Jeff Sackmann is using Sean Smith’s Total Zone Rating, which has been shown to correlate well with UZR. Maybe the more statistically inclined azruavatar can come and tell us what he thinks these numbers are worth, I don’t really know for sure. You can take them with a grain of salt.
According to the numbers, the Cards have some defensive stalwarts in the minors-
- Colby Rasmus – Runs: 9 – Runs/150: 15
- Jon Jay – Runs: 16 – Runs/150: 25 (!?)
- David Freese – Runs: 8 – Runs/150: 12
- Pete Kozma – Runs: 11 – Runs/150: 19
- Daryl Jones – PB: 8 – Runs/150: 17, Springfield, Runs: 8
- Niko Vasquez – Runs : 7, Runs/150: 18
My first thoughts were “yep, Colby is probably that good” and “there’s no way Jon Jay is that good, is he?”. From what we hear of Kozma, Vasquez and Freese, I’d tend to believe those numbers. Jones is a shocker and it makes the Carl Crawford comparison more apt. If you were wondering about Wallace and Craig, Wallace was a -3 at both the QC and Springfield, that’s just out of 119 total chances he had. Craig was a -3 per 150. Jarrett Hoffpauir – remember him? – was the worst fielder I saw that the Cardinals had, with a – 15/150.
Small side journey – Tommy Pham, a personal favorite cheeseball of mine was a +19 per 150.
Personally, I’d emphasize what the scouting reports say about a player in the minors first, and then you can look at these numbers, Dan Fox’s SFR and BP’s FRAA. What ever happened to Dan Fox, anyway? FRAA is probably the last place you want to look, but until now it’s what has been the most readily available.
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Fox took a job with the Pirates last year
figures.
Just what I was looking for a few days ago. Thanks for pointing it out.
I don’t think those ratings are far away from those guys’ scouting reports. Were there any interesting catchers’ stats?
I’ve been out of town the last few days b/c of the ice storm to the south. Good to be back finally. There’s some crazy stuff going on in southern MO. Trees snapping off left and right because of ice. It’s dangerous to be outside w/o protective gear.
Anyway, TotalZone is roughly analogous to Dan Fox’s SFR in methdology and value. It’s a huge step up from FRAA, imo, and is in the second tier of stats with other psuedo play by play metrics. Basically (and I’m 90% sure what I’m about to write is accurate) it looks at retrosheet data to map out who fielded the ball and get a rough idea of what kind of numbers are average at each position. It’s not a true play by play metric that includes actual BIS or STATs zone data but it’s a healthy approximation. I’d have confidence that as long as it doesn’t wildly diverge from the scouting report, you can probably find a +- 5 range for their defense.
The usual caveats to defensive statistics still apply.
Tommy Pham! Keep the hope alive.