Ultimate Zone Rating - 2007

This is the sixth part of my series on fielding in 2007. The table of contents for the entire series is listed below:

Basic fielding stats
Converting Zone Rating to something useful
Revised Zone Rating
Probabilistic Model of Range
Fielding Bible
Ultimate Zone Rating
Fan Fielding Survey versus range measures
Outfield arms
Ranking the second basemen
Ranking the shortstops
Ranking the third basemen
Ranking the first baseman
Ranking the center fielders
Ranking the right fielders
Ranking the left fielders
What about catchers?

Today, I'm going to talk about Mitchel Litchtman's Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR). Developed in the 1990s, UZR revolutioned the evalution of fielding. It was the first system to use advanced play by play data such as location, speed and type of batted balls to determine how many outs each player was expected to make and how many he actually did make in comparison to the average player.

Lichtman says that his system is very similar to the Fielding Bible +/- system except that it uses STATS data rather than BIS data. It actually includes a few additional features that the +/- system does not use such as ground ball/fly ball tendencies of pitchers and runner/out combinations. The complete methodology is described in two articles written in 2003.

Many analysts still consider UZR to be the gold standard of range metrics. Unfortunately, Lichtman is now a consulting statistical analyst for the St. Louis Cardinals and does not publish the UZR as freely as he would otherwise. He did release data for the top three and bottom three at each position in each league for 2007 and these figures are included on the Tangotiger site.

Table 1 shows the UZR runs saved per 150 games for Tigers in 2007 (RSAA/150). Table 2 shows how all the different methods discussed so far compare on RSAA/150. It reveals that UZR agrees with the other methods that Curtis Granderson, and Brandon Inge save runs and that Miguel Cabrera and Carlos Guillen give up runs. The methods continue to be all over the place on Sean Casey and Magglio Ordonez. UZR favors both of them.


Table 1: Run saved per 150 games according to UZR

Pos	Player	Inn	RSAA/150
1B	Casey	989	8
2B	Polanco	1,209	N/A
3B	Inge	1,310	12
3B	Cabrera	1,311	-28
SS	Guillen	1,074	-24
SS	Renteria	1,019	N/A
LF	Monroe	806	N/A
CF	Granderson	1,285	18
CF	Jones	645	N/A
RF	Ordonez	1,221	14

Table 2: Runs saved per 150 games: comparison among range metrics

PLAYER	RZR	ZR	PMR	+/-	UZR
Granderson	34	10	19	18	18
Jones	24	9	13	42	N/A
Inge	13	12	16	18	12
Polanco	12	4	9	8	N/A
Monroe	9	7	-12	N/A	N/A
Renteria	5	-9	-4	N/A	N/A
Ordonez	-5	10	-3	N/A	14
Casey	-8	8	-15	N/A	8
Cabrera	-13	-16	-26	-20	-28
Guillen	-18	-7	-18	N/A	-24