Quote:
Originally Posted by the 'stache
Agree with the bolded part completely. I see that Roberto Clemente's defense in right was worth only 12.1 wins over 17 seasons, and I laugh myself silly. Then I look at somebody like Andruw Jones, who was a fine center fielder, no doubt. But you'll never convince me that, for his career, his defensive contribution was twice as good as Clemente's. Jones had 24.1 dWAR to Clemente's 12.1. The argument has always been "Clemente made 140 errors in 17 seasons". How many of those errors came on balls that no other right fielder in baseball could have even gotten to? If you get a glove on the ball, but don't catch it, the official scorer is going to give the fielder an error. The point being that any other fielder in right is going to let the ball drop in for a double. Clemente's range in right was unrivaled, and his gun might be the best the game has ever seen. Of course, he's going to have more errors, because he's going to also attempt to throw out more runners than the average outfielder. When you're throwing the ball from the warning track in right field all the way to third base, some balls are going to skip away because the third baseman can't handle it, or it hits the runner.
Please. I've watched a ton of footage from Clemente's defense over the years. The man was a god in the outfield, and some stupid metric trying to convince us that his defense didn't even net 1 win in 162 games a season is utter bullcrap.
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playing Cf gives you more value because it's a more difficult position. Andruw is not only the best fielding CF'er of all time, but it's not even close and Clemente had a great arm, but his range wasn't as good as old timey memory may make us believe. Confirmation bias skews things (which is why we have stats) (and man alive quit using baseball reference, it's old, antiquated and behind the times)
Clemente was a great OF'er, but by playing RF he is always going to be worth less than an equally great fielder who plays CF because of the range required.
oh, and Fangraphs has him worth 1+ win a year for his fielding :-)
edited to add: errors are not included in metrics, they are based on plays made relative to avg, in zone and out of zone as well as arm, distance covered...etc and yelling at math because it disagrees with your opinion is not really very scientific, it's the reason we needed metrics, confirmation bias skews things far too much for things like fielding% or errors made to have much value