Tim Marchman: Brian Bannister should be your favorite player

Even if he has Pugh!.....................................................................(on his similarity list)

Yesterday I suggested that there are actually some people in uniform who find defensive statistics credible. Today I talked to Brian Bannister, who’s famously passionate about sabermetrics, about them. He really does have an excellent grasp of statistics in general, much more so than your average writer (actual quote: “Baseball is a game of regression to the mean") and I thought this bit of our conversation might be relevant.

..."I think it’s important to look at all three of the metrics—plus/minus, John Dewan’s plus/minus, UZR and there’s another one. There are three that are the main ones and I think whether you buy into it or not that what they’re doing with Sportvision—what’s the one going in San Francisco?—they just installed it, they have Pitch/FX, it works, its a great system. They’ve been messing with Hit/FX, that’s going to come out soon and I believe Sportvision is what it’s called, but they installed it in San Francisco, so pretty much from now on as soon as they get that established, whether you buy into the stats or not, now it’s going to actually be measured. I mean they’ll measure it from the moment the ball is hit, how much ground you cover and be able to compare you to everyone in the league, so I think that’ll end all debate as to how you are as a fielder. I think for now the lines are still a little blurry. I think they do a good job of going through and analyzing every play, but I think the machine will be able to break it down better once that’s established.”