League Year-By-Year Fielding--Averages. A brief inquiry into their history might give us a new perspective on defense and on the report that defense is the new OBA. The first proposals to reassess fielding statistics involved adjustments to the defensive statistical categories that have existed since 1876. (Some of those balls would have turned into doubles. A hit would have to be recorded not only as a hit for the batter and against the pitcher but also as a missed opportunity for the fielder(s). Revised Zone Rating (RZR) involves two major improvements over plain Zone Rating. The Mariners, ranked twentieth in MLB in UZR (1) in 2008, led all of MLB in that category (+85) in 2009. Individual Conference Pitching Statistics # Player ERA WHIP W-L APP-GS CG SHO SV IP H R ER BB SO 2B 3B HR AB B/AVG WP HBP BK SFA SHA Bio Link; Totals: 0.00: NaN: 0-0: 0-0: 0: 0: 0: 0.0: 0 During the regular season, Texas played a total of 34 games at home and 30 games away from UFCU Disch-Falk Field. outfield. Stolen bases against individual pitchers and catchers began to be recorded more reliably, and catchers began to be credited for caught stealing. Otherwise the system of measuring defense remained fairly static until Bill James began to publish his groundbreaking work in the late 1970s. (Total Runs does not apply to pitchers.). [fn]Ibid., 6367.[/fn]. Franklin had a UZR value of 29, indicating that, in theory, he saved 29 runs. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) is the defensive metric used in our WAR calculations to measuring fielding runs above average relative to the average player at that position. second basemen despite logging more innings at the position . Its almost impossible, writes Alan Schwarz in The Numbers Game, for the modern baseball fan, conditioned to focus on the battle between pitcher and batter, to appreciate how important fielding was in the early game. BIS software enables the video scouts to simply click on the computer image of the field to plot the hit location. ), to check the reliability of their statistical analysis. David Laurila of Baseball Prospectus asked him whether defensive metrics [are] an important part of your evaluation process or do you rely primarily on scouting? Hendry replied: Its scouting for me. [/fn] A players Fielding Runs number is either positive or negative, unless its zero; an average fielder at any position would save zero runs. )[fn]Peter Abraham, Calling Jamess Number: Stat Guru Senses New Defensive Focus, Boston Globe, 15 January 2010.[/fn]. Even a few Hall of Famers. I look at each batters career rates of outs by position. Plus/Minus Runs Saved is the largest component of Defensive Runs Saved for all positions except catcher. [/fn] But is that still true? [/fn] Using Defense Efficiency Record (see below), he also adjusted for team defense to compensate for the fewer opportunities that a given fielder is likely to have if he plays on a team with good defense. [fn]Sean Smith, Measuring Defense for Players Back to 1956, 25 March 2008, HardballTimes.com. The SPORTS REFERENCE and STATHEAD trademarks are owned exclusively by Sports Reference LLC. A practical advantage that plain Range Factor has over Relative Range Factor is that it can be generated entirely from the data in box scores (you dont consider, for example, whether the pitchers the fielders are playing behind are groundball or fly-ball pitchers), although the reliability of plain Range Factor is inferior to that of RRF. Current: If the ball goes between the first baseman and second baseman for a hit, does this count as a missed opportunity for the first baseman, the second baseman, both, or neither? However, like Range Factor, Adjusted Range Factor yields an estimate, not an exact measure of the opportunities presented to a fielder. Extensive Play-by-Play Data Available. Their record in 2008 was dismalthey won all of 61 games. For example. Some high school data is courtesy David McWater. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by. Welcome to Total Zone. But after a year, most positions get regressed somewhere around 50 percent, so we treat a +10 for a season worth of data as a +5, for example. The caught-stealing percentage is tracked for pitchers as it is for catchers. player has saved over his peers. Infielders are scored for their ability to turn double plays, and catchers for their success at controlling the running game and prevent passed balls and wild pitches. All voting is based on a combination of defensive statistics and visual observation. "Depth" is from home plate, in feet. Or, rather, is the converse still truethat the compensation to players whose glove is better than their bat is not commensurate with their true value? This displays a one-pixel-by-one-pixel hit location where a ball lands or is fielded. Spotless records are enticing In this article we use the term defense mostly in the twenty-first-century sense, to mean fielding as distinct from pitching. The trick is to know not only how to read the maps for what they are, a set of honest if not infallible data points, but how to read them with one eye while keeping the other one on the ball in flight as Franklin Gutierrez takes off to run it down. For outfielders and corner infielders, their Plus/Minus Runs Saved number is calculated by taking their positional value and multiplying that by their Enhanced Plus/Minus. Players attempt to catch a fly ball or popup and it drops between them. attempt. From the beginning, this project involved dividing up the field into zones. [fn]Ibid., 1113. UZR is a measure of the actual number of runs a player saves because of his defense. Even though our calculator can do the work for you, it doesn't hurt to learn how to do the math yourself. As for the resistance from some front offices, are they allergic to innovation, or is it that they have a healthy aversion to busyness? [/fn] From 2003 through 2008, Albert Pujols and Mark Teixeira had the best Enhanced Plus/ Minus at first; Mike Jacobs and Richie Sexson had the worst. For example, each hard fliner hit 350 feet at vector 180 (the vector representing straightaway center field) is compared only to other hard fliners hit 350 feet at vector 180. Some kids have outstanding fielding % because they can only get to the balls an average kid can get to. What Im most curious about in 2010 is how much better were going to be defensively, Bill James, who works as special advisor on baseball operations for the Red Sox, said earlier this year, during the offseason. At the college and professional levels, it is about .970 and above. Ive been doing the [offensive] stuff all my life. Means a slip-up here and there, a batted-ball event with a launch angle between eight Baserunner kills are a more direct measurement of an outfielders arm than are assists, which include relay throws to an infielder whose own throw may have had more to do with the eventual putout than did the outfielders relay. [fn]Doug, Miller, Four New Defensive Stats Explained, 11 January 2010, MLB.mlb.com.[/fn]. . )[fn]Dewan, Fielding Bible, 11. Apparently most of the baseball writers voting on the NL MVP that year didnt recognize the strength of Utleys seasonhe finished only fourteenth in the voting. After the average fan leaves the ballpark at the end of the game, he wouldnt be able to say for certain whether a players UZR increased or decreased as he would know, for example, if the batting average of a player who got one hit in four at-bats rose or fell. Here are some examples: Conversely, fielders are credited for plays theyre not expected to make. Types are classified as groundball, liner, fly ball, fliner (balls considered halfway between a fly ball and line drive), or bunt. WEAK%: % of batted balls weakly hit (fly balls and ground balls) HHB%: % of batted balls that are line drives or hard ground balls. Each one saves .73 to .76 runs per Plus/Minus point. In DA, every zone is assigned to at least one fielderno gaps in the outfield, for example, are recognized, as they are in ZR, and every ball put into play is deemed to be at least possibly fieldable. [fn]Dewan, Fielding Bible, 217. window") of the runner is at least 30 ft/sec. For the outfielders and corner infielders, it is adjusted to reflect the number of bases saved (on plays that could be or were extra base hits)the result is an Enhanced Plus/Minus number. Fielding percentage puts a fielder's number of putouts and assists in comparison to the total number of opportunities they've had for putouts and assists. [fn]Personal communication with Vince Gennaro. James adjusted for these wrinkles in Relative Range Factor (RRF), which he introduced in a chapter in The Fielding Bible, twenty years after his original article on plain Range Factor. Become a Stathead today and run queries with our, Most Unique Players by Age by Similarity Scores, Most Games without a World Series Appearance, Most Games without a Postseason Appearance, Highest Career and Single-Season Salaries, Scores from any date in Major League history, Minor, Foreign, College, & Black Baseball, Frequently Asked Questions about MLB and Baseball, Subscribe to Stathead Baseball: Get your first month FREE. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. Outfielders are rated on how often runners advance, stay put, or are thrown out in extrabase advancement situations. . In the past year many baseball writers have remarked that defense is the new on-base percentage, meaning that its an undervalued assetas the ability merely to get on base was about a decade ago, when driving in runs was thought to be the ticket, or so said Michael Lewis in Moneyball. A much more talented player could have a lower fielding % because he has much greater range and actually can get to balls an average HS player can not make a play on. For example, a fielder who catches a 25% Out Probability play gets +.75; one who fails to make the play gets -.25. In the original Zone Rating from STATS, players get extra credit for fielding a ball out of their zone. We present them here for purely educational purposes. [fn]Dewan, Fielding Bible, 199.[/fn]. The reason there are still more inefficiencies on the defensive side is that defense remains hard to quantify, Jeff Kingston, assistant general manager of the Seattle Mariners, told Sports Illustrated earlier this year. What is the positional adjustment? MLB LeadersAL:--- General Batting --- Batting Average Home Runs At Bats Runs Scored Hits Singles Doubles Triples Total Bases Runs Batted In Sacrifice Bunts Sacrifice Flies Stolen Bases Caught Stealing Walks Intentional Walks Hit By Pitch Times On Base Batter Strikeouts Ground into Double Play Batter Plate Appearances Games Played Slugging . Defensive Average (DA). In 2009 they won 87, scoring 31 fewer runs than the year before, but the runs they allowed were 119 fewer. Total Zone Rating and initial framework for Wins above Replacement calculations provided by Sean Smith. But Howard ranked only fiftieth in the major leagues in Total Runs; in fact, three teammates, Utley, Jimmy Rollins, and Shane Victorino, all had more Total Runs than Howard did. Referring to the quantification of defense, he comments that we havent been doing it all our lives. Sitting and watching or scoring a game, any casual fan can deduce that a batter who gets 1 hit in 4 at-bats in a game is batting .250 for the game. All rights reserved. [fn]Peter Abraham, Calling Jamess Number: Stat Guru Senses New Defensive Focus, Boston Globe, 15 January 2010. His zone rating is simply plays divided by opportunities; in this way, zone-rating numbers are numerically similar to fielding percentage.