THE FIELDING BIBLE?

There is a new stat geek book out that focuses on fielding. The crux of the book is a new way of looking at fielders by giving them a +/- rating similar to hockey players. The book evaluates players and calculates how many plays they should have made compared to how many they actually did make. The book loses value, in my view, when Kevin Millar gets a higher rating than J.T. Snow.

Baseball organizations are hungry for ways to evaluate defensive talent. There are so few statistics for defense especially compared to those for hitting or offense. This book gives clubs a new way to look at players, but I think the way itself is in error. Pun intended.

First of all, defense is the most team oriented aspect of baseball. Many plays involve multiple players, and almost all infield plays involve multiple players. Secondly, defense is the most specialized aspect of the game. Each position has nuances that other's don't. This means trying to evauluate all defensive play with a solitary statistical method will always fall short of doing so.

The only way to really gauge defensive players is to watch them. Range cannot be statistically calculated. Jump on the ball and tracking cannot be calculated. Arm strength cannot be calculated. When runners don't run on Ichiro or Guerrero for fear of their arm, that cannot be statistically factored.

In the baseball community, there is a faction obsessed with simplifying the game into a mathematical equation. This goal is unattainable. Stats can be used for general comparisons and to make gameplans, but they can never tell the whole story because some things simply cannot be expressed by numbers.