Defensive Skills--Shortstop and Third Base

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GM33
Posts: 234
Joined: Thu Oct 12, 2017 6:15 pm

Re: Defensive Skills--Shortstop and Third Base

Post by GM33 »

allenciox wrote: Mon May 07, 2018 3:16 pm phen0m, my experience is the same as yours. I did some regression analysis awhile back on about 40 years worth of data, and found that better defense matters for Catchers the most, then 2B, then SS, then 3B and all three outfielder positions about the same, then P, then 1B (1B had a very insignificant effect on team success in holding down runs for other team).

It appeared that the amount of runs given up by a team depended about 70% on pitching, 30% on fielding.

As far as range and arm are concerned: for both 2B and 3B, range was about twice as important as arm. At SS, it's about 55% range, 45% arm. In the OF, C, and P, arm is most important: for outfielders, arm is about 70%/30% range, for P it's about 80%/20%, and for Catchers it's more than 90% arm --- if you totally ignore range in a catcher it won't really hurt you.
This is great info. I am curious, did the analysis group all outfield spots together? I am wondering about the importance of range versus arm for centerfield compared to the corner spots. Most CF draftees appear to have higher range / lower arm (which mimics real life baseball but not sure how that actually plays out in SD). Or did the analysis consider them separately and the results for CF were just similar to those for LF and RF?
allenciox
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:57 pm

Re: Defensive Skills--Shortstop and Third Base

Post by allenciox »

I looked at positions independently, but my analysis did not account for people that play multiple positions. A lot of OFs can play LF, RF, CF but my analysis only considered their primary position. At any rate, all three OFs came out with arm as dominant. For some reason, CFs came out at closer to 80% arm, than 70% arm but that might be an artifact of the data. RFs and LFs both came out almost exactly the same.

Note that the advantage of arm in OFs does not show up in fielding percentage or plus/minus ratings; those are dominated by range. However, arm shows up in hidden ways; mostly by not allowing runners on base to take an extra base on singles/doubles nearly as often (i.e. runner on first going to third or runner on second going home on a single; runner on first making it to home plate on a double).
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