Team Defense

by David Bloom on Dec 28, 2007 10:02 PM EST

As a side project, I have been working on a new site called Trophy League that aggregates posts from the Blogosphere, as well as a stats section. I'll be using this as a supplement to DRays Bay to easily pull up numbers as I have just added links for 2007 data.

One thing that alarmed me while looking over some of the numbers was that we wrapped up the title for worst team fielding as based on PMR which is a formula devised by David Pinto of Baseball Musings using data from Baseball Information solutions.

Pinto uses play-by-play data to determine the probability of a ball in play being converted to an out based on six parameters: Direction of hit (a vector), The type of hit (Fly, ground, line drive, bunt), How hard the ball was hit (slow, medium, hard), The park, The handedness of the pitcher, The handedness of the batter

On my site you can browse the PMR by position. Brendan Harris shows up as almost dead last for up the middle at SS. Also, towards the bottom is Ty Wiggington. Surprisingly, Upton and Pena are in the middle of the pack. The model says the problem on defense is not in the outfield. So, with the addition of our new SS Bartlet who shows up near the top of the pack, our pitchers will definetaly be helped out. I am guessing whoever we throw out there at third will be an upgrade over Wiggy.

With our improved pitching and defense we should see improvements in the win column. Also, I noted that even with Cliff Floyd's down year, he had an RBI% of 14.94 % compared to Delmon's 16.84%. I think if Floyd can stay healthy which is a big IF, we won't be that bad there. Overall, there is truth about the optimism being thrown out there about the Rays.

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