fielding

In my analysis of team run prevention, I found that the Tigers ranked 1^st in the American League in ERA but only 3^rd in FIP ERA. This is an indication that their pitching may not have been as good as their ERA. Their league leading DER suggested that their pitching might have been significantly aided by strong fielding.

However, DER does not take into consideration things such as: location of ball, how hard the ball is hit (soft, medium, hard), type of ball hit (e.g. ground ball, fly ball, line drive), handedness of batter and pitcher and ballpark. The PMR system developed by David Pinto takes all those things into consideration in determining how many outs should have been made versus how many were actually made. The results for all Major League teams in 2006 are shown in Table 1 below.

The team RMR table provides further evidence of the Tigers fielding excellence. We can see that the Tigers were 2^nd in the American League and 3^rd in the Majors in converting balls in play into outs. There were 4,439 balls in play for Tiger fielders in 2006. Based on the batted ball data and associated probabilities, they should have made 3,069 plays. They actually made 3,112 plays so according to PMR they made 43 more plays than expected (the diff column). The last column of the table (Ratio) is actual outs divided by predicted outs. Since an extra out is worth .8 runs per play on average, the Tigers fielders saved approximately 43*.8 = 34 more runs than an average team. Theoretically, this comes out to about 4 wins.

In the 2007 Hardball Times Baseball Annual (a book I recommend to anyone who is interested in current sabermetric research), there is an article on team fielding written by John Dewan. In his article, he disscusses the Plus/Minus System which was described in last year’s Fielding Bible. Like PMR, the Plus/Minus system is based on analysis of detailed play by play data collected by Baseball Info Solutions video scouts. The Plus/Minus system does not rate the Tigers quite as high as DER and PMR but it still ranks them well. It has them 10^th in the Majors and 3^rd in the AL behind the blue Jays and Mariners.

The Tigers had a team score of +26 which means they made 26 more plays than the average team would have made. Dewan also broke it down by position: +15 for Tiger middle infielders, +31 for corner infielders and -20 for outfielders. The +46 total for the infield was 2^nd in baseball to the Astros. Their outfield ranked 22nd. This supports what many of us observed – that the Tiger infielders were better than their outfielders defensively.

How did their individual fielders rank? That’s more complicated but I’ll get into in more detail once I’m done gathering and analyzing data which is currently being made available. I should have several posts about individual fielding over the next month.

Table 1: Probabilistic Model of Range for Teams in 2006

Team	In Play	Outs	Pred Outs	diff	Ratio
Cardinals	4448	3096	3045.22	50.78	101.67
Blue Jays	4326	2994	2951.45	42.55	101.44
Tigers	4439	3112	3069.37	42.63	101.39
Mets	4310	3028	2987.11	40.89	101.37
Cubs	4152	2903	2865.00	38.00	101.33
Yankees	4472	3103	3065.29	37.71	101.23
Giants	4422	3098	3062.31	35.69	101.17
White Sox	4528	3138	3106.11	31.89	101.03
Angels	4301	2970	2940.33	29.67	101.01
Brewers	4300	2950	2922.74	27.26	100.93
Dodgers	4536	3084	3057.68	26.32	100.86
Royals	4618	3120	3093.21	26.79	100.87
Mariners	4431	3054	3029.47	24.53	100.81
Padres	4386	3116	3093.20	22.80	100.74
Braves	4490	3078	3060.69	17.31	100.57
Diamondbacks	4462	3049	3033.47	15.53	100.51
Twins	4328	2967	2952.29	14.71	100.50
Astros	4342	3039	3024.90	14.10	100.47
Phillies	4438	3021	3009.27	11.73	100.39
Rangers	4542	3084	3075.69	8.31	100.27
Orioles	4435	3013	3011.80	1.20	100.04
Rockies	4590	3129	3139.99	-10.99	99.65
Athletics	4530	3120	3133.56	-13.56	99.57
Red Sox	4463	3028	3041.66	-13.66	99.55
Marlins	4339	2971	2985.34	-14.34	99.52
Indians	4594	3099	3122.02	-23.02	99.26
Nationals	4594	3173	3203.39	-30.39	99.05
Reds	4527	3081	3114.48	-33.48	98.93
Devil Rays	4545	3048	3085.21	-37.21	98.79
Pirates	4448	2997	3034.28	-37.28	98.77