UZR Tidbits Through May 17th

by
May 18, 2009

Almost a fourth of the way into the season, let’s take some position-by-position glances at the best and worst defenders.

1B
Best: Chris Davis (3.9), Ryan Howard (3.2), Lyle Overbay (2.9)
Worst: Jason Giambi (-3.9), Nick Johnson (-3.4), Joey Votto (-3.3)

2B
Best: Ian Kinsler (5.4), Rickie Weeks (5.4), Brandon Phillips (5.3)
Worst: Skip Schumaker (-7), Dan Uggla (-5.7), Chris Getz (-5)

3B
Best: Ryan Zimmerman (6.7), Joe Crede (6.4), Evan Longoria (5.6)
Worst: Michael Young (-7), Josh Fields (-4.1), Chipper Jones (-3.8)

SS
Best: Marco Scutaro (4.9), Elvis Andrus (4.2), Ryan Theriot (3.6)
Worst: Yuniesky Betancourt (-8.2), Khalil Greene (-4.4), Miguel Tejada (-4.3)

COF
Best: Nyjer Morgan (9.9), Jay Bruce (8), Brandon Moss (7.7)
Worst: Jason Bay (-9), Andre Ethier (-8.4), Adam Dunn (-8.2)

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

CF
Best: Mike Cameron (7.8), Matt Kemp (7.3), Franklin Gutierrez (5.7)
Worst: Shane Victorino (-7.5), Vernon Wells (-5.8), Elijah Dukes (-3.8)

A few other tidbits:

Proof that this amount of UZR data is pretty useless in predictive value, Carlos Beltran ranks as the fourth worst center fielder in the entire league at -3.5 runs. Over the last three years, Beltran’s UZR have been 8.8, 1.2, and 5.3. Even if you think his skills have declined, he’s unlikely to keep up this pace, which would have him at nearly -12 over 150 games.

The Pirates are your new team UZR leaders at 17.5, ahead of the Rays (16.3), Reds (15.2), Rangers (15.2), and Brewers (14.5). Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, the Nationals (-18.3), Mets (-14.4), White Sox (-14.4), Red Sox (-12), and Orioles (-9) rate as the worst set of gloves in the league.





 

22 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
JB H
16 years ago

Are these numbers already park adjusted? I ask because of Jason Bay’s ranking. He looks terrible in the field to me either way.

0
Fresh Hops
16 years ago
Reply to  JB H

More than not being park adjusted, they’re subject to extreme fluctuations in limited samples. So, while it’s fun to look at these numbers every week, at this point, you should take them with a big grain of salt. As the post points out, there’s very little predictive value in these numbers so far. Most players will be closer to average (i.e. 0) at the end of the season than they are now.

0
David Appelman
16 years ago
Reply to  JB H

UZR is park adjusted.

And Jason Bay since 2007 has always been considered awful by UZR whether in Boston or not.

0
Judy
16 years ago
Reply to  David Appelman

It does seem remarkable that the Red Sox traded the old worst LFer in MLB for the new worst LFer in MLB.

0
David
16 years ago
Reply to  David Appelman

How good is the park adjustment for CitiField and the new Yankee Stadium? Problems with the former might have something to do with Beltran’s low fielding numbers.

0