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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Worst fielding CF of all time (relative to his team peers)?
The 1993 Boston Redsox centerfielders (led by Billy Hatcher) had 33.6% of all the outfield putouts (RF had more putouts). The 1964 Yankees (Mickey Mantle) had 33.7% (LF had more putouts). The 1956 Reds (Gus Bell) had 34.0%.
On the flip side, the 1977 Whitesox had 47.1% of their putouts by the CF (mostly Chet Lemon). Among contemporary teams are the 2007 Redsox (Crisp) and the 2002 Angels (Erstad).
The reasons (besides talent of CF) would be any combination of:
1. fielding talent of your LF and RF
2. propensity for pitchers to spray or not the flyballs
3. dimensions of park
4. positioning of the outfielders
As an example for #2: Billy Hatcher’s pitchers had a propensity historically to spray their balls. So, Hatcher would likely have gotten less opportunities. Based only on the kind of pitchers he had, and the total number of outs he recorded, I have him at -25 plays (as opposed to the minus 40 plays the historical low above would suggest). So, minus 20 runs. Rally though has him as league average. This would mean that there were tons of plays marked as not being hit to CF. Certainly possible, but it does seem odd though that that happened. It could be scorer bias likely based on poor CF positioning. That’s one guess.
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