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9/2/24 Dee-fense, Dee-fense…Part IIIDoes your team suck and you can’t figure out why? I’ll bet your fielding has something to do with it. It is my assumption that most GMs pay attention to their players’ batting and pitching statistics. I know some also pay attention to fielding statistics, but I suspect many do not. Why don’t they? I would guess it’s a combination of
Well, if you’re locked into the opinion that fielding isn’t very important, I can’t help you. But if you’d like to start paying attention to fielding and you just don’t know how to begin, I can. You only need to look at two stats, and they’re really easy to interpret. Assessing fielding is much simpler than assessing hitting or pitching. The two stats: Zone Rating (ZR): Simply put, a positive ZR is good, and a negative ZR is bad. Zero is average, so the farther away from zero you get, the better or worse you are. A couple of points above or below zero is nothing to get excited about. When you get to about -5.0 ZR or lower, it’s a cause for concern. Defensive Efficiency (EFF): 1.000 is average. Below 1.000 is below average, but on my team, I don’t worry much unless a player is below .975 or so. Even .950 isn’t the end of the world if it’s at a corner position, but I don’t like it. As a general rule of thumb, below .975 at an up-the middle position is problematic, and below .950 at a corner position is problematic. There are starters in this league with an EFF below .900. Yikes. Guess what? Their teams are well below .500. Before we go on, let’s clear up something that might be confusing to some people. There are actually two different stats that are both referred to as “defensive efficiency” in OOTP. One is a team stat and the other is an individual stat. The team stat is abbreviated “DEF” in OOTP. Of course OOTP doesn’t tell you how they calculate it (all the manual says about is that it “can be approximated with ‘1 - BABIP’”). I’m assuming it’s similar (although possibly not identical) to what is called “Def Eff” by baseball-reference.com, which in turn is similar (although possibly not identical) to “DER” (Defensive Efficiency Ratio), which is used by Baseball Prospectus and other sources. All three of them attempt to measure the percentage of balls put into play that are converted to outs by a team’s defense. In modern baseball, the average Def Eff (per baseball-reference.com) is usually around .695, with the bulk of teams in the .685-.705 range. You’ll occasionally see a team over .720, but not very often. On the bad end, you’ll sometimes see teams around .670 or lower. Basically, .705 and above is good, .685 and below is bad. For some reason, we get higher numbers than that in OOTP. The league average in the NBL as of this writing (game date 7/21/69) is .702, and the league average in the ABL is .719. Does that mean our league’s fielding is better than that of the real modern day major leagues? It might, but I doubt it; I think it’s more likely that OOTP’s “DEF” is calculated slightly differently than baseball-reference.com’s “Def Eff”. I checked the other online league I’m in, and I found that its league DEFs are often in the .715-.725 range. I think “DEF” is a different, though similar, stat than “Def Eff”. I’ll say one last thing about DEF and then I’ll move onto what this article is actually supposed to be about. Team Defensive Efficiency (along with Team Zone Rating) are good indicators of how your fielders are performing. Forget about what the numbers actually mean or how they’re calculated, and just look at where your team stands compared to the league average. If your DEF is way above the league average, your defense is doing good. If it’s way below the league average, your defense is doing bad. Moving on… I made a list of players who
The purpose of this was to show that if you’re trotting a terrible fielder out there every day, you’re not alone. The list:
Now, first I want to say that I am in no way saying that any of these players shouldn’t be starting. Some of them, like Tom Adams or Tom Crowell, are outstanding offensive players who have the skills to be at least decent, if not good, at a less demanding position. Others, like Don Keough or Diego Mateo, are going to be bad defensively no matter where you put them, but they at least make up for their fielding deficiencies with their bats. This is not a list of all the bad defensive starters in the league. I only looked at teams with bad overall defensive statistics. Obviously, teams with good overall defense can also have a bad fielder or two, but their bad fielders are “hidden” by the better fielders. I also didn’t include players who have bad statistics but ratings which aren’t that bad, or vice versa. Fielding is like hitting and pitching. Sometimes a good pitcher has a bad year; sometimes an ordinary pitcher has a really good year. Sometimes a good hitter has an off year, sometimes a career .240 hitter hits .300. It’s the same with fielders. Good fielding ratings usually translate into good fielding statistics; poor fielding ratings usually translate into poor fielding statistics. Other times, randomness takes over. What are “good” fielding ratings? Depends on the position. In relative order of importance:
You’ll notice I’ve listed Range as the most important thing at every position except third base. That’s no joke. Range really is that important, especially up the middle (SS, CF, 2B). The above ratings are what I consider “good”, and opinions may differ on some details, but I will say this. If you’re doing any of the following four things, you’re asking for trouble: THE “BIG FOUR” OF FIELDING NO-NO’s
Don’t believe me? Take a look at all the teams with .600+ winning percentages this year (DAL, DET, NYK, PHI, SF). You’ll see that none of them are doing any of those four things. Now take a look at every last place team (BAL, CLE, LAB, LAP) in the league. All of them are doing at least one of those things, some are doing at least two. Coincidence? Not trying to shame anyone; I get that some teams are rebuilding, and fielding is only one area of concern as they begin their quest to rise from the ashes. I also get that there probably aren’t enough shortstops with 65 or better Range in this league for every team in the league to have one. You can only play the players you have; if you don’t have a good shortstop, you have to play one that isn’t good. Everyone is limited in some way by what’s available to them. On the other hand, if you’re not rebuilding, and you think you have a pretty good team that seems to be underperforming, give your fielding the once-over. You might find something that’s fixable with the personnel you already have. Or something to look into with the trade deadline and draft coming up. |