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1) using profanity or any euphemisms for profanity
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Defensive Charts by Baseball Musings
2005-03-27 21:31
by Jon Weisman

Graphic illustrations of how well every ballplayer fields, courtesy of David Pinto at Baseball Musings. The X axis, I believe, is a physical representation of the range a ballplayer covers in a given situation, while the Y axis shows the quantity of outs recorded, with the black line showing actual outs and the yellow line showing expected outs. My favorite at first glance: Adrian Beltre on bunts. Supoib.

Here are the charts for Jeff Kent - pretty much at expected level on grounders to second base. Here's Alex Cora - just a hair better.

Feel free to add your own discoveries ...

(Pinto recently also gave us day-by-day offensive stats for any player. Great stuff.)

Comments
2005-03-27 22:03:56
1.   Tom Meagher
Jon,
I think you're misreading the graphs. Kent is quite strong on grounders straight to him and grounders to his left, and kind of weak on grounders to his right. Cora is a nightmare on grounders - he's slightly above average on the ones right toward him, but he's poor to his left and even poorer to his right.

If you look at the red line, it shows outs recorded relative to expected outs.

It's also interesting that Beltre apparently played pretty far off the line.

2005-03-27 22:05:07
2.   Tom Meagher
Okay, "nightmare" is a little strong, but you get the point.
2005-03-27 23:00:09
3.   Jon Weisman
Yeah, I'd say nightmare is strong. You can barely see any space at all between the actual and expected lines in the places you're talking about. And I see the red line - if that small amount below the axis is something huge, then they need to make the scale of the overall graph different. I mean, you can't be much less below the axis without being above it, if you get my drift.
2005-03-27 23:05:27
4.   Jon Weisman
On Beltre's bunt chart, for example, now there you can see some dramatic differences between actual and expected.
2005-03-28 01:20:34
5.   GoBears
Just for fun, look at Greg Maddux's charts - he of the 436 Gold Gloves. If I'm reading these correctly, he's great on non-bunt GBs, terrific on bunts hit down the baselines, and, oddly, bad on bunts hit nearer the mound. An odd combination. I wonder if small sample size matters - are these just for 2004?
2005-03-28 05:32:02
6.   Dr Love
"are these just for 2004?"

They're just for 2004. It says so at the top ;)

2005-03-28 08:48:59
7.   mcrawford
These charts are so fun, so informative.

Not sure exactly what the error bars mean, but they seem to cover just about everybody. So even Beltre's huge advantage on bunts is contained within the error bars. Same with Cora's and Kent's range. I mean, it's pretty easy to see that Beltre is awesome on those slow rollers, anyone could see that by watching a few games. But I'm just pointing out that what looks like a "huge" difference on Beltre, and the differences you're comparing between Cora and Kent are all within the error bars.

2005-03-28 08:51:37
8.   mcrawford
Robin Ventura is still an excellent defensive first baseman, presumably because he was actually a third baseman.
2005-03-28 09:02:45
9.   mcrawford
Man, I love these things.

Cesar Izturis is a bit below average in the 3B hole, and great at going up the middle. Probably part of this is due to the fact that Beltre was taking stuff in the hole, playing off the line, as Tom noted.

2005-03-28 09:56:57
10.   corey
Haha, Jose Offerman is off the charts! I love these things, and that one gave me a good chuckle.

^^^^^^ slightly bitter

2005-03-28 12:43:50
11.   Tom Meagher
The "error bars" are one standard deviation.
2005-03-28 17:07:25
12.   mcrawford
Yeah, I should have read the entire site first. It certainly seems like it's hard to get past even one standard deviation. The only people I see outside of the error bars are some infielders on ground balls, since there's lots of data there. Probably indicates that we need some sort of 3-year averages to look at, or something.

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