BTB: 2010 Catcher defensive rankings

Klaasen @ BTB:

let’s see which catchers in baseball are ranked as providing the most (and least) overall value to their team (I didn’t combine multi-team performances) in 2010 in runs above/below average in combined fielding errors (FE), throwing errors (TE), passed balls and wild pitches allowed (PBWP), and caught stealing (CS). …

Rank	Name	Age	Tm	PA	FERuns	TERuns	PBWPRns	CSRuns	Total
31	Ramon Castro	34	CHW	1204	-0.4	0.7	1.6	-0.9	1.0
102	A.J. Pierzynski	33	CHW	4650	0.6	0.9	-0.8	-3.0	-2.4

FutureSox looks at the defense of the Sox catching prospects

FutureSox:

It is really hard to evaluate the defensive ability of a catcher, especially for us when we don’t see the players often enough if ever. Defensive statistics like UZR have become popular, but don’t apply to catchers. Since the White Sox have three catchers that were in our top 11 prospects, I wanted to keep track of whatever catching stats I could. Take a look at the results.

I tracked the basics (steals, caught stealings, errors and passed balls) and matched the baserunning statistics to each pitcher. This also allows us to see which pitchers are able to hold runners and which are easy to run on. Obviously, it’s barely more than a month into the minor league season, but let’s take an early look. …

Kenny Williams loves him “some of these new-age stats”

Miller @ whitesox.com:

White Sox general manager Ken Williams … and his director of baseball operations, Dan Fabian, are interested in some of these new-age stats, too, and UZR, or Ultimate Zone Rating, ranked Chicago as the fourth-worst team defense in the Major Leagues in 2009.

Developed by statistician Mitchel Lichtman, UZR, as described on FanGraphs.com, where the statistics are available for free, quantifies “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity.”

UZR gets to this number by combining “range runs,” which are “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity,” and “error runs,” defined as “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by the number of errors he makes as compared to an average fielder at that position given the same distribution of balls in play.” Added to standard UZRs are the UZR/150 numbers, or “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, per 150 defensive games.” …

“Don’t use UZR/150 … if at all possible. It’s way too misleading.”

Suntimes discovers UZR

Suntimes:

The new sexy stat is run prevention, and the Mariners are the model. Simple philosophy: an opponent can’t win if an opponent can’t score. The Mariners were last in the American League in runs scored in 2009 but still won 85 games thanks largely to their solid pitching staff and a defense that helped hold opponents to an AL-low 625 earned runs. That same defense also was off the charts in ultimate zone rating, or UZR — a plus-minus stat that measures defensive ability by the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in range runs, outfield-arm runs, double-play runs and error runs combined. …

Pitching and defense

Wade:

The 2010 White Sox seem to want to be the next team in this lineage, who improve by focusing on pitching and defense. They’ve got the pitching part down pat. Jake Peavy, John Danks, Gavin Floyd, Mark Buehrle, and Daniel Hudson (or Freddy Garcia, whoever wins the fifth spot) form the top rotation in the division and one of the best in the AL.

They improved their defense, too, I don’t think that’s too much to assert, but did they improve it enough? …

FutureSox examines TotalZone (defense) numbers for Sox prospects

Viciedo’s TZ number is interesting:

Much has been made of Dayan Viciedo’s poor defensive ability, but as you can see, TotalZone likes him and had him pegged as a +4 run fielder over 130 games. It is expected that Viciedo will make the transition to first base this year, likely starting at Charlotte, and he certainly made his fair share of errors last year, but TZ indicates he may have had a future at 3B. The scouts disagree citing his lack of range and concentration as his main flaws.

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: C

Brian Joseph:

How do we measure catcher’s defense? Who knows, really. While there’s plenty of data available, it is rare to find anyone taking a stab at it. As I was working on this series and thinking how to look at catchers in a different way, I came across chuckb’s post at Beyond the Box Score called “An Attempt to Capture Catcher Defense.” At the same time, I was working on my own way to measure catcher’s defense. The similarities were evident. Using some of the same logic and with some help from our own Rob McQuown on determining what values to use (because Rob is more knowledgeable than me when it comes to that stuff!), here’s what I came up with and how I got there: …

Here is the C entry:

C (aBrR, DPAR, SAPR, CDIR, CDIR/120, DIRaa/120)

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: CF

Brian Joseph:

While UZR/150 is the stat du jour for many when it comes to defensive stats, there are plenty of statistics available that offer us some insight on defensive performance. For this reason, I thought it would be a great exercise to look at as many defensive metrics — from the unpopular fielding % and RF/9 to the very popular fielding value and UZR/150 — and rank them by position for each league. The next step was to add those rankings up and come up with a cumulative ranking at each position. Over the next week or so, I will look at each position around the Majors and present how the players ranked out at each position and which metrics were used (and where I pulled the data from).

Here is the CF entry:

CF (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, ARM, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: RF

Brian Joseph:

While UZR/150 is the stat du jour for many when it comes to defensive stats, there are plenty of statistics available that offer us some insight on defensive performance. For this reason, I thought it would be a great exercise to look at as many defensive metrics — from the unpopular fielding % and RF/9 to the very popular fielding value and UZR/150 — and rank them by position for each league. The next step was to add those rankings up and come up with a cumulative ranking at each position. Over the next week or so, I will look at each position around the Majors and present how the players ranked out at each position and which metrics were used (and where I pulled the data from).

Here is the RF entry:

RF (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, ARM, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: LF

Brian Joseph:

While UZR/150 is the stat du jour for many when it comes to defensive stats, there are plenty of statistics available that offer us some insight on defensive performance. For this reason, I thought it would be a great exercise to look at as many defensive metrics — from the unpopular fielding % and RF/9 to the very popular fielding value and UZR/150 — and rank them by position for each league. The next step was to add those rankings up and come up with a cumulative ranking at each position. Over the next week or so, I will look at each position around the Majors and present how the players ranked out at each position and which metrics were used (and where I pulled the data from).

Here is the LF entry:

LF (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, ARM, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: SS

Brian Joseph:

While UZR/150 is the stat du jour for many when it comes to defensive stats, there are plenty of statistics available that offer us some insight on defensive performance. For this reason, I thought it would be a great exercise to look at as many defensive metrics — from the unpopular fielding % and RF/9 to the very popular fielding value and UZR/150 — and rank them by position for each league. The next step was to add those rankings up and come up with a cumulative ranking at each position. Over the next week or so, I will look at each position around the Majors and present how the players ranked out at each position and which metrics were used (and where I pulled the data from).

Here is the SS entry:

SS (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, DPR, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: 3B

Brian Joseph:

While UZR/150 is the stat du jour for many when it comes to defensive stats, there are plenty of statistics available that offer us some insight on defensive performance. For this reason, I thought it would be a great exercise to look at as many defensive metrics — from the unpopular fielding % and RF/9 to the very popular fielding value and UZR/150 — and rank them by position for each league. The next step was to add those rankings up and come up with a cumulative ranking at each position. Over the next week or so, I will look at each position around the Majors and present how the players ranked out at each position and which metrics were used (and where I pulled the data from).

Here is the 3B enty:

3B (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, bF2O%, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)

Minor-League Midseason TotalZone numbers (defense)

Jeff Sackmann:

In February, Sean (“Chone”) Smith applied his TotalZone defensive metric to the last few years of minor league data. The resulting numbers confirmed some opinions, questioned some conventional wisdom, and helped us better understand the relationship between fielding at various levels of professional baseball. Sean or I will probably go further in depth when the 2009 season is in the books, but while we wait, we’ve run TZ for the full-season minors through games of July 31. Read on for some of the highlights. … Notable to my eye, though with extra sample-size caveats, is Gordon Beckham (yes, at shortstop), who comes in at +6 in very limited time at the position. It’s encouraging to see him there, since my own college fielding algorithm rated Beckham one of the best defenders in the college game in 2007-08. And—lookee here!—just above Beckham on the 2007-08 college list is…Brandon Crawford! For all the warnings we have to throw around with defensive stats, it’s great to see different systems supporting each other.

For more players go to minorleaguesplits.com. Here’s Tyler Flowers ; Click “Defense.” And Jordan Danks. And Dayan Viciedo. And Jared Mitchell.

BDD’s Defensive Metrics series: 1B & 2B

Brian Joseph:

While UZR/150 is the stat du jour for many when it comes to defensive stats, there are plenty of statistics available that offer us some insight on defensive performance. For this reason, I thought it would be a great exercise to look at as many defensive metrics — from the unpopular fielding % and RF/9 to the very popular fielding value and UZR/150 — and rank them by position for each league. The next step was to add those rankings up and come up with a cumulative ranking at each position. Over the next week or so, I will look at each position around the Majors and present how the players ranked out at each position and which metrics were used (and where I pulled the data from).

Here are the 1B and 2B entries:

1B (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, bF2O%, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)

2B (Fielding %, RF/9, UZR/150, F2O%, DPR, RZR, OOZ, Fielding Value, +/-)