at least as one used to evaluate a player's defensive ability. Some of it has to do with the way the rule is defined, particularly in that mere mental errors and misjudgments are NOT officially errors. Infielder throws to the wrong base? No error. Outfielder breaks the wrong way to a fly ball? No error. On the other hand, I once charged an error to a player who - under the absolute letter of the law - shouldn't get one. The player was Corey Wimberly, an A's farmhand who was stuck in left on this particular day. High fly ball toward the line, he ran straight to the correct spot, set his feet, then dropped the ball Charlie Brown-style. However, when determining ordinary effort, the rules require the OS to use the standard of an average player at that position for that level of baseball. Wimberly was one of the fastest players in professional baseball. An average player hoping to snare that ball would have to do so on a full sprint, with the wall and the rolled-up tarp looming in front of him. In other words, that catch would take extraordinary effort for an average left fielder because an average guy isn't fast enough to get there. Wimberly got charged with an E7 because he DID have the speed to get there and thus had his "full range of motion" for making the catch.

Me with Adam Dunn on my strat-o-matic team: Opponent: I roll a 5-11. Me: LF(X)..........another single........

Loving this second channel content

Celebrate, Don't Denigrate a Player? ✅ Answer a Deeper Question than the Title Asks? ✅ Encourage Deeper Analysis by Generating Curiosity? ✅ Use Stats In an Interesting Way and Show Your Work? ✅ Focus On a Player Who Isn't in the News? ✅ Be a Silly Lil Bailey Baseball Boi and Make Us All Laugh?✅ This was an S tier video.

Absolutely loved the video! Always excited to see your new videos pop up in my feed.

I gotta thank you Bailey. Without these videos, I would still be relying on fielding percentage to see who’s the best defender in the league. Phillies broadcasts think Nick Castellanos is an amazing defender because he hasn’t recorded an error since 2022 when we all know that’s not the case. Defense is much harder to measure and you’ve done a great job in getting the more obscure info out there.

New dimensions and textures of what to watch for during my next MLB viewing session. Fantastic effort. You can never truly overthink what's happening in front of you.

I hate the error stat. I hate how if a pitcher makes an error and the runner scores, it is an unearned run EVEN THO THEY EARNED IT!!! I love you bailey

Aww that little smile at 12:13 after making the nice play is so adorable ❤ That’s right you are nice with it little man

Very first thing I thought of when you were explaining how all the numbers work nowadays was - eye test. And literally 10 seconds later , you brought up eye test. Made my day 🍺🍺

Thanks for the video Bailey! My birthday is today and this is one of the best presents I could have got

MLB Power Pros Legend, Adam Dunn.

This brings up another point about why I dislike the universal DH. It's an interesting tradeoff to have a great hitter but poor defender that must play the field in order to bat. The rules rewarded having more complete players that could play every aspect of the game well instead of just allowing players to be locked into one-dimensional roles.

I don't know if it was intentionally edited like this, but there being footage of Luis Castillo after saying "being able to track a fly ball" is so funny to me as a Mets fan.

ANOTHER BANGER , BAILEY. THANK YOU

Your content always puts a smile on my face. 😁

great video as always

Great video as always Bailey. This one fascinates me a lot because I worked at Inside Edge for a few years and one part of the job was quantifying defensive play probabilities. I think IE's methods/calculations were different than what BIS does to calculate DRS, but figuring out the catch probabilities was always fascinating to me. Some guys like Dunn make routine plays look difficult and much better fielders can make tough plays look easy. Regardless, figuring out the in-between plays was always the toughest part.

What a beautiful day, always a pleasure to get a fresh bits.

This is the earliest I’ve ever been idk what to say. I love you, funny internet baseball man.

Absolutely loved you picking 30 games to look at it! Sample size is large enough

Love the video Foolish. However on your own calculation of DRS on the Mike trout ground ball you should have found the difference not on "Bases empty, 1 out" and "Bases empty, no outs", but rather on "Bases empty, 1 out" and "A runner on first, no outs", because you are finding the difference between the expected amount of runs the offense scores in the instance that the SS makes the play and in the instance he doesn't make the play: (P(doesn't make the play)-P(makes the play)) * .5= DRS (using this method).This makes the total DRS for that play (not accounting for the Angels horrendous offensive output) (0.908-0.275) * .5= 0.3165.

As a young kid from Cincinnati during Dunn’s tenure for the reds I vividly remember my dad going absolutely ballistic over Dunn doing pretty much anything, meanwhile he was my favorite player

You are by far my favorite baseball youtuber.. informative af and funny af at the same time! Thanks for brightening up my day big dawg

always love when the second channel gets some love

Baseball Bits always makes me feel better

Is that the Jim Leyland as one of your patreons? incredible video - very fond memories of Dunn from his playing day

Love the vids. Greetings from The Netherlands.

Thanks for reminding me how much I hate the universal DH. Now I'm mad all over again.

Just when I thought my day couldn’t get better. Foolish Baseball comes up clutch.

A new Baseball Bits from Foolish and a Playin' Watchin' Guts from Jomboy, Jake and Joezack. Can't get any better than that on a Wednesday.

Adam Dunn...one of my favorite players because his offensive contributions were offset by his defensive liabilities. YET...I have always wondered...how did he play so many years and never improve? What is the story there? Was he uncoachable? Did he simply not have the physical abilities? And why did teams put up with it? Did they see his offense as something that allowed them to simply accept his liabilities as a defender? Did they think he would get better? I think it is correct to assume that in an era of universal DH, his career would have looked different--and lasted longer. But even so, would any team keep anyone on a roster with so much defensive liability these days? Perhaps he was a product of his era, but sometimes I wonder what managers and owners are smoking...

5:25 is how Castellanos goes season after season without recording an error

Seeing a Jon Bois video getting mentioned makes my heart full

Adam Dunn is one of my favorite baseball subjects.

The song playing at the beginning of the level 5 segment was great

Adam Dunn And Austin Kearns came up through the local low A Dayton Dragons Inaugural season. Watched their very first professional games. Man being 14 was cool. You knew early on they were going to be good. Love ya Big Donkey 🫏

So glad you took a different take than Jon what a weird player, Bailey. Love your stuff

I'll bring him because it's important people never forget about Raul Ibanez manning the OF. Great guy, good lefty bat, endless snuff films with the glove.

“muscle relaxers go brr” -Rod Manfred

Adam Dunn was the second most impressive batting practice that I’ve ever seen live. I watched him pepper the scoreboard at Shea when he was still a Red.

the best part of this video was i got to remember jorge cantú and a sweet ball he hit out to adam dunn because i was at that game lmao. i commented that he seemed to let stuff drop in front of him all the time... at the time!

The game over always makes me smile

Adam Dunn was just rocking and AWP with no armor, helmet or nades!! He is just built different

Sitting on the toilet for the next 18 minutes to watch new Foolish

What’s good my man! @FoolishBaseball Could u take a look at Carlos Zambrano stats and see if it’s worth a baseball bits.. It’s fascinating his baseball career but on top of that his batting skill! Thanks again as always

Adam Dunn is the best 2 tool player in the history of baseball. Power and Contact. Nothing else.

He should upload more of these second channel videos. They’re fantastic!

I love your videos bro

The pride of New Caney, Texas! My hometown high school's greatest ever athlete.

That sword convinced me to never question FB.

Bailey you done did it again

every time foolish baseball uploads i go “no way it’s been a month since the last one” and every time it has been and i am reminded of the unrelenting passing of time

great video, music is amazing too wtf

What about a video about "The Art of Getting Left on Base??"

YESSSS!! Time for me to tell an anecdotal story!!! Big reds fan, went to a game and sat in the front row of left field so I could heckle barry bonds. Ended up heckling Adam Dunn for literally never moving in the outfield. It was on real he never took more than one step towards ball unless it was hit to him. In the 9th inning they brought in Chris denorfia as a defensive replacement. First batter hits a ball into deep short and denorfia runs to back it up and runs back my drunk ass stands up and starts clapping for him in a dead silent stadium. Out of my mouth comes "that's more than Dunn ran the whole game" and the guy started laughing visibly on the field

I was waiting for a Schwarber joke, but damn, 2:29 made me cackle 😂

Jon Bois 🤝 Bailey Putting Adam Dunn in perspective

around 12:15 i think you should also have looked at the possibility of runners on 1st and 2nd, no outs, where Dunn bodyblocks the ball and comes up in time to prevent the runner from going to 3rd, but cant reasonably make a play at 1st.

i think adam dunn is the most adam dunn-looking guy to ever live

The Rob Manfred calculating DRS was comedy gold

I love me some Dunner. Made baseball in DC so much fun.

Dude, wicked sword 😮

“How come good hitter WAR bad and bad hitter WAR good?!?!” had me dying😂

Dude I remember him hitting a homerun against the Cubs almost onto to rooftops in Chicago

The fact that 10 of his 14 seasons were in the NL still baffles me. If any man needed the DH, it was Dunn.

You should do one for the elite defender as well.

I was only gonna have one beer with lunch but Foolish posted so I'll have two

I would've loved to hear about range factor. yadier molina has a below average (for a catcher) Rangefactor/9inn, but he's usually considered one of the best catchers ever. I wonder why that stat is unkind to him

The Big Donkey was my first favorite baseball player.

1:48 I know some defensive metrics just "Hate" certain players for whatever reason. But the fact that MATT KEMP in the middle of winning 2 GOLD GLOVES almost had the worst season ever by DRS is wild af😂

The other thing is that playing deep all the time means more singles on plays where it's not immediately obvious that a different outfielder playing at normal depth would have made the play.

You should do a video on the 2002 Anaheim Angels a team full of role and no Hall of famers that won the World Series living and dying by just singles and doubles

In 2014, I got to watch this very large man play right field at then-AT&T Park. He nearly killed Jordan Danks

An issue with this is that it's very hard to determine or approximate how difficult a play in the outfield is without direct comparisons in similar plays. Catches that look very hard or impossible when Dunn is the fielder can look routine or at least doable to a good OF because the initial reaction time, acceleration, and route to the ball matter so much. Simply put, everything looks harder when Dunn does it, so it's very easy to say he made a play 50% of players make when in reality it's a play a vast majority of players would make.

Wow! 462 home runs is no joke! I guess I hadn't realized that he mashed that many homers.

Honestly, Foolish Runs are way better than any other defensive metric.

Foolish a true stats nerd, making the sample 30 games to make it a normal distribution

Fangraphs did a fun simulation where they made an entire team of Adam Dunns, and a few other players... He won a gold glove in CF over Dee Gordon

"What if Adam Dunn was a career DH" is one of my big whatifs so I'm glad to see that answered. Also the rest of the video was super interesting

wake up babe Foolish Baseball just uplo.... oh right, I have no "babe" hence being a Foolish Baseball subscriber...

The perfect video to kill some time before my team drafts Caleb Williams

You can track live odds per pitch or play with a betting app, you could literally read a teams probability to win before a web gem vs immediately after

I am not a pro, but I fielded pop ups as an infielder from a pithing machine. There is not a more impossible catch than a 400ft straight up with weird spin(thank you juggs machine), and we made those catches on the regular. Adam Dunn is a great hitter, but an outfielder being challenged by a fly ball to the fence is not a major league outfield skill.

Get her Dunn. I probably went to 15 games that summer and he was so much fun during an era of bad Nationals baseball