THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Most fans don’t know anything about UZR.  While they may know that fielding percentages isn’t everything, they have no idea how else to judge a OFer except for: ESPN Webgems, speed (most think that fast player = good fielder) and the only stat they know is fielding percentage.  Given that Ellsbury’s was .994 (as listed on the link you provided) and people know he’s really fast and he gets good exposure from being on the Red Sox, it isn’t a surprise he was picked.

The Hank Aaron Award (best hitter in each league, voted on by the fans) has the same issue.  You’d think hitting would be the easiest thing for the fans to pick, but apparently not.  Last year, the fans voting on the Hank Aaron Award took Aramis Ramirez as the best hitter in the NL.  Forget Pujols, he was probably the third best candidate named Ramirez (Hanley and Manny, even in half a season).  This year, they took Jeter as the best hitter in the AL.

KY#1, really? You’re not surprised that the *worst* centerfielder according to UZR was voted to be the best by the fans at MLB.com? Defensive stats are universally recognized as a poor measure of actual defensive value, but you could not get two more disperate estimates: best and worst.

If your not surprised, then you must think that either the fan voting or UZR is not just flawed, but absolutely meaningless.  I’m not sure its reasonable to believe that either is meaningless.  Ellsbury is an interesting contradiction that the performance evaluation community currently seems unable to reconcile.