Nationals' Fielding Review #2

Being five hours ahead of North America is making it difficult for me to keep up with the games, although that's partly because I have to help with homework and read bedtime stories, as well as going up to the University of London during the day.

Anyway, here is some fielding data. I've replaced the in-season cumulative UZR with Chris Dial's Defensive Runs Saved. You can find an explanation of what he's up to here. UZR/150 is the current UZR extrapolated to 150 games. RZR is Revised Zone Rating, which is like a fielding average but counts balls hit into a zone, rather than those the fielder actually reached.

Player              DRS   Change  UZR/150  Change  RZR   Change   MLBaverage
Zimmerman (3B)       4    +2      24.7     +3.0   .755    +.008       .704
Desmond (SS)         3    -2      14.8     +0.2   .833    -.034       .811
Gonzalez (3b)        3    -1      44.0     -1.9   .882    +.007       .704
Maxwell (RF)         2     -      21.6     -6.1   .857    +.018       .885
Harris (RF)          0     -      13.3     -0.7   .852    +.044       .885
Kennedy (2b)         0     -     - 4.8    -12.2   .800    -.039       .819
Guzmán (SS)          1    +1       8.9     +1.8   .750    -.017       .811
Willingham (LF)     -2     -       5.8     +4.9   .880    +.021       .871
Guzmán (2B)          3    +3     - 2.6     +0.5   .839    +.022       .819
Dunn (1B)           -2    +1     - 2.7     +2.4   .776    -.006       .772
Bernadina (RF)       1    +1     -11.3     +3.0   .915    +.015       .885
Morgan (CF)          0    -1     -11.8     +0.3   .883    +.009       .916
minimum 73 innings

Harper commented after the last fielding review on how we need more like three years' data to get a sense of a player's talent as a fielder. This is true, but one of my old-fashioned sabermetric principles is that we should be more interested, as fans, in what happened rather than what we can expect to happen. Over three years, Dunn might turn out to be the worst first-baseman in the league. However, for the moment he's been doing better than I thought we had any right to expect. I'll keep singing praises for his effort and dedication so long as he keeps that up — and even if he starts having difficulties, because he's clearly trying his best. Jolly good show!