Catching Up #2 - Nationals' Fielding 'Weekly' #8

Here's the latest fielding statistics for Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and Revised Zone Rating (RZR), as I've been keeping them throughout the season. There's loads of stuff I want to say, but if I say too much I'll steal some of my thunder from other 'Catching Up' posts I have planned. So let's try and stick to players still with the Nationals.

Adam Dunn is doing as well as I expected. It's just a terrible mistake to expect him to be a tolerable fielder at 1B. Gonzalez has defied confidence in his glove all year. I'm told Belliard is deceiving me with his good numbers. But, here we are, and there's little alternative to them.

When you think about what the Nationals have now, you'd have to say that overall their fielding is potentially worse than it was in the first half of the season, when it was bad enough. They consequences of various moves has been to upgrade the outfield, but to degrade the infield. Since the outfield was way below average, and the infield only a little bit below, I guess if you were paying the price in one place for an upgrade you'd do it like that. But they didn't. They dealt away better infielders and replaced them with weaker ones. The upgrade in the outfield came independently of the degraded infield.

Guzmán's improvement is their only sign that they might be saved from the potential disaster in the infield. Is he regressing to his true talent level? Or is this a misleading glimpse of sun during a perfect storm at sea? I'm putting my life jacket on, just to be safe.

Player              UZR   Change  UZR/150  Change  RZR   Change   MLBaverage
Zimmerman          12.7   + 3.3    16.9     +1.6  .748   +.008     .715
Johnson           - 6.0   + 0.4   - 6.8     +0.3  .770   +.006     .785
Guzman            - 4.4   + 1.9   - 3.0     +3.2  .769   +.010     .802
Dunn (LF)         -12.4   n.c.    -24.3     +0.2  .832   n.c.      .889
Hernandez           1.2   + 0.2     2.3     +0.2  .854   +.002     .814
Willingham (LF)   - 2.4   - 0.7   - 6.0     -0.8  .919   +.009     .889
Kearns (RF)         1.7   + 0.2     5.3     +1.9  .893   n.c.      .905
Morgan (CF)        13.2   + 6.0    35.9     +5.5  .964   +.007     .933
Harris (CF)       - 5.1   - 0.1   -16.0     -0.6  .938   n.c.      .933
Dukes (CF)        - 5.1   + 0.5   -18.6     +1.7  .898   n.c.      .933
Belliard (2B)       3.3   n.c.     11.3     -2.3  .893   +.003     .814
Dukes (RF)          0.0   - 0.5   - 1.5     -4.7  .898   -.078     .905
Gonzalez (SS)     - 5.8   - 0.6   -26.2     -1.5  .691   -.001     .802
Willingham (RF)   - 0.7   - 0.1    -2.3     -1.3  .962   +.002     .905
Dunn (1b)         - 7.3   - 3.8   -35.4     -3.6  .536   +.007     .785
Gonzalez (2b)     - 3.8   - 2.6   -16.3     -7.1  .757   -.009     .814
Dunn (RF)         - 8.3   - 0.9   -38.8     -4.2  .761   n.c.      .905

The table is in order of innings played at the position, with the cut-off at 180 innings. The biggest moves, either up or down, in each of the three measures are in bold.

UZR converts fielding statistics into a +/- rating reflecting the number of runs saved or given away. There is a basic version, which is based on the number of innings played by the player, and a normalized version that assumes everybody plays 150 games. It also is forced to sum to zero, so a player can have his UZR adjusted even when he doesn't play.
RZR is like a fielding 'batting average', dividing the number of plays made by the number of opportunities. Unlike old Zone Rating, it excludes plays made 'out of zone'. (Zone Rating divides the field into zones, and assigns responsibility among the players.) For comparative purposes, I've put at the end of each player's line the MLB average RZR for position.