UZR Now on FanGraphs

by R.J. Anderson on Dec 7, 2008 10:07 AM EST Comment 23 comments

Yes, Ultimate Zone Rating is now available at FG, and even on the leaderboards. Beyond handy. Say you wanted to see who ranked as the best fielders in baseball last year, all you have to do is select the position and boom, here's your results:

Pos	Player	UZR/150
LF	Crawford	28.6
2B	Utley	19.8
RF	Winn	18.9
3B	Lowell	18.5
3B	Longoria	17.7
2B	Ellis	17.7
CF	Gomez	17
3B	Beltre	16.1
2B	Phillips	14.5
RF	Fukudome	13.4

Thoughts:

- Crawford had a really good defensive season despite offensive shortcomings.

- Utley is a monster at second, anytime you can finish ahead of Ellis and Phillips is worthy of praise.

- The two best defensive third basemen are in the American League East. Adrian Beltre isn't too far off.

- Winn doesn't get enough love.

- Gomez is going to be better than Torii Hunter ever was defensively.

- Fukudome in center is something the Cubs should consider.

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That is AWESOME!

by Dan Turkenkopf on Dec 7, 2008 10:22 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Indeed.

by R.J. Anderson on Dec 7, 2008 10:23 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Although I wish they were still using Stats Inc. data

I think we’re now getting all our advanced PBP metrics from BIS (although I could be missing one).

The two companies use different ways of recording the location of hit balls (i.e. different zones/vectors), so it was nice to see how the two systems compared.

What would be amazingly cool is if MGL had UZR results under both systems and could tell us how they compared.

by Dan Turkenkopf on Dec 7, 2008 10:26 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes.

I’m pretty sure he can’t/won’t share complete STATS-based UZR, but I’d hope a cross-analysis will be done soon. Looks like he still needs to add a couple pieces to the BIS version, according to Fangraphs.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 10:32 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Unbelievable.

Thanks, MGL and David. You know where I’ll be for the rest of the day…

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 10:23 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I'm also hoping Fangraphs does a regressed weighting of UZR as a 2009 projection...

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 10:40 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Brad Hawpe, -37 UZR in 2008

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 10:51 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Team UZR

These numbers ignore players who switched teams (mostly) because Fangraphs doesn’t give them a team label. Guys like Teixeira.

Rays 61.9
Red Sox 55
Phillies 48.3
Nationals 35.7
Cardinals 32.1
Astros 30.8
Athletics 27
Giants 24.4
Brewers 19
Royals 19
Blue Jays 16.5
Mets 15
Cubs 13.9
Indians 8.9
Orioles 3.4
Marlins -0.8
Padres -6.4
Braves -6.4
Angels -10.3
Pirates -11.1
Reds -15.7
White Sox -17.9
Twins -20.7
Mariners -25.7
Diamondbacks -28.8
Dodgers -29
Yankees -35.1
Rangers -35.5
Tigers -40
- – - -58.5
Rockies -71.1

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 10:52 AM EST reply actions 1 recs

Blue Jays below the Royals?

Now, that’s a surprise.

Mother---- him and John Wayne!

by MerryGoByeBye on Dec 7, 2008 10:59 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

UZR doesnt'

by Dan Turkenkopf on Dec 7, 2008 4:15 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Doh.. hit enter too early

UZR doesn’t include catcher or pitcher defense. Jays pitchers contributed a lot to their overall defensive performance this year – at least according to PMR.

by Dan Turkenkopf on Dec 7, 2008 4:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

And UZR really doesn't like Vernon Wells

-21 per 150 compared to PMR’s -7.5

by Dan Turkenkopf on Dec 7, 2008 5:17 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Wow, Rockies were considered very good on D in '07

And neck size to baby eating ratio.

by Jordan M on Dec 7, 2008 11:09 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

thank you, Brad Hawpe!

The Denker bus is now bound for San Diego. Those who were passengers on it are now angrily stranded at a gas station in Modesto, CA. Not much about baseball here .

by oldjacket on Dec 7, 2008 12:13 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

did you just

export to excel, sort by team, and then sum each team’s totals or did you find these numbers somewhere on the site? I can’t find it there and was hoping to save a little time. Thanks

by chuckb on Dec 7, 2008 12:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, I just exported to Excel and pivot-tabled.

Love the Fangraphs auto-export feature.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 12:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Well, love it except for the hyperlinks. I always have to copy and past-values to a new worksheet.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 12:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I Know!

I’m going to design a macro to remove all that.

The Denker bus is now bound for San Diego. Those who were passengers on it are now angrily stranded at a gas station in Modesto, CA. Not much about baseball here .

by oldjacket on Dec 7, 2008 12:43 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The hyperlinks are awesome.

All you have to do is strip out some of the resulting HTML and then you have ID codes for every player. Just use an ID map file (there are some available) and you can link the UZR data up to, say, the Baseball Databank or any other datasource you like.

I has a blog. | Ask a sabermagician!

by cwyers on Dec 7, 2008 6:19 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Well, I'll be.

How useful: http://www3.sympatico.ca/tblaker/master_09.csv

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 6:39 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Curtis Granderson -10 runs in 2008

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 11:24 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

The Brewers

won at least 2 more games last year just b/c they moved Braun to LF. He was -24.6 at 3B in ‘07 (-33 per 150 games) and Jenkins was +4.6 in LF. The Hall/Counsell/Branyan hybrid went +5.4 at 3B last year w/ Braun -3.7 in LF. That’s at least a 30 run gain at 3B and only an 8 run drop in LF in ‘08. It’s fair to say that moving Braun to LF put them in the playoffs last year.

by chuckb on Dec 7, 2008 12:48 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I don't often toot my own horn, but...

http://skyking162.com/2008/01/mike-cameron-savior/

Including both offense and defense, the Brewers are between 4.0 and 5.5 wins better with Mike Cameron than without him. At $4 million per win, that’s worth between $16 and $22 million on the free agent market, all for only $7 million. We can’t give all that credit to Cameron (the Brewers technically could have moved Hall and Braun without signing Cameron), but acquiring a good center fielder forces the issue. It’s a great signing and the Brewers are now back to competing with the Cubs for first place in the NL Central.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 7, 2008 1:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs