D-(fence) After 100 Games

One of the very cool things I get to do as, well, I don't really know why they let me do this. But I get to be on the panel for the Fielding Bible Awards. These is an effort by John Dewan and Bill James and others to try and create a better Gold Gloves, you know, one where Derek Jeter doesn't keep winning for his human couch act at shortstop.

I had been relatively agnostic about Jeter's defense at short -- agnostic in the sense that I suspected he wasn't particularly good but willing to concede that he had a knack for making some big plays and that perhaps watching him every day would increase my appreciation for him. Friends of mine who DO watch him more or less every day had always said that. Well, I've watched Jeter closely enough now that I'm a true non-believer. He's a brual defensive shortstop, one of the five worst in the game. Sure, he's athletic enough, and he's baseball brilliant enough to make a few nice plays, which his supporters then trumpet like he cured polio. That's the JHE (Jeter Halo Effect).

The JHE reminds me a little of the Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler fight -- if you wouldn't mind a completely bizarre analogy. You might recall that Sugar Ray Leonard won that fight, and if you scored a replay of it, you would probably score it for Leonard by one or two rounds. However, as my friend Greg Barrett once told me, try to score it with the SOUND DOWN. That is, try to score the same fight without hearing the announcers praise every little thing Sugar Ray does, without hearing the crowd go absolutely berzerk whenever Sugar Ray lands some puff punch. I did it, and found that Sugar Ray's punches were all but worthless, Hagler landed the better shots and -- yep -- that Hagler proabably won the fight, and maybe by two or three rounds.

Ditto Jeter. If you can turn down the noise, I think he loses the fight too, and loses it convincingly.

Anyway, as part of the panel I am granted access to John Dewan's groundbreaking defensive statistics. You know John and his folks there literally chart every single defensive play on some sort of computer; if I understand it correctly (an unlikely scenario, I admit), it goes like this: Torii Hunter hits a ground ball into the hole against the Detroit Tigers. The Fielding Bible people will punch into the computer exactly where the ball went, exactly how fast it was going, etc ("What's the vector, Victor?"). He will then see if Carlos Guillen can make the play. But here's where it gets good -- he then compares Guillen's performance against other shortstops on precisely that play.

So, let's say Guillen goes into the hole, backhands it, sets, fires, and throws out Hunter. Dewan's people will then determine what percentage of shortstops made that very play this year. If, say, 47 percent of shortstops make the play, then Guillen will get a +.53 on the play (100 percent minus the 43 percent that make the play). If 12 percent make the play, he gets a +.88. And so on.

And if the reverse is true -- say Guillen does not get to the ball -- then it's a minus play. If 47 percent of shortstops make the play then Guillen gets a -.47.

I hope I'm explaining this correctly -- and I doubt I am. But I know it's SOMETHING like this. At the end of the year, each player gets a final +/- rating that compares his performance to those who play his position. I'm not smart enough to know how good this statistic is compared to what the Major League teams use, but it definitely makes a whole lot of sense to me, and while there's no doubt it is affected by context (where does the shortstop play, how thick was the grass that day, who was running, etc), well, defense IS context. The greatest play in World Series history (with apologies to Willie Mays and Vic Wertz), I think, is Brooks Robinson throwing out Lee May from foul ground in the '70 World series. Well, it's that's Bobby Tolan instead of Lee May, there's no way Robinson throws him out.

And if you prefer the Willie Mays play, well, that whole play is context. If that ball is hit in any other ballpark, it's gone, right?

ANYWAY, now that I've made a mess of explaining all that, I can tell you John sent me the midseason Fielding Bible statistics. And while I'm not allowed to pass along those stats -- and I wouldn't do that to John anyway -- I have used them, along with zone rating, range factor, a few chats with scouts and my own rough evaluations to pick a sort of tentative all-defensive team. I reserve the right to change my choices by the end of the year based on your, "YAAI," comments.

Oh yeah, one other thing: In the Fielding Bible Awards, we choose one team for all of baseball, and we break up the outfield into LF, CF, RF rather than just choosing three outfielders like they do in the Gold Gloves. That makes sense to me. A leftfielder has not won a Gold Glove since Barry Bonds in 1998. And in the American League you have to go back to ... yikes, Yaz in '77?

One other thing ... I would normally do this in one gigantic blog that would take me forever to write. But based on comments from the gallery and also comments from my wife, I will spread this out, position by position, each a new blog, over the next few of days. Supposedly this will be easier on me and also give you, the brilliant readers, some clarity. We'll see. We might never make it to right field.