Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:44 am
If you go to baseball-reference.com for Heyward and click on the Advanced Fielding tab (next to the Standard Fielding chart on the initial screen of stats) you can see a number of items related to OF throwing.
It first breaks down errors by Catch/Field/Throw, then goes on to a breakdown of assists by base, then each on base situation where a throw might be needed (opportunities/held/killed). "Opportunities" is total number of possible situations faced by that OF, "Held" is number of times the runner did not attempt to advance, and "Killed" is number of outs when the runner did attempt to advance.
Over his 5-year career Heyward's totals show that runners held 45.8% of the time and were killed 2.2% - MLB averages being 46.5% held and 2.3% killed - so these numbers are slightly below the MLB average. Of course, this is only one parameter of fielding - Heyward's range was considered best of any RF in 2014 by several indices.
Very neat stats to ponder.