My five-year survey of fielders using objective PMR continues with second basemen. (You can find all Probabilistic Model of Range posts here.) We start with the composite team view:
Team | In Play | Actual Outs | Predicted Outs | Actual DER | Predicted DER | Index |
NYA | 16081 | 2674 | 2462.3 | 0.166 | 0.153 | 108.6 |
COL | 17011 | 2796 | 2590.3 | 0.164 | 0.152 | 107.9 |
ARI | 16276 | 2672 | 2498.8 | 0.164 | 0.154 | 106.9 |
PHI | 16614 | 2596 | 2481.2 | 0.156 | 0.149 | 104.6 |
TEX | 16691 | 2721 | 2611.7 | 0.163 | 0.156 | 104.2 |
OAK | 16203 | 2653 | 2563.1 | 0.164 | 0.158 | 103.5 |
TOR | 16418 | 2663 | 2590.4 | 0.162 | 0.158 | 102.8 |
CLE | 16901 | 2687 | 2616.5 | 0.159 | 0.155 | 102.7 |
NYN | 16069 | 2476 | 2428.2 | 0.154 | 0.151 | 102.0 |
HOU | 15999 | 2467 | 2427.4 | 0.154 | 0.152 | 101.6 |
BOS | 15779 | 2509 | 2478.1 | 0.159 | 0.157 | 101.2 |
SEA | 16591 | 2562 | 2531.3 | 0.154 | 0.153 | 101.2 |
ATL | 16587 | 2585 | 2554.0 | 0.156 | 0.154 | 101.2 |
MIL | 16105 | 2373 | 2351.5 | 0.147 | 0.146 | 100.9 |
FLO | 16105 | 2493 | 2474.4 | 0.155 | 0.154 | 100.8 |
LAN | 16188 | 2573 | 2555.3 | 0.159 | 0.158 | 100.7 |
WAS | 16839 | 2518 | 2517.7 | 0.150 | 0.150 | 100.0 |
ANA | 15624 | 2549 | 2554.1 | 0.163 | 0.163 | 99.8 |
DET | 16562 | 2593 | 2598.1 | 0.157 | 0.157 | 99.8 |
MIN | 16082 | 2630 | 2635.0 | 0.164 | 0.164 | 99.8 |
CIN | 16377 | 2478 | 2484.3 | 0.151 | 0.152 | 99.7 |
CHA | 16459 | 2541 | 2552.9 | 0.154 | 0.155 | 99.5 |
CHN | 15242 | 2340 | 2379.5 | 0.154 | 0.156 | 98.3 |
SFN | 15403 | 2308 | 2360.4 | 0.150 | 0.153 | 97.8 |
SLN | 17217 | 2555 | 2620.3 | 0.148 | 0.152 | 97.5 |
TBA | 15843 | 2408 | 2472.2 | 0.152 | 0.156 | 97.4 |
BAL | 17338 | 2474 | 2573.4 | 0.143 | 0.148 | 96.1 |
SDN | 16048 | 2442 | 2566.9 | 0.152 | 0.160 | 95.1 |
KCA | 16381 | 2448 | 2575.9 | 0.149 | 0.157 | 95.0 |
PIT | 16877 | 2218 | 2472.8 | 0.131 | 0.147 | 89.7 |
The Yankees dominate this list, while I’m not surprised the Royals, a very poor defensive team, come up near the bottom. The Giants, who like to play veterans, tend toward the bottom as well. Next, the individual players, the regulars and semi regulars:
Fielder | In Play | Actual Outs | Predicted Outs | Actual DER | Predicted DER | Index |
Orlando Hudson | 12946 | 2221 | 2031.8 | 0.172 | 0.157 | 109.3 |
Robinson Cano | 14648 | 2415 | 2237.8 | 0.165 | 0.153 | 107.9 |
Mark Ellis | 11955 | 2018 | 1894.1 | 0.169 | 0.158 | 106.5 |
Ian Kinsler | 12629 | 2103 | 1976.6 | 0.167 | 0.157 | 106.4 |
Clint Barmes | 5285 | 855 | 805.1 | 0.162 | 0.152 | 106.2 |
Jamey Carroll | 6028 | 1000 | 943.2 | 0.166 | 0.156 | 106.0 |
Jose Lopez | 11573 | 1878 | 1772.7 | 0.162 | 0.153 | 105.9 |
Chase Utley | 14380 | 2270 | 2152.4 | 0.158 | 0.150 | 105.5 |
Adam Kennedy | 7914 | 1276 | 1224.0 | 0.161 | 0.155 | 104.2 |
Dustin Pedroia | 10181 | 1645 | 1588.2 | 0.162 | 0.156 | 103.6 |
Kazuo Matsui | 7745 | 1207 | 1167.3 | 0.156 | 0.151 | 103.4 |
Placido Polanco | 10775 | 1723 | 1683.6 | 0.160 | 0.156 | 102.3 |
Aaron Hill | 12243 | 1968 | 1928.3 | 0.161 | 0.158 | 102.1 |
Howie Kendrick | 8266 | 1375 | 1355.0 | 0.166 | 0.164 | 101.5 |
Josh Barfield | 5445 | 879 | 874.1 | 0.161 | 0.161 | 100.6 |
Dan Uggla | 15092 | 2318 | 2318.3 | 0.154 | 0.154 | 100.0 |
Rickie Weeks | 10082 | 1457 | 1459.3 | 0.145 | 0.145 | 99.8 |
Brandon Phillips | 14595 | 2213 | 2217.3 | 0.152 | 0.152 | 99.8 |
Kelly Johnson | 9706 | 1474 | 1481.7 | 0.152 | 0.153 | 99.5 |
Felipe Lopez | 5964 | 898 | 904.0 | 0.151 | 0.152 | 99.3 |
Aaron Miles | 5054 | 754 | 767.0 | 0.149 | 0.152 | 98.3 |
Tadahito Iguchi | 6725 | 1004 | 1030.2 | 0.149 | 0.153 | 97.5 |
Mark Grudzielanek | 7038 | 1052 | 1085.3 | 0.149 | 0.154 | 96.9 |
Ronnie Belliard | 7049 | 1025 | 1057.5 | 0.145 | 0.150 | 96.9 |
Luis Castillo | 10720 | 1608 | 1668.0 | 0.150 | 0.156 | 96.4 |
Brian Roberts | 13706 | 1945 | 2038.1 | 0.142 | 0.149 | 95.4 |
Ray Durham | 6439 | 925 | 978.5 | 0.144 | 0.152 | 94.5 |
Freddy Sanchez | 10154 | 1398 | 1483.3 | 0.138 | 0.146 | 94.2 |
Jeff Kent | 6600 | 970 | 1043.5 | 0.147 | 0.158 | 93.0 |
I like that the peripatetic Orlando Hudson comes up at the top of this list. He played for three teams over these five seasons. I sometimes wonder if the way the model is built makes fielders on strong offensive teams look good (like Robinson Cano). The Yankees send a number of good left-handed hitters to the plate, so when a model is built for Yankee Stadium, one might expect the ability for a second baseman to field a ball there is tougher than it may be in reality. Hudson, coming out high on the list, playing for fairly weak offensive teams argues against that.
At the other end is an old Jeff Kent. Right smack in the middle, however, is Dan Uggla, who owns a reputation as a poor fielder. In fact, there is a big discrepancy here between the objective model and FanGraphs range run ranking. The latter puts Cano, Uggla and Orlando Hudson all near the bottom of the list. This is fairly huge. Looking at Bill James Online, Hudson was near the top in +/- in three of the five years.
Here’s a closer look at Hudson and Cano:
Type of Batted Ball | Hudson’s Index | Cano’s Index |
---|---|---|
Ground | 103.2 | 106.5* |
Line | 125.8 | 112.6 |
Pop | 131.5* | 112.6 |
*Highest
So Hudson caught a lot of line drives and is a pop up hog. Cano’s ranking looks pretty good, however. I don’t know if you can be lucky with line drives over a five year period. Maybe Orlando is really good at positioning himself.
Um, we can find all of your PMR posts in the Peter Abe article on Tito?
🙂
@James: Sorry, I’ll fix that.
Interesting that the Mets score pretty high despite relying on the withered remains of Luis Castillo for much of that period.
I guess Ruben Tejada, Jose Valentin, Damion Easley, and all the other journeymen who’ve filled in there did pretty well for themselves defensively.
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