Who the Eck? - A SS analysis

The other day I dissed the defensive skills of Edgar Renteria and to be fair I didn’t know much about his D apart from he’d had a poor year. I said he was a ‘below average defensive SS’ and Neil wondered why I had that impression, so I decided to do some research and do a stat based update compared to my usual ‘I’ll go with what I see’ type musings.

So I asked Neil H to name an average SS, he said Jeter. Jeter before this year has a .974 Fielding Percentage. I asked Neil to elaborate, ‘below average range left to right, above average range backward, above average arm’, said the NY based writer. So overall he’s your average SS.

I asked him for another and he went with sophomore Bobby Crosby over in Oakland. With only two years behind him he records a .973 Fielding Percentage. Neil continued, ‘I’ve not seen much, but what I have, above average range, average arm’

Next up I asked about Miguel Tejada, ‘above everage range, above average arm’ but he only comes in with a .970 Fielding Percentage. So far he has the worst FP, despite the highest praise. Orlando Cabrera comes in at .977 and ‘above average range, average arm’ according to Neil H’s scouting.

We have two final players left to show you, I asked about David Eckstein, ‘below average range, way below average arm’ replies Neil H. He’ll be stunned to read that he has the best Fielding Percentage at SS amongst all the players at .980 and Renteria at .969 even before his poor 2005 season brings up the rear. Neil says about Renteria, ‘above average arm, above average range, way below average brain.’ So his brain puts him to the bottom of the list.

This is an update only using one basic stat and I know there are many other equasions like the home turf, who is at 1st saving errant balls etc, but I am just trying to show that sometimes stats can be misleading and the human eye is more valuable than the number crunching.

We’ll end with a quick A-Rod v Jeter SS analysis, .974 for DJ and .977 for A-Rod and I think we can all agree that the latter is by far the superior SS although the stats show only a 3 in 1000 chances differential.

Just for fun Nomar also comes in at a career .969 SS.

Numbers eh…?

Eckstein .980
Cabrera .977
A-Rod .977
Jeter .974
Crosby .973
Tejada .970
Garciaparra .969
Renteria .969