Can you tell how good a fielder someone is or crown a gold glove winner by looking at enough fielding stats?
There is so many fielding stats. How leading or misleading are they exactly? Can you crown a gold glove winner without seeing any video footage but from looking at enough of their fielding stats? Are there enough fielding stats in baseball? Prior to the gold glove award, they still had some fielding stats but how do I really know how good the early players were at playing defense?
What about baseball players stats from the dinosaur age. Can you judge their fielding from looking at their fielding stats as much as you can judge their hitting stats like batting average and on base percentage? How come fielding was so underlooked prior to the gold glove award and still is today?
2010-01-02T20:24:29Z
Are there enough fielding stats to accurately determine who is a good or bad or great fielder?
Anonymous2010-01-02T20:34:00Z
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Well I think the stats can give you an idea but are ultimately insufficient. To me you gotta see the guy in action. This is because most stats are based on errors. This doesn't give you any measure of the player's positive attributes such as range and arm strength, and most importantly how willing he is to give up his body. To me nothing says gold glover like a guy who will do ANYTHING to make the catch.
Old baseball stats, not even close. Errors are subjective and don't tell near the whole stories. Stuff like range factor are better, but still have flaws (teams with good strike-out guys will have their range factor suffer, range factor is basically useless for outfielders, flyball/groundball tendencies for pitchers skew the numbers, and Bill James had a theory on a team that had a bunch of right-handed pitchers who could bring the heat would cause the pull-side fielders [shortstop/3rd base] to have lower range factors).
More modern stats like UZR and Dewan's +/- system are a step in the right direction, but I still take those numbers with a grain of salt (I find it hard to believe that Mark Teixeira is a below-average first baseman).
Also, NO ONE can see every play by every fielder, so being subjective will always be difficult. This is why I don't trust scouting reports.
I should also note that even saying that some fielders are better based on their spectacular plays is flawed. I've seen Jeter make some plays that were spectacular. . .for him. The balls at the edge of his range are closer to routine for someone with the range of Tulowitzki or Elvis Andrus. Same goes for many outfielders. There were many years where Andruw Jones wouldn't make circus catches. Instead, he got great reads off the bat and had great closing speed, so he would already be under it (before he got fat and overpaid).
Well you can judge a fielder on his defense by some stats but you can't judge a fielder on HOW GOOD HE IS because stats don't show the amazing defensive plays that some of these guys make.
No, not possible. Errors are a bad way to measure a fielder's ability, some of the better fielders might reach the ball and drop it because they were running to it at high speed, while poor fielders might miscalculate the location of the ball and can't reach it in time, but no error received. Not possible.
nicely santana couldve had yet another yet ultimately, carlos beltrans protection isn't underrated as a met (even nevertheless he probable wouldnt have been presented the gg if he didnt get on sportscenter for the rob over the centerfield wall.) david wtight made some distinctly good performs, even nevertheless we did see some blunders, yet that doesnt count while it includes gold gloves. there werent a great form of excellent ss performs interior the nl this 12 months so i think you will possibly desire to offer it to the reigning champ brandon phillips ultimately gets one nate mclouth deserved it yadier molina (cant say something because of the fact i dont relatively understand) and comparable with gonzalez reason i dont relatively watch any padres video games. so yea i agree