Sunday, January 04, 2009

Ranking the third basemen - 2008

This is the second part of my series on fielding in 2008. The table of contents for the rest of the series is listed below:

Intro to series and ranking of first basemen
Second basemen
Shortstops
Left fielders
Center fielders
Right fielders
Adding Arms to the outfield


Today, I'll look at fielding statistics for third basemen in 2008. These are the measures:
They are discussed in detail in the Fielding Glossary.

Table 1 lists the third basemen with over 700 innings in 2008. The results are highlighted below:

The good: Four different third basemen finished first in defensive categories. Adrian Beltre (an aggregate score of 21 runs saved above average per 150 games) was on top of the Zone Ratiing, Revised Zone Rating and +/- lists. Chone Figgins (+14 overall) was the Probabilistic Model of Range leader. Evan Longoria (+14) had the best UZR and Scott Rolen (+13) finished first in fan scouting.

The bad: Jorge Cantu (-15 runs saved overall), Edwin Encarnacion (-14) and Melvin Mora (-14) rated poorly on all systems.

The Tiger: There is a lot of disagreement among the systems on Carlos Guillen. He ranks well on ZR (+15) and PMR (17) but not so well on RZR (-2), UZR (-5) and the fan survey (-9). This may be due to a relatively small sample size - just 749 innings at third base.

The disagreements: Last year's overall winner in most categories was Pedro Feliz. This year the systems could not agree as he rated anywhere from -14 on PMR to 9 on UZR and 10 on the fan survey. David Wright did pretty well on the BIS systems but was -8 on the STATS based Zone Rating.


Table 1: Range statistics for third basemen in 2008


Player

Team

inn

ZR

RZR

PMR

+/-

UZR

Fans

ARS

Beltre

Sea

1,208

18

33

15

28

16

18

21

Figgins

LAA

914

13

24

22

13

12

0

14

Longoria

TB

1,045

3

15

17

11

18

18

14

Rolen

Tor

1,006

6

25

7

14

6

20

13

Hannahan

Oak

983

-1

25

14

23

11

-1

12

Lowell

Bos

935

8

7

14

N/A

19

10

12

Dewitt

LA

727

5

20

14

16

10

1

11

Jones

Atl

987

10

25

10

10

7

5

11

Crede

CWS

834

6

15

11

17

8

1

10

Zimmerman

Was

910

5

17

1

12

9

13

9

Rodriguez

NYY

1,126

-1

16

5

N/A

-0

8

6

Hall

Mil

899

9

-0

10

N/A

10

-9

4

Guillen

Det

749

15

-2

17

N/A

-5

-9

3

Wright

NYM

1,433

-8

10

1

N/A

2

5

2

Feliz

Phi

978

7

-10

-14

N/A

9

10

0

Kouzmanoff

SD

1,379

-7

-3

5

N/A

-1

-8

-3

Bautista

Tor/Pit

766

-6

-1

3

N/A

-5

-4

-3

Glaus

StL

1,243

1

-12

-15

N/A

3

5

-3

Ramirez

ChC

1,282

-12

3

-4

-10

-4

4

-4

Castillo

Hou/SF

880

-1

-9

-8

N/A

-1

-14

-7

Blake

Cle/LA

1,104

-7

-17

-13

N/A

-5

-6

-10

Reynolds

Ari

1,288

-12

-14

-10

-11

-2

-11

-10

Atkins

Col

797

-1

-10

-9

-15

-11

-16

-10

Gordon

KC

1,180

-15

-21

-12

N/A

-4

-2

-11

Mora

Bal

1,059

-4

-36

-22

-13

-3

-4

-14

Encarnacion

Cin

1,237

-13

-24

-6

-18

-12

-9

-14

Cantu

Fla

1,066

-22

-22

-10

-11

-8

-14

-15

2 comments:

  1. Thanks. I am not a Tigers Fan but I am a fan of yours and your work to educate better both Tigers and the rest of us baseball fans.

    On an aside, I am really suprised you don't get more discussion going on the topics you take on. Is it really that depressing in the Motor City that nobody even wants to talk baseball?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks rainman. It would be nice to get more discussion but it's not as bad as it looks. I spend a lot of time over at the motownsports messageboard and we talk about some of these things over there. People seem to like the messageboard format better.

    Plus, I'm lazy about promotion and google hates me. :-)

    Lee

    ReplyDelete

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