Upton top CF arm

John Walsh, conducted his survey on outfield throwing arms for the 3rd consecutive season over at Hardball Times, you can see the entire article here. Thanks to RJ for showing me this link.

After losing Delmon Young, who was ranked at the top of ESPN's outfield arms list, many thought the days of a missile launcher in the outfield were gone for the Rays. Walsh's study, which break's down every players arm to runs saved per 200 opportunities, shows that B.J. was the best arm in centerfield in all of baseball. While his arm doesn't come quite as close in runs saved, he does lead all in his position with a 8.5 runs saved per 200 opportunities. Most notably, B.J. leads Ichiro Suzuki by a staggering 3.3 runs/200, as Ichiro is widely considered to have one of the top guns in the game.

Delmon rated as the 4th best right fielder, and wasn't really anywhere close to leader Michael Cuddyer, who posted a 14.6 runs/200.

Carl Crawford did not rate that well, but this is not uncommon with left fielders. Carl finished with a -2.0 runs/200, meaning he was giving away 2 runs every 200 opportunities.

All in all, I would take this statistical comparison over Crasnick's opinionated ratings. Not to say that we don't like Crasnick, because we do. This system breaks their arms down to runs, which is the easiest way to find value in a player.