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Yes, he ranks third despite not having played in 2008 or ‘09.
Note also: Bonds was certainly the #1 player of the 1990's.
The 11th best of the decade?
edit: From 2000-2004, his age 22-26 seasons, Chavez hit .280/.357/.513/126 OPS+ with 150 home runs. From 97-01, Rolen's 22-26 seasons, he hit .286/.378/.514/127 OPS+ with 129 home runs. He then proceeded to pretty much play the entirety of the rest of the decade, at a .283/.366/.490/123 line with another 150 homers. After his age 26 season, Chavez hit .250/.326/.441/102/66 and, all things considered, will have gone down as being completely finished by his age 30 season.
I won't say he would've been a slam dunk Hall of Famer or anything, but Chavez was basically on the right track, and then, just like that, it was over. Rolen more or less got to play a full career.
But he probably did deserve to win a Cy Young in 2005, so it mostly balances out.
Man, I had forgotten how much Eric Chavez looked like a superstar through 2004.
I noticed him 5th but I haven't RTFA yet to see who I might have chosen ahead of him. Could be I agree -- he did play most of the decade, after all.
Mainly I was too surprised at Bonds only being third -- and trying to work through that in my head -- to focus on Ichiro.
Entirely agreed. Any one of us can quibble here or there, but on balance this is a pretty damn fine accounting.
On pure quality, I agree. But Chipper's been awfully fragile the second half of the decade. Those extra 30+ games per season Ichiro's been playing since 2004 sure add up to a lot of value, don't they? Beltran hasn't been as durable as Ichiro, but more so than Chipper.
On balance, I guess I'd still put Chipper ahead of them. But staying in the line-up counts, that's all I'm saying.
Beltran wasn't significantly more durable than Chipper. There's less than 250 PA between them.
Beltran has had injuries, but no where near the level of Chipper. Beltran has more power, been a better offensive player, and when you factor in positional adjustments a more valuable defender than Ichiro.
So I'm confident in putting Beltran ahead of Ichiro, but I'd have to waste some time to determine if Chipper is ahead, in the middle, or behind both of them.
Like #23 said, this is all just minor quibbles. The list is solid.
I think my favorites are the (several) people campaigning for Griffey to be on the list.
By a lot, I would think. OWP of .600 in the '00's.
RTFA, already.
Also, I wouldn't have expected to see Brad Radke or Corey Koskie in the top 100 of the decade.
And oh yeah: he has a high OPS+ for his career than Mark Teixiera, who Neyer says is the the "best-hitting non-Pujolsian first baseman in the majors."
-- MWE
Howard: 167, 145, 140, 133, 124
Teixera: 152, 149, 149, 144, 131
here's my list
1 Alex Rodriguez 57.32 Barry Bonds 53.6
3 Albert Pujols 53.4
4 Lance Berkman 41.4
5 Todd Helton 41.0
6 Chipper Jones 40.3
7 Randy Johnson 38.6
8 Manny Ramirez 38.3
9 Derek Jeter 37.4
10 Johan Santana 37.1
11 Roy Halladay 36.8
12 Roy Oswalt 36.2
13 Mark Buehrle 34.4
14 Pedro Martinez 34.3
15 Vladimir Guerrero 34.3
16 Carlos Beltran 33.9
17 Bobby Abreu 33.8
18 Tim Hudson 33.7
19 Jim Edmonds 33.3
20 Jorge Posada 32.0
21 Jim Thome 31.5
22 C.C. Sabathia 31.0
23 Curt Schilling 30.7
24 Brian Giles 30.7
25 Ichiro Suzuki 30.6
26 Javier Vazquez 30.2
27 Carlos Delgado 29.7
28 Greg Maddux 29.6
29 Jason Giambi 29.3
30 Barry Zito 29.1
31 Miguel Tejada 28.9
32 Scott Rolen 28.8
33 Roger Clemens 28.7
34 Brandon Webb 28.5
35 Carlos Zambrano 27.9
36 Derek Lowe 27.8
37 Jeff Kent 27.4
38 Chase Utley 27.1
39 Andy Pettitte 26.8
40 Mike Mussina 26.6
41 Gary Sheffield 26.3
42 J.D. Drew 25.6
43 Derrek Lee 25.4
44 Magglio Ordonez 25.3
45 Tom Glavine 25.0
46 Miguel Cabrera 24.3
47 Mark Teixeira 24.1
48 Mike Cameron 23.8
49 Johnny Damon 23.1
50 John Lackey 22.8
51 Adam Dunn 22.7
52 David Wright 22.7
53 Luis Gonzalez 22.7
54 Troy Glaus 22.4
55 Joe Mauer 22.4
56 Jarrod Washburn 22.3
57 Andruw Jones 22.1
58 Mariano Rivera 22.0
59 Jake Peavy 21.8
60 Aramis Ramirez 21.7
61 Jimmy Rollins 21.6
62 Chris Carpenter 21.5
63 David Ortiz 21.3
64 Alfonso Soriano 21.3
65 Tim Wakefield 21.3
66 Josh Beckett 21.2
67 Ivan Rodriguez 21.2
68 Hanley Ramirez 20.9
69 Eric Chavez 20.9
70 Bartolo Colon 20.8
71 Ben Sheets 20.8
72 Danny Haren 20.7
73 Kevin Millwood 20.7
74 Sammy Sosa 20.5
75 Jamie Moyer 20.5
76 John Smoltz 20.2
77 A.J. Burnett 19.8
78 Freddy Garcia 19.7
79 Jon Garland 19.6
80 Grady Sizemore 19.5
81 Jason Schmidt 19.4
82 Doug Davis 19.3
83 Matt Holliday 19.0
84 Ted Lilly 18.8
85 Brad Radke 18.6
86 Mike Lowell 18.5
87 Rafael Furcal 18.4
88 Brian Roberts 18.2
89 Kelvim Escobar 18.1
90 Carlos Guillen 18.0
91 Jason Bay 17.9
92 Kenny Rogers 17.8
93 Bronson Arroyo 17.8
94 Larry Walker 17.7
95 Nomar Garciaparra 17.7
96 Brad Penny 17.5
97 Carlos Lee 17.5
98 Michael Young 17.4
99 Ray Durham 17.4
100 Shawn Green 17.4
101 Torii Hunter 17.3
102 Randy Wolf 17.3
103 Jeff Suppan 17.2
104 Cliff Floyd 16.5
105 Livan Hernandez 16.4
106 Kerry Wood 16.3
107 Frank Thomas 16.3
108 Ken Griffey 16.3
109 Jeff Bagwell 16.3
110 Travis Hafner 16.2
111 Mike Piazza 16.1
112 Ryan Howard 16.1
113 Billy Wagner 16.1
114 Victor Martinez 16.0
115 Melvin Mora 15.9
116 Felix Hernandez 15.8
117 Moises Alou 15.8
118 Jermaine Dye 15.7
119 Raul Ibanez 15.7
120 Joe Nathan 15.6
Guy, you've shown yourself in the past unable to be objective about Jeter's defense. It hasn't been as bad in recent years as you state. Why don't you just get it over with and claim that Julio Lugo is a more valuable player than Derek Jeter, while you're at it?
Fangraphs' UZR numbers actually like Jeter's fielding a little better than TotalZone, to the tune of about 10 runs over the span from 2002-09. Beltran loses about 10 runs of fielding value over the same span, while Ichiro gains around 6. So if you prefer Fangraphs' UZR to TotalZone, Jeter actually gains ground.
I have him at 12 wins better (with the bat) than Ichiro, and 6 wins better than Beltran (for the 2000-09 decade)
Is it possible that Ichiro's dee vaults him 12+ wins over Jeter? Possible, yes, but 12 wins is a lot of runs- Is it possible that Ichiro's dee is so superior to Jeter's that it vaults him so far over that it's not even close? I don't see it (and I'm no fan of Jeter's dee)
The only reason I know of to doubt the WOWY result is Jeter's not-too-bad UZR ratings. However, Jeter's UZR was MUCH worse when it was based on STATS data, he only became tolerably bad when MGL switched to BIS data (or vice-versa, I may have it backward). So I have a hard time having confidence that the "new" UZR rating the right one, when WOWY, the "old" UZR, and his basic defensive stats all tell us he has been an historically bad SS.
I'm actually agnostic on the question of whether he's gotten a bit better the last few seasons. Hard to say. But it wouldn't change his value over the full decade much either way.
Howard didn't make his MLB debut until 2004, and didn't play a full season until 2006. That's got to hurt your standing on any "top players of an arbitrary ten-year period that starts with a year ending in zero" list.
Ray, I *think* Neyer is primarily looking at total Sean WAR for the decade--although I don't know how he gets Jeter so high if he is-- in which case Bonds' missed playing time definitely puts him third. For the decade, Bonds is at 64.4 wins, ARod at 72.9, and Pujols at 76.6, hence Neyer's ordering. (Side note: I believe Sean adjusts for league quality differences. If he doesn't, then obviously Bonds and Pujols move down and ARod moves up.) However, I think it's pretty reasonable to put extra weight on big seasons in this sort of exercise; if you do so by squaring the value of each season and the adding them up, Bonds *just* jumps into first, well ahead of ARod and effectively tied with Pujols. I think Pujols and Bonds are both totally reasonable choices.
Right. I immediately noticed Howard's omission, and of course immediately suspected that Joe Sheehan had collaborated with Rob on the list :-) But then when I started comparing Howard to some of the players at the bottom of the list (Koskie, Radke, KRogers, Figgins, Thomas, etc.) I was surprisingly forced to conclude that they probably belonged over Howard.
I'm no Howard basher -- he's overrated and has his weaknesses but he's a fine player -- but I can't really see a strong argument that he belongs on the list, given how many years in the decade he wasn't around for.
Easily. WOWY has Jeter at -436 runs for his career (thru 2008), so let's call that -305 for the 2000s. It has Ichiro at +202 runs. Credit Jeter with another 122 runs for the position difference (SS vs. RF), based on Sean's position adjustment. That's a total advantage for Ichiro of 385 runs on defense, almost 40 wins. So yes, when you essentially compare the best and worst fielders in baseball over a decade, the difference can be very large.
For anyone interested in the WOWY data, or the limitations of Total Zone, look at this thread.
Honestly, I think JPFW13 is if anything overrating Griffey. He spent several years this decade playing some of the worst center field in baseball history. To pick a random name below him, I would certainly take Victor Martinez's decade over Griffey's.
The most direct comp to Howard at the bottom of the list is Frank Thomas, whose value is very similar but probably a touch higher for the decade.
On the other hand, in the words of one of the commenters,
So there's that.
If he does, then Neyer may have gotten himself in trouble by adjusting for them again.
You're right. You've decided that one defensive metric, one that is totally out of line with the others, is the best metric and all the others are worthless. Nothing subjective about that at all.
WOWY has Jeter at -436 runs for his career (thru 2008)
-436 plays.
That's a total advantage for Ichiro of 385 runs on defense, almost 40 wins.
I, for one, am now totally convinced that a good right fielder can be worth 4 wins a year more on defense than a below average SS. Thank you for opening my eyes and showing me that reality doesn't need to make sense as long as I blindly believe in extreme outliers.
Consider how many years some of the guys near the bottom of the list weren't "really around for", either (even though they played). Jose Valentin was only a good player for five years of the decade - yet he's on the list. Corey Koskie had basically 4 1/2 seasons of duty plus two injury filled partial seasons - yet he's on the list. Basically, what Neyer did was to give some of those players near the bottom of the list credit for showing up and not being completely awful, over players like Howard who appeared later in the decade and were consistently excellent. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
-- MWE
Right; the extra seasons for Thomas put him over Howard.
SASSY!
You're right though - a difference of 40 runs per season between the two of them just isn't reasonable on the face of it.
15 Vladimir Guerrero 34.3
16 Carlos Beltran 33.9
When I look at it, I easily assume that Beltran was a way more valuable player this decade than Vlad.
Beltran: 6091 PA, 121 OPS+, 251 HR, 256 SB, 89.5% SB%;
Vlad: 6094, 146 OPS+, 315 HR, 147 SB, 68.7% SB%;
Beltran, by all accounts, is a fabulous CF. I wonder how many defensive runs you have him for this decade?
Vlad started the decade as a decent RF, but fell quickly to an awful RF to a Glorified DH.
I'm fascinated by these different opinions on how to adjust for quality defense vs bad defense, different positions, base running, while factoring in say a 25 OPS+ difference to calculate WAR.
Yes, I think it's arguable, Mike. It's just that when I checked people like Koskie (I didn't check Valentin) I didn't see a clear argument that Howard was more valuable. I expected to see a stronger argument for him than I saw. I agree you can probably get him on the list, but IMO it's not a slam dunk.
But I would not extend this to the outliers of the system, like Jeter (worst TZ at short) and assume that he's even worse than those numbers. As has been pointed out, UZR has more detailed data, and Jeter doesn't look any worse in UZR than TZ for the comparable years.
The rest of your post, however, makes little sense. The WOWY assessement of Jeter is entirely consistent with his actual PO and Assist rates, and pretty consistent with "old UZR" -- it's not an outlier at all. And UZR is mostly useful for trying to get a bead on a player with only a few seasons of data. When you have 15 years of data, as we do for Jeter, we don't really need to worry much about adjusting for his opportunities -- they will be very close to average.
As for SS vs. RF, are you serious? In this case we're comparing a RF who most observers believe can be a good CF, against a SS who many people believe should have left the position a long time ago. Those assessments may or may not be correct, but you can't answer them by saying "RFs usually aren't as valuable as SSs." Of course that's true, but it doesn't tell us anything useful about Ichiro and Jeter.
As for UZR, it really depends on which UZR you want to believe. Is there evidence that the BIS data is superior, in general or for SSs?
What the new UZR wants us to believe is that Jeter has had vastly fewer opportunities to make outs over his career than a typical SS. Not only that, but far fewer opportunities than we would expect once we control for the pitchers on the mound and opposing hitters (which is what WOWY does). I'm not sure how to precisely estimate the likelihood of Jeter having this much bad luck in the field, but given his career length it has to be on the order of 1 in a million. Now, considering his fame, wealth, and girlfriends, I won't dispute that he deserves that much bad luck in the field, I just don't believe it happened.
I have Vlad 4.4 wins better with the bat
My list is a work in progress, I'm still thinking through defense, I have far less confidence in defensive metrics than offensive ones, so tend to regress quite a bit.
And PO and Assist rates are almost meaningless when measuring a player's defense without context.
pretty consistent with "old UZR"
Of course, its old UZR. You have yet to explain why its more reliable than new UZR or RZR or TZ or any of the other freely available metrics that are way out of line with your position but generally agree with one another. Why are all of those other metrics wrong?
In this case we're comparing a RF who most observers believe can be a good CF
IIRC though, the metrics thought he was a pretty lousy CFer. And the Mariners were quick to move him back to RF in 08 despite not having a full time CFer or a notable defensive stud for center.
against a SS who many people believe should have left the position a long time ago
Are these observers or statheads? Because my impression is that plenty of observers think he's just fine out at SS, including those who vote for the Gold Glove. So if we are going with observers, I don't think you can reasonably make much of a distinction between the two.
What the new UZR wants us to believe is that Jeter has had vastly fewer opportunities to make outs over his career than a typical SS. Not only that, but far fewer opportunities than we would expect once we control for the pitchers on the mound and opposing hitters (which is what WOWY does).
It's probably a conspiracy!
I'm not sure how to precisely estimate the likelihood of Jeter having this much bad luck in the field, but given his career length it has to be on the order of 1 in a million.
And that's the problem behind your entire line of thinking! It's not luck. It's how the Yankees pitch. They have had pitchers that throw the ball in ways that consistently produce less groundballs to the SS than most other baseball teams. The Yanks have had the exact same baseball management for Jeter's entire career. They've had the same catcher for nearly Jeter's entire career. They had the same manager for nearly Jeter's entire career and since they got the new one, Jeter's numbers have gone up. It makes sense that you're coming to such bizarre conclusions. You're chalking up something that has been methodically put into practice for nearly 13 years to random chance. That's liable to make ones conclusions come out wacky.
I have got to get back to contracts. I know I'll have another opportunity to rehash this tired conversation again sometime in the next few months.
I don't think Rob is above making a page-hit decision here, either. You run the numbers and see that Ryan Howard and Corie Koskie are essentially equally valuable for your given time period. It's a toss up, really. So who do you choose? Well, you're probably going to get more hits from Philly fans furious that Howard is omitted than you would from Corey Koskie's mom.
It depends on which metric. IIRC, Dial had him as below average there, but TotalZone had him as notably above average - about 20 runs in 1.5 seasons.
Not that this settles the debate, but if true this is something WOWY would certainly detect.
Well, its obviously doing a worse job of detecting it than all the other metrics out there.
WOWY controls for the Yankee pitchers. It compares how many outs Jeter recorded behind those pitchers, and compares that to the outs made by all the other SSs who have played behind those 100+ different pitchers. So that's accounted for. And as for blaming Torre, well, I don't even know what to say....
And PO and Assist rates are almost meaningless when measuring a player's defense without context.
I think this is the real crux of the problem. I get the sense that a lot of posters here believe this. And for any one season, maybe two, there's a lot of truth to it. But with a large enough sample size, stats like assists, POs, and DPs gives a pretty accurate read. There's a tendency today to look on these as "primitive," kind of like fielding percentage. That's mistaken. Over an entire career, it's not at all clear that UZR will be any more accurate than what we can see in assist and PO totals, and it's likely less accurate than the WOWY method.
Consider the basic stats for Jeter and some other recent top-level SSs, all pro-rated to Jeter's 18,440 innings (Assists/Putouts/DP):
Jeter 5354 / 3158 / 1132
Ripken 6359 / 3328 / 1426
Trammell 6229 / 3423 / 1319
Ozzie 7089 / 3597 / 1346
Jeter is basically 1200 plays behind Ripken and Trammell, and 2200 plays behind Ozzie. Now, SSs today make about .1 fewer assists and .1 fewer PO per game than they did in the 1980s, so let's debit the other guys 400 plays for that. That leaves Jeter about 800 plays behind Ripken/Trammell, or 600 runs. And he’s about 1800 plays, or 1350 runs behind Ozzie. That's about the difference between Ted Williams and an average hitter!
These differences are just gigantic. If you want to talk about conspiracy theories, it's the idea that Yankee pitchers, catchers, and managers have somehow conspired to keep the ball away from Jeter hundreds of times over the past 15 years.
Actually, come to think of it, that wouldn't have been a bad idea......
Isn't this the problem with placing too much confidence in defensive metrics, even looking at a wide swath of them? Below average vs. notably above average is a wide gap. It would be like if a hitter with no SB value had a .280 EqA but a 95 OPS+. Of course, we don't see that.
(EDITED)
From the link you posted upthread:
Accounting for actual (well, approximate) team balls in play allowed per inning would knock Ozzie's numbers down by about 7.3% with respect to Jeter, and Ripken's by 5.6%.
That's without correcting for the myriad of other issues with raw range factor, which do not necessarily even out over the course of a long career if it's spent entirely (or almost entirely) with the same team.
That's at least partially because everyone has agreed on what the basic offensive elements are, and everyone has agreed on how those basic elements are to be measured - for offense, they're all distinct single events. For fielding, there's still considerable disagreement on even how to measure the events and outcomes.
With that being said, even with strong agreement on these offensive elements and their ability to measure past performance, we still see huge spreads in the future predictions - periodically of the 0.280 EqA vs. 95 OPS+ magnitude. Fielding is probably closer to offensive prediction in terms of accuracy than anything else.
Yes, but I don't see how that does anything but help my point.
But we're talking about evaluation of past performance, not prediction of future performance. The fielding metrics are all over the map when trying to evaluate past performance.
Probably because I'm not arguing with you. Fielding metrics are much more volatile than hitting metrics, and much less reliable - especially in single season chunks. As a result, when examining them, you want to take in as many as you can, balance them with scouting reports, and then possibly still apply some sort of additional regression (toward average? Toward reputation? Both? Something else? I don't know).
Again, not arguing with you (which is part of the problem, since I usually am arguing with you). I'm just trying to give a point of comparison to the current level of likely accuracy within a single fielding system or across multiple fielding systems. To me, that most reasonable comparison in accuracy just happened to be between fielding evaluation and offensive prediction.
Which is exactly why I added the 400 play adjustment in Jeter's favor. If we use your numbers instead, it's more like 475 plays vs. Ripken, and maybe 700 vs. Ozzie (the latter strikes me as too high, but let's be conservative). Fine. Then can we agree that Jeter is about 525 runs worse than Ripken or Trammell, and 1100 runs behind Ozzie? (And I'm using Ozzie's career rates -- he was certainly better than that over the ages Jeter has played thus far.)
As for spending a career with one team, again, WOWY adjusts for all the pitchers, and the hitters, and the park. And as it turns out, none of that changes the conclusion much at all: when other SSs play behind these same pitchers, facing the same hitters, those SSs simply make a LOT more outs.
And BTW, new UZR, RZR, and Plus-Minus all use the BIS data. So the idea that "most" metrics say Jeter isn't that bad is mostly an illusion: ONE source of PBP data indicates Jeter isn't terrible. And TZ is really just a crude measure compared to WOWY, because it essentially gives half the blame for every ball Jeter misses to either the Yankees 2Bman or 3Bman.
Why start now?
No, because:
That's without correcting for the myriad of other issues with raw range factor
Suppose someone claimed that Juan Pierre has in fact been an excellent hitter once you account for the “context” of the pitches he faced. Under this theory, Pierre has faced an unusually difficult array of pitches over his career, and if not for that he would be a league-average hitter. Could that be true? Theoretically, yes. In reality, no.
This is basically the argument being made for Jeter, except that there is one data source (BIS) which suggests he really has faced very unusual fielding opportunities. My view is that this one source should be treated with a lot of skepticism. First, it’s just incredibly unlikely to be true. Second, a very good analysis finds that after you adjust for almost all the factors that could plausibly reduce his opportunities (WOWY), Jeter still made far fewer outs than he should have. With 15 years of data, the burden of proof should be on those who think Jeter is substantially better than his assist and putout totals imply.
Here's a good question for Jeter defenders: has any other player in the history of the game had such extreme bad (or good) luck in terms of ball distribution? Can we identify great fielders who had average PO and assist totals over a long career? Any average fielders who had terrible assist and PO totals? Or is Jeter unique in the history of the game in this alleged misfortune?
and roy oswalt is the third highest ranked pitcher and the comments about the AL are not reasonable because the shift betwen AL and NL didn't happen until 2005. but roy has been ignored - and the fact that he got zero all-star game appearances for FOUR years is, um, because, um, he's not famous?
The post I was addressing was arguing with raw PO/A/DP, not with WOWY. I was more interested in this statement:
than I was in arguing about Jeter's defense specifically.
Bad defense, and lot and lots of outs. Those two probably drove down his value enough using whatever metric he chose. That's my best guess.
My off-the-cuff impression was that Soriano would be about equal to Jimmy Rollins, whom Neyer ranks 52nd. JPWF's list backs up that impression... I don't know. It seems odd.
Do you have any reason to doubt that? Play-by-play data adds potential bias as well as additional information. I don't know at what point the lines cross and we're better off with the raw stats (compared to league), but it's certainly possible that the tipping point is well short of Jeter's 14 seasons. Look, the switch from STATS data to BIS data had a huge impact on Jeter's UZR rating. I forget the exact numbers, but it meant the difference between Jeter being cosmically bad vs. a bit below average. So with a large enough sample, it's not at all clear how much value added the PBP data provides.
But I certainly don't think the raw stats are the best we can do. Adjusting for the pitchers is important to do, and LHH vs. RHH. Everything else is probably pretty marginal.
Jeter 31.7%
Ripken 29.9%
Trammell 23.5%
Ozzie 37.8%
The league median for the last 30 years or so typically runs at about 25-26%. That number for Ozzie is just insane - he played in front of more pitching staffs that were 45% or more left-handed than staffs that were 25% or less.
My impression is that the main function of pitcher handedness is the effect it has on batter handedness, in terms of teams pursuing the platoon advantage. Considering the recent advent of the LOOGY, it might be helpful to split this data up between starters and relievers, and see if the effect changes between them. But I'm not going to mess with that right now, obviously.
I don't know if one is superior to the other, but UZR/BIS is easier to find, the only thing available for the last 2.5-3(?) years, and the only one that will be used going forward, to the best of my knowledge.
I find the conclusions of WOWY - if it has Ozzie 1100 runs better than Jeter (something like Ozzie +35 runs per season, Jeter -35) to be hard to believe. I've seen the results from other players (some outfielders having +50 or -50 per season rates) that I just can't believe. I trust the UZR scale 100% more. I can trust it (WOWY) to tell me who the good and bad fielders are, but I don't trust it at all to tell me how much better.
True, but what I see in the results is that it's close enough on the extreme fielders. Maybe 10-20% less spread than UZR, which is quite a difference than comparing to WOWY, where the dispute is whether Jeter is a -100 or a -300 guy.
WOWY has it's own crudeness, in that a ball in play fielded by another player counts against Jeter. Or a ball in play he had zero chance on, like a fly ball to right field.
UZR vs TZ, extreme fielders: (TZ 1st)
Everett 2006: +40, +27
Gutierrez 09: +28, +29
Crisp 07: +26, +24
A Jones 05: +9, +30 (TZ has Jones over +20 several other years)
Matsui 04: -16, -25
Griffey 05: -27, -22
Braun 07: -34, -24
Where is Sidney Ponson?
Click a few minutes on Google Earth; you'll spot him.
Not really relevant, but one of BPRo's better snarky comments of recent years was their description of Braun's 3B defense as "civilization threatening"
On WOWY, I agree that it has limitations. For example, it may be possible to improve it by looking at the percentage of outs a SS records on all BIP, or all non-out BIP, rather than looking at all plate appearances. Still, when you have 14 years of data, I think it's a very strong metric.
I don't think we know that being close to UZR somehow validates the proper range for great and terrible fielders. In fact, we know that TZ MUST understate the extremes given its methodology. So if UZR has a similar variance, that's good evidence that it too has too narrow a spectrum. That could easily be true, if, for example, there is a tendency for scorers to rate balls as farther from the fielder and/or harder to field when a play is not successfully made. Until we have objective PBP data -- in which the coding is totally independent of where the fielder was positioned and the outcome of the play -- I'm not confident that the PBP metrics are more reliable than WOWY.
For a player, perhaps, but not for a team. Craig Biggio probably had a better rating than he should have thanks to Everett grabbing balls headed up the middle, but I'm still rating Everett as +40 runs. I've looked at enough examples in all the time that I've taken putting this data together that I'm convinced the effect is only a few runs here or there. I think on this we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I wonder if there's some way to estimate the expected range of great/poor fielding performance by looking at the range on team defense (Something like park adjusted DER +/-).
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