Comments on: Shelton Game

By: Tim D

Tim D — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:01:53 +0000

From Dave Haller at Baseball Prospectus:

DETROIT TIGERS
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Twelve straight losing seasons has a way of breeding pessimism towards a team, and the Tigers have become one of baseball

By: Joey

Joey — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 16:51:59 +0000

Shelton made the best fielding play I have ever seen last year in Seattle, a ball was hit over his head, he threw up his glove which caught the ball and then caught the mitt! Granted, that was in BP, but i have been trying to do that since I was kid!

By: Chuck Hildebrandt

Chuck Hildebrandt — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:48:44 +0000

I have always believed that of any position, 1B is the one in which errors is actually a good measure of fielding prowess. You could use zone rating and range to a small degree to measure a 1B’s defensive value, but the vast majority of a 1B’s value is in making the catch on the throw from the infield, including the scoop on a direct throw in the dirt, which I’m pretty sure 1B gets dinged on as a fielding error if he drops that.

On other positions, obviously, the range and zone rating are much more important, inclduing up the middle, so error totals mean less. (In fact, you can expect to see more erros from good range guys, since they get to more balls they can “muff”. But at 1B, i would weight errors as at least 75% of the equation.

Chuck

By: Lee Panas

Lee Panas — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:10:07 +0000

David Gassko’s range measure says that Shelton has the worst range in the majors. Who are we to believe? I’m not sure. He didn’t list Pena because he didn’t play enough innings. Based on my own observation, I’d say that Shelton’s range is not good but I don’t know if it’s the worst. I think that taking throws from infielders is more important than range. I believe Pena excels in that department. Shelton seems be ok there – better than advertised.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:54:22 +0000

I’m not sure the sample size is enough to really use throwing errors by other fielders. For it to work you’d have to assume that each player received a similar number of good and bad throws, and among the bad throws, a similar number of low throws and high throws (since you can’t scoop a ball if it isn’t in the dirt). And you’d have to assume the number of throwing errors to bases other than 1B was the same or similar. We only had about 60 or so total errors by non-1B infielders last year.

I also don’t think RF is terribly usefull for comparing first basement. Really, I think 1B is one of the two toughest positions to measure defensive performance.

Either way, if Pena is getting AB’s, he should be taking them away from Monroe and Young, not Shelton.

By: Jeff M

Jeff M — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:30:14 +0000

I’m not sure about the footwork part, but the number of throwing errors by the other fielders could be used to approximate his ability to “scoop” a bad throw.