Amazin’ Avenue: UZR Hates The Mets Outfield

Ooh, baby, ooh-ee
It’s that million dollar bosch

The Mets have the 2nd worst Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) in baseball, at -20.1 runs.  Only the embarrassing Nationals measure out worse.  This number jumps off the page because the Omar Minaya Mets have been strong defensively.  They were worth +27.1, +6.8, and +9.8 defensive runs in 2008, 2007, and 2006, respectively. Team ERA outperformed team FIP in each of these seasons, consistent with a team that plays above average defense.  We’ve seen that UZR correlates decently with FIP-ERA.  Based on how poorly UZR rates Mets defense this year, one would expect team ERA to underperform team FIP.  This is not the case, as ERA is once again better than FIP by 0.11.  Compare to the Nationals, whose ERA is worse than their FIP by 0.52.  It’s always prudent to seek another opinion on defense statistics, so I looked at plus/minus (+/-) and Revised Zone Rating (RZR) to maybe figure out what the heck is going on here.

...The disparity between UZR and RZR regarding outfielders once again stands out.  R.J. Anderson noted at Fangraphs that UZR is still using Shea Stadium park factors for its calculations.  He proposed that this might be having an effect on Carlos Beltran’s poor UZR this season, but ultimately decided that such a small sample isn’t enough to make any conclusions.  Still, the 4 players who have played the most outfield innings for the Mets this season all rate worse per UZR than +/-.  It would be useful if a home/away UZR breakdown was available at Fangraphs, but it isn’t (yet).  Also useful would be an analysis of these stats for all team’s outfields to provide some context, but teamwide +/- data is not readily available.

Defense stats are inexact but always improving.  I agree with R.J. that less than half a season’s data is not much to go on either.  However, it might be wise to take Mets OF UZR with an even larger grain of salt than usual, atleast until Citi Field park factors are used in its calculation.