Mistakes, what is it… How bad is Lotte at defense?

As of the 6th, Lotte ranks 3rd in fewest errors (81) among the 10 KBO teams.

In fact, they were tied for second in that category until shortstop Goodrum made an error (31) in their 2-7 comeback loss to Samsung on Day 6.

So why does it seem like Lotte can’t play defense?

Because they can’t actually play defense.스포츠토토

Lotte’s Na Kyun-ahn, who couldn’t secure the win despite allowing one run (unearned) in the sixth inning against Ulsan. Courtesy of Lotte
In baseball, “good defense” means “good at getting outs.

So if you want to know how good a team is at defense, you can look at how well they get outs.

Because, broadly speaking, a hit or an error is the same as a “missed catch”.

How do we measure this? We just count them.

The league average is 0.678.
So far this season, the Lotte pitching staff has allowed a total of 3096 in-play balls (fair balls excluding home runs).

The Lotte outfield has turned 2039 of them (65.9%) into outs.

Out of the 10 teams in the KBO, only Lotte has a DER of less than two-thirds (66.7%) of these fair balls.

In other words, Lotte is the worst defensive team in the KBO.

The average winning percentage of the 10 teams in games with errors is 0.441.
Lotte’s offense is also extremely sensitive to errors.

In 58 games without an error, Lotte went 35-23 (0.603 winning percentage).

With an error, their record drops to 18 wins and 37 losses (0.327 winning percentage).

Lotte is the team with the largest difference in winning percentage (0.276) between games in which they committed an error and games in which they didn’t.

The line graph is Win Probability, and the bar graph is Leverage Index.
The reason Lotte is so sensitive to errors is because they make them at key moments.

In sabermetrics (baseball statistics), an indicator called LI (Leverage Index) is used to analyze important moments in a game.

For example, at the start of a game in the top of the first inning, the LI is around 0.9.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, when the home team is trailing by one run, the LI jumps to 10.9.

The average for the nine teams excluding Lotte is 1.10.
When Lotte committed an error, their average LI was 1.43.

That’s 43% more critical moments than normal (LI 1.0).

Of course, this is also the highest among the 10 KBO teams.

So it’s no wonder that the team’s performance plummets after an error.

Doosan leads the league in runs scored after an error with 104.
Lotte also tops the list for the average number of runs given up after an error until the end of the inning.

It’s a vicious cycle of making mistakes at key moments, not being able to recover from them, and eventually giving up runs.

It’s even weirder when these teams are good at baseball.

So you can say that Lotte has players who can’t get used to not being able to play defense even though they’re not good at it.

Lotte cheering message. Courtesy of Lotte
“Don’t hit a ball that’s hard to hit, and don’t catch a ball that’s hard to catch.”

Novelist Park Min-gyu wrote in his 2003 novel The Last Fan Club of the Sammi Superstars (plagiarizing a popular 1990s PC news site “Chunryan”) that Sammi played “baseball as self-discipline” in this way.

By now, you know that Lotte is a team that doesn’t catch hard-to-catch balls.

LOTTE also leads the league in the percentage of pitches thrown by opposing pitchers (56.1%).

If players are free to play “baseball as a form of self-discipline,” what the hell are Lotte fans guilty of?

As of the 6th, Lotte ranks 3rd in fewest errors (81) among the 10 KBO teams. In fact, they were tied for second in that category until shortstop Goodrum made an error (31) in their 2-7 comeback loss to Samsung on Day 6. So why does it seem like Lotte can’t play defense? Because they…