In the mean time, I'll try to post one or two tidbits, starting with a review of the Nationals' fielding so far, using the same measures as last season — Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and Revised Zone Rating (RZR).
Zone Rating involves a person deciding whether a ball was in a notional fielding zone, then noting whether or not someone caught it. UZR converts this data and turns it into a +/- rating in relation to average, showing the number of rns. RZR converts this data into a percentage, while make an accounting distinction between Balls In Zone (which should be caught) and Balls Out of Zone (which are to be regarded as bonuses). There's been a bit of a stink about UZR recently, which included its creator, MGL, behaving most unconscionably towards a critic, Baseball Prospectus' Colin Wyers. I'd link to it but the crucial contributions have been edited out. However, the point is that UZR shouldn't be taken necessarily as the 'Gold Standard' in fielding metrics. For my part, I've always preferred humble RZR between the three, but Colin has had a go at that, too.
The table shows UZR, the anticipated UZR per 150 games, RZR and the NL average RZR for that player's position. I would have liked to have included Chris Dial's defensive runs calculation, but I haven't asked him to send me the data. Maybe next time. In the future, the Change column will show the change from last time.
Player UZR Change UZR/150 Change RZR Change MLBaverage
Zimmerman (3B) 4.1 - 21.7 - .742 - .698
Desmond (SS) 3.8 - 14.6 - .867 - .800
Gonzalez (3b) 2.7 - 45.9 - .875 - .815
Maxwell (RF) 1.4 - 27.7 - .833 - .898
Harris (RF) 1.1 - 14.0 - .818 - .898
Kennedy (2b) 1.1 - 7.4 - .839 - .803
Guzmán (SS) 0.5 - 7.1 - .767 - .800
Willingham (LF) 0.4 - 0.9 - .859 - .865
Guzmán (2B) -0.8 - - 3.1 - .817 - .803
Dunn (1B) -1.4 - - 5.1 - .782 - .782
Bernadina (RF) -1.7 - -14.3 - .897 - .898
Morgan (CF) -4.3 - -12.1 - .874 - .916
minimum 61 innings
The interesting thing, for me, is how well Dunn is doing at first base. I was quite the sceptic last season, but he's proved me wrong. Complimenti, Adam. He'd be my favourite National if it wasn't for a long-standing appreciation of mine for Pudge. The next interesting thing is Morgan's decline. What's going on? Third, is how the outfield generally is poor. All hail the infield though, as Guzmán has done just as well making the shift to second base as Dunn has to first.
1 comment:
I've always heard that fielding stats are not very useful on the single year level and that one season of batting stats equates to roughly 3 seasons of fielding stats. If that's the case wouldn't this be similar to looking at hitting stats sometime before the end of April? Not to say Morgan isn't in decline (he sure appears to be everywhere else) but don't we need a little more time before praise and shame can be doled out.
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