Ian Kinsler Finishes Second in Fielding Bible Voting

Ian Kinsler handled second base deftly in his first year as a Tiger.
(Photo credit: Getty Images)

Fielding statistics have made progress over the past decade, but there is still a good deal of work to be done.  Advanced statistics such as Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating and Total Zone tell us more than errors and fielding percentage, but they don’t work as well as hitting stats such as On Base Percentage and Slugging Average. Questions arise because different fielding systems, which are supposed to measure the same thing (how efficiently players turn balls in play into outs), sometimes disagree substantially on individual players.

It’s clear that a fair amount of subjective input and interpretation of available data is needed to accurately evaluate fielding performance. With this in mind, John Dewan, owner of Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) and long time leader in the sabermetric community, developed an interesting approach to the evaluation of fielding performance a few years ago.  Rather than relying solely on statistics, he put together a “panel of experts” to select the best fielders at each position. He calls it the Fielding Bible Awards as he considers them a complement to the statistics in his book: The Fielding Bible.

The way the Fielding Bible Awards work is each of 12 voters ranks 10 players at each position. A player gets 10 points for a first place vote, 9 points for a second place vote, etc. Among the voters were several prominent sabermetricians including Dewan, Bill James and Rob Neyer, BIS video scouts who studied every single game of the 2014 season in great detail, former major league outfielder Doug Glanville and knowledgeable fans who participated in Tom Tango's Fan Scouting Report.   

You can see the final results including how each panelist voted at The Fielding Bible site.  Table 1 below shows that the only Tiger finishing in the top ten in the major leagues was second baseman Ian Kinsler.  The first-year Bengal garnered 98 out of a possible 120 points in the voting to place second only to Red Sox second sacker Dustin Pedroia.  Kinsler received first place votes from writer NBC Sports writer Joe Posnanski and ESPN analyst Brian Kenny. 

It was a little surprising that catcher Alex Avila - just 4 points in an 18th place ranking - did not do better in the voting.  Avila ranked second in an aggregation of statistics for stopping the running game, pitch blocking and avoiding errors.  However, he dropped to 15th when pitch framing was added.  So, maybe the voters put a lot of emphasis on that.  

Do the Fielding Bible Awards work better than statistics? I don't know, but they are a nice complement to the available quantitative data and an interesting alternative to the Gold Glove Awards.  I believe they are a significant contribution to the ongoing quest to more accurately assess fielding performance.

Table 1: How the Detroit Tigers Ranked on Fielding Bible Awards

Position	Player	Points (120 Max)	MLB Rank
Catcher	Alex Avila	4	18
First base	Miguel Cabrera	1	21
Second base	Ian Kinsler	98	2
Third base	Nick Castellanos	0	--
Shortstop	Andrew Romine	0	--
Shortstop	Eugenio Suarez	0	--
Left field	Rajai Davis	7	12
Left field	JD Martinez	0	--
Center field	Austin Jackson	1	19
Right field	Torii Hunter	0	--

Data Source: The Fielding Bible

Catcher Defense Without Framing

Yesterday, I presented statistics on catcher defense and ranked MLB catchers on total run saved.  I used five components to arrive at the total:

• Stopping the running game
• Pitch blocking
• Avoiding fielding errors
• Avoiding throwing errors
• Pitch framing or receiving

One commenter wanted to see how catchers ranked without the pitch framing.  It makes sense to look at it both ways since pitch framing is a new area and still a work in progress.  So, for those who aren't ready to fully embrace pitch framing metrics or are a little concerned about how they differ from site to site, the ranks based on the first four components are shown in Table 1 below.

Keeping in mind that this table leaves out a lot of a catcher's responsibilities such as receiving pitches and pitches and pitcher management, Alex Avila was the American League leader with 10.9 runs saved.  The MLB leader was Yadier Molina of the Cardinals (12.3).

Table 1: Catcher Runs Saved Leaders (Pitch framing excluded), 2014  

Player	Team	Inn	Running Game	Pitch Blocking	Throwing Errors	Fielding Errors	Total
Yadier Molina	STL	931	5.7	5.2	0.8	0.6	12.3
Alex Avila	DET	1,017	4.3	6.0	0.4	0.1	10.9
Robinson Chirinos	TEX	784	5.7	2.7	0.0	0.5	9.0
Brian McCann	NYY	889	4.9	0.7	0.8	0.6	6.9
Russell Martin	PIT	940	6.8	-0.6	0.0	0.6	6.8
Wilson Ramos	WSN	775	3.1	3.4	0.3	-0.0	6.8
Caleb Joseph	BAL	672	4.7	1.0	0.4	-0.1	6.0
Buster Posey	SFG	929	1.3	4.3	0.3	0.1	6.0
Jonathan Lucroy	MIL	1,182	-1.0	4.8	0.9	0.2	5.0
Rene Rivera	SDP	734	5.2	-0.2	-0.6	-0.0	4.3
Carlos Ruiz	PHI	960	0.1	3.6	0.6	-0.4	3.9
Kurt Suzuki	MIN	1,017	-1.4	3.5	0.4	0.6	3.2
Devin Mesoraco	CIN	936	-0.5	2.5	0.8	0.1	2.9
Salvador Perez	KCR	1,248	1.7	1.2	-0.4	0.3	2.8
Yan Gomes	CLE	1,082	2.9	1.6	-2.0	0.2	2.6
Welington Castillo	CHC	916	3.1	-0.3	0.2	-0.4	2.5
Miguel Montero	ARI	1,152	0.9	2.2	-0.8	-0.8	1.5
Ryan Hanigan	TBR	603	-1.5	1.7	0.6	0.4	1.2
Dioner Navarro	TOR	907	-3.1	2.1	0.5	0.6	0.1
Chris Iannetta	LAA	835	1.2	-2.5	0.7	0.5	-0.1
A.J. Ellis	LAD	773	-0.9	0.6	0.6	-0.5	-0.2
Jose Molina	TBR	628	-0.1	-1.0	0.4	0.4	-0.4
Tyler Flowers	CHW	1,052	1.3	-3.0	-0.1	0.2	-1.7
Jason Castro	HOU	971	-3.4	0.4	0.9	-0.4	-2.5
Hank Conger	LAA	637	-1.5	-0.3	-0.7	-0.1	-2.7
Mike Zunino	SEA	1,121	0.6	-4.9	0.6	0.2	-3.5
Derek Norris	OAK	870	-4.8	0.2	-0.1	0.0	-4.7
Travis d'Arnaud	NYM	909	-3.5	-2.4	-0.9	0.1	-6.7
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	MIA	922	-4.6	-0.2	-2.5	0.1	-7.3
Evan Gattis	ATL	799	-3.1	-4.9	0.1	-0.0	-8.0
Yasmani Grandal	SDP	607	-5.2	-3.3	0.1	-0.1	-8.5
A.J. Pierzynski	BOS/STL	721	-9.2	0.2	-0.0	0.4	-8.6
Wilin Rosario	COL	824	-3.1	-5.2	-0.2	-0.5	-9.0

Data source: Baseball-Reference