from Amazon
Thursday, September 18, 2008
How good are the various teams’ defense?
I took everyone’s current defensive projection in UZR only (does not include outfield arms and turning the DP, and a few other things), based on the last 3 years (05-07) plus most of this year, and applied that to every player’s number of PA so far this year (which is used as a proxy for how many innings they played in the field).
I assumed that everyone gets the normal (league average) number of flyball and groundball opportunities - IOW, I did not take into consideration a team’s pitcher’s g/f ratio, handedness, or number of BIP.
So basically I prorated everyone’s current defensive projection by their playing time so far this year as of a few days ago and added everything up to get a “true estimate” of the approximate value of each team’s defense averaged over the entire of 2008 so far. I would think the totals should roughly correspond to team DER’s.
Team IF OF Total
NL
SDN 12 11 +23
PHI 15 -1 +14
SLN 7 4 +11
NYN -8 17 +9
CHN 6 3 +9
COL 20 -14 +6
ATL 13 -12 +1
SFN -12 13 +1
PIT 4 -6 -2
LAN -10 1 -9
ARI 5 -15 -10
HOU -10 -3 -13
MIL -15 -3 -18
CIN -1 -22 -23
WAS -23 -18 -31
FLO -43 1 -42
AL
KCA 14 20 +34
CLE -1 31 +30
OAK 17 9 +26
CHA 21 4 +25
TOR 8 5 +13
ALA 7 3 +10
BAL 1 3 +4
TBA 7 -4 +3
BOS 14 -15 -1
DET -14 13 -1
MIN -4 0 -4
SEA 10 -23 -13
TEX -26 7 -19
NYA -17 -7 -24
One thing that stands out is that the AL is MUCH better in defense, +83 runs per 150 games times 14 teams, or .08 runs per game! (Keep in mind that UZR is normalized to both leagues combined, so that a zero UZR for a player in either league is an “average defender at that position for both leagues combined,” presumably.) Probably one of the reasons for the lower run scoring in the AL this year and the continued dominance of the AL over the NL.
The NL is a total of -74 runs per 150 games times 16 teams, or .06 runs per game.
The difference between the NL and AL in defense alone is .14 runs per game, or around a 51.4% advantage!