The Shortstop Championship Belt

[steveringo]

You're actually suggesting that Vizquel was equal or superior to A-Rod, Nomar and Jeter in the late 1990s? Because of defense, batting average and steals?

But you're "lolling" at me?

I'm sure "batting average" was a typo...

 

[DragonfromTO]

seriously? all players defensive goals is to get the batters out, they don't stop and think about if they will make an error or not...unless your talking about fringe players.

and they sure don't care about WAR, DWAR and Sabermetrics, lol...

You sort of missed the point. If the goal of defense isn't avoiding errors, then looking at who made the fewest errors is an incomplete and inadequate way to judge defensive contributions.

Say what you will about the accuracy of dWAR, but at least it's trying to measure how well the player fulfills his actual defensive objective.

 

[StanMarsh51]

seriously? all players defensive goals is to get the batters out, they don't stop and think about if they will make an error or not...unless your talking about fringe players.

and they sure don't care about WAR, DWAR and Sabermetrics, lol...

Defensive value goes well beyond errors

Player A and Player B each have 600 balls hit in their general area/zone for a season (presume same position)....
-Player A has 350 total chances and makes 10 errors
-Player B has 500 total chances and makes 15 errors

Player A has less errors and a better fielding percentage, but can we conclude he was better than B? B was able to get to 150 more balls than A, which does count for something.

 

[Brahmsian]

Defense is not "equally weighed" for good reason. I'll write it out in equation form this time

Team run scoring = team offensive contributions
Team run prevention = team defensive contributions + team pitching contributions

So if defense is as valuable as offense, then either pitching has no value or a run prevented is significantly more valuable than a run scored. Do you think that either of those things is true?

The quality if the fielding behind him affects the frequency of a pitcher's hits allowed.

A good fielder will at least get a glove on balls a poor one wouldn't manage even that much with. So hard hit balls can end up being scored as errors by fielders with good range or good positioning. So good fielders can make a pitcher's hits allowed look better than it should.

And in a road game a run prevented in the home half of the 9th or an extra inning can give the offense
a chance it wouldn't have had otherwise. That's an unusual situation, granted, but still significant.

 

[DragonfromTO]

The quality if the fielding behind him affects the frequency of a pitcher's hits allowed.

A good fielder will at least get a glove on balls a poor one wouldn't manage even that much with. So hard hit balls can end up being scored as errors by fielders with good range or good positioning. So good fielders can make a pitcher's hits allowed look better than it should.

And in a road game a run prevented in the home half of the 9th or an extra inning can give the offense
a chance it wouldn't have had otherwise. That's an unusual situation, granted, but still significant.

Of course it does. I'm not sure why you'd think I don't realize/acknowledge this or how this invalidates the point I was making. Whether or not the defense makes the pitcher's numbers look better or whether or not we are perfectly assigning value on the run prevention side, the pitcher is still making some not insignificant contribution to overall run prevention.

 

[Omar 382]

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