Graph of the Day: The Yankees Outfield

Trying something new here on GotD.
In the past week the Yankees have announced their starting outfield for 2009 - choosing Brett Gardner and Xavier Nady over Melky Cabrera and Nick Swish respectively.
Here's how the current starters stacked up defensively in 2008 by vector.
All vectors extend from the infield to the wall (more or less). I've shortened them for display purposes - so we can see the zones that are covered by more than one fielder.
Damon was amazing on balls hit in the normal LF positions (+7 outs) which suggests he's good at going forward and back on the ball, but doesn't necessarily have great lateral movement.
Nady, on the other hand, was -4 outs on balls hit to the normal RF position. I know it's beating a dead horse, but I'm still not sure why Nady is starting instead of Swisher. Sigh.
Data from David Pinto's Defensive Charts based on his Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR). You should definitely check them out.
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Gardner
Looks impressive – is it just me, or will he cover a lot of the ground Damon won’t?
by Harry Pavlidis on Mar 30, 2009 10:06 AM EDT reply actions
Swisher's got a tiny sample size in RF for 2008
The zone with the most predicted outs has only 5.
Nady on the other hand had close to 40 in his biggest zone.
by Dan Turkenkopf on Mar 30, 2009 7:37 PM EDT up reply actions
Nady's range graph really amuses me.
He’s awful with balls straight at him (maybe he can’t judge short/long very well?) He’s merely bad slightly to each side, then actually good two vectors away, but then back to bad at the extremes.
Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.
Is there a way to show number of opps at each vector? Or maybe league-average distribution of opps?
Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.
Sweet
I would love to see this stuff more for GotD. How about taking a look at the new and improved Mariners outfield? I would hope to see all green there.
-Zach Sanders
MLB Notebook.com
Roto Rat.com
Erik might need to invent some sort of uber-neon+ color
Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.
Could we just use White?
Black could be for guys who truly suck (Black Hole, get it?), and white for the Gods of fielding
-Zach Sanders
MLB Notebook.com
Roto Rat.com
Right now, white is neutral/average -- lack of either color
I like it that way, otherwise you’re not quite sure what shade of grey is average. Of course, our red/green color-blind readers might disagree.
Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.
It's not going to be as good as you'd like
There’s not a lot of data for Chavez or Gutierrez at their current positions.
And while Ichiro was above average in RF last season, it was only by about 3 runs according to PMR.
That said, the graph should be out tomorrow or Thursday.
by Dan Turkenkopf on Mar 31, 2009 7:47 PM EDT up reply actions

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