The long term fielding study continues with a look at shortstops. (See yesterday’s post for background.) The following table shows how the teams performed as a whole at the position over the last five years:

I’m surprised Texas does this well, as Michael Young was the shortstop for a good period of time here, and he’s not known for his defensive ability. Minnesota’s ranking makes some sense as the team is known for good defense. Boston’s rotating players at the position took a toll. It’s been a terrible half-decade in New York. Despite their high-profile shortstops, this study show they were poor fielders.

On to the individuals. The following table shows shortstops on the field for at least 5000 balls in play over the last five seasons. That gives us the regulars and semi-regulars.

You can see why Texas ranked so high. Michael Young played a little above league average, while Elvis Andrus came out near the top of the rankings. Of the longer term shortstops, Troy Tulowitzki brought the Rockies up to the number one team ranking.

Derek Jeter ranks last, despite his good 2009 season, which brings me back to the whole idea of presenting a more objective model, biases in scoring hit location make some players look better. This system shows Jeter turning 165 fewer balls into outs than expected. Looking at FanGraphs and Baseball Reference, both which use batted ball location data, this objective model is very much in line with their results. Jeter is a poor fielder compared to the average shortstop.

The big disagreement comes with Omar Vizquel. FanGraphs rates his range very high, and BR shows him positively contributing to the defense. Since Omar has such a great reputation as a fielder, maybe scorers are putting balls he doesn’t get to more out of reach than than they should be. It would make sense, at Omar’s age, that he would not be that great defensively anymore.

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts.