Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

How many more hits will a 3 in the infield give up than a 2? How do you correlate a better range (2) to a lesser (3) and take into account the errors total may be higher for the player with better range?

2007 Example
Guillen is a 2e33. Eckstien is a 3e8. Who is the better defender?

Check this out. http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/btf/pages/basesim/stratfldg.htm

I use the TB (total bases) column to determine which fielding combination is better. Hits and errors both advance the runners so it really doesn't matter which occurs.

In your example Eckstein will allow fewer TB than Guillen.

[url=http://andrew-stevens.tripod.com/index/stratfield.html]This chart[/url] expresses it in terms of OPS, which lets you subtract the defensive value from the player's offense in order to get the total value of the player. Note, however, that neither of these charts incorporates the effect of double plays. This is very important up the middle.

much thanks dean and LM.

If you want a simple summation, at 2b and shorstop range is more important while at the corners range becomes less important due to the less frequency in which balls are hit to those positions. Errors, however, ar always still errors.
I tend to think of errors as a team thing. I try not to have too many of my fielders commit a huge amount of errors. Otherwise, I figure that money spent on pitching has been spent in vain.

About 30 years ago when I had nothing better to do with my time I actually charted everything out by position. Then I factured the opportunity based on the players hitting and compared it to the threat based on his fielding as well as the position he played. Its been a while so dont't quote me on this but the fielding rating was about 40% of the 2ND and SS value and the lowest was with the firstbase position being the lowest at about 16% of the players value coming from his fielding.

[b:bc7f9c18a6]HMF[/b:bc7f9c18a6], that's pretty close to what the OPS-based chart I posted earlier comes up with.

The link DeanTSC posted is... awesome :)