Sports: A Game Of Inches

We are four humble men who love sports, but hate sports commentary. Peter Gammons is our hero and John Madden is our enemy. If you were to ask us our purpose, our answer would be simple: "We are forever locked in Mortal Kombat for the souls of sports fans everywhere. Statistics are our science and 'the immeasurable character of men' is the obsolete religion of blind faith. Our job is to prove that God doesn't exist and that athletes are merely cold, metal machines with no hearts or souls."

Stolen Goods: 2010 UZR Projections

Three months ago, Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond The Boxscore calculated regressed and age-adjusted 2010 UZR/150 projections. With baseball season on the horizon (I promise to stop saying that after Thursday...), I think readers might be interested in how their team's fielding is reasonably projected to fair. The data is available in a sortable excel spreadsheet here.

BTB's Projected Top Defenders By Position:Position Name Projected UZR

Position	Name	Projected UZR
1B	Albert Pujols	+5.5
2B	Chase Utley	+11.0
3B	Evan Longoria	+11.0
SS	Adam Everett	+8.6
RF	Austin Kearns	+8.3
CF	Franklin Gutierrez	+14.8
LF	Carl Crawford	+9.8

BTB's Projected Bottom Defenders By Position:

Position	Name	Projected UZR
1B	Mike Jacobs	-5.6
2B	Kelly Johnson	-5.2
3B	Ryan Braun	-12.4
SS	Yuniesky Betancourt	-9.7
RF	Brad Hawpe	-19.3
CF	Jacoby Ellsbury	-9.0
LF	Adam Dunn	-13.4

1 comments:

The 'Bright' One said...: those values seem very conservative to me. 10 players in the majors last year had UZRs higher than the highest value predicted for next year; February 17, 2010 at 2:16 AM