All About Defense
November 21, 2006 by Geoff Young
Filed under Stats and Analysis
I’m out this week visiting family for Thanksgiving. I hope there will be some good free agent signings and trades to talk about when I return. Meantime, here’s a little something you might enjoy…
David Pinto is running his annual Probabilistic Model of Range articles over at at Baseball Musings. The first one examines team defense. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us to see the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals at or near the front of the pack (or the Tampa Bay Devil and Pittsburgh Pirates pulling up the rear, for that matter).
The second in Pinto’s series breaks down the team numbers by ground balls and fly balls. Again, as we might expect, the Tigers and Cardinals are at the very top for grounders.
For fly balls, the Chicago Cubs and Toronto Blue Jays lead the way. As someone who watched almost all of the San Diego Padres’ games in 2006, I’m more than a little surprised that they check in at #12 (behind, among others, a San Francisco Giants outfield that featured a gimpy-kneed Barry Bonds) by this measure.
As with dairy products, defensive metrics always give me a bit of trouble. That is probably more information than you needed, but there it is. Have a nice day, and good luck getting the image out of your head. 
