Aggregate Defensive Evaluations – 2009 LF

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August 20, 2010

Update: Tangotiger pointed out to me that fans scouting report numbers for Holliday and Wilson looked off. Turns out I was calculating players who switched teams for the Fans Scouting Report incorrectly and as a result Matt Holliday and Jack Wilson are now adjusted accordingly and the tables below have been updated.

Earlier this week I ran the the Aggregate Defensive Evaluations (ADE) on 2009 shortstops. For those who missed it, this is an attempt to take 5 different fielding metrics (UZR, Fans Scouting Report, John Dewan’s DRS, Total Zone, and Total Zone with Location), put them on the same scale and then see which player’s defensive abilities we are fairly certain about and those which we are not.

In response to some comments, I’ve added a weighted average and standard deviation. This excludes standard Total Zone in favor of TZL. It also weights UZR, DRS, and TZL 3 times each and then the Fans Scouting Report only 1 time. (These are the last two columns)

It’s probably not much of a surprise that Carl Crawford sits atop the list. UZR has actually rated him as 56 runs above average the past three years, more than double the next closest player. Same goes for pretty much all the defensive metrics.

Matt Holliday I would say has the highest level of disagreement of any player. The Fans Scouting Report hates him, DRS loves him, UZR thinks he’s above average, and Total Zone thinks he’s just average. I’d consider the inconsistency with Holliday different than Juan Rivera’s situation where there’s also a high level of disagreement. In Rivera’s case at least all metrics agree he’s average or better.

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Ryan Braun is also pretty interesting in that the Fans rated him as +15, while all the other defensive models thought he was well below average. This season Ryan Braun continues to be rated poorly by the defensive models. It will be interesting to see what the fans think of him next season.

I’d still consider these reports a bit of a work in progress, but for those interested, here’s the shortstops again, but this time with the weighted averages column:





 

David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.

24 Comments
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Sky
15 years ago

The averages are really cool, but I’ve got to say I’m even more excited to have the FSR runs numbers on the site. Great addition (assuming it’s an addition).

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David AppelmanFanGraphs Staff
15 years ago
Reply to  Sky

Well… it’s not really an addition. I’m also not really sure it’s safe to say these are concrete runs either. It’s more of a scale from -20 to 20 ish to match up with UZR and the others. I guess it’s probably good enough.

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Sky
15 years ago
Reply to  David Appelman

You’re not going to list FSR runs on the site?

Have you seen this method for converting FSR rankings into runs? Check out the Fans Scouting Report section here: http://www.basement-dwellers.com/2007/10/player-value-part-3a-fielding.html

Basically, weight each trait depending on the position, compare to average, and convert from points to runs via standard deviations.

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