2011 Team Defense
Posted: April 6, 2011 Filed under: Big Ten Baseball, Defensive Efficiency, Research Leave a commentUpdated for all games through April 5th.
Rk | TEAM | DER | Err | BIP | Out | xOut | Delta |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | IND | 0.662 | 31 | 775 | 513 | 489 | 24 |
2 | MSU | 0.660 | 32 | 670 | 442 | 422 | 20 |
3 | PSU | 0.657 | 38 | 647 | 425 | 408 | 17 |
4 | ILL | 0.653 | 26 | 597 | 390 | 376 | 14 |
5 | MINN | 0.636 | 19 | 538 | 342 | 339 | 3 |
6 | OSU | 0.624 | 37 | 593 | 370 | 374 | -4 |
7 | IOWA | 0.621 | 33 | 742 | 461 | 468 | -7 |
8 | MICH | 0.611 | 37 | 736 | 450 | 464 | -14 |
9 | PUR | 0.598 | 37 | 774 | 463 | 488 | -25 |
10 | NW | 0.589 | 36 | 676 | 398 | 426 | -28 |
AVG | 0.630 |
DER – Defensive Efficiency Ratio. Formula taken from Baseball Prospectus; Measures number of balls in play turned into outs by the team
ERR – Errors
BIP – Number of Balls In Play
Out – Number of Outs Converted
xOut – Expected number of outs converted if said team had a league average DER and had the exact same number of BIP as the team in question
Delta – Difference between expected outs and actual outs
List is sorted by team DER
Exploring Team Defense
Posted: November 10, 2010 Filed under: Defensive Efficiency, Research 2 CommentsOne of the big banes of Sabermetrics is attempting to quantify team defense. There are nifty tools out there like Ultimate Zone Rating, Defensive Runs Saved, Total Zone (all three of which can be found at Fangraphs) that are the most “advanced” defensive metrics available for Major League Baseball.
However, Colin Wyers of Baseball Prospectus fame has questioned defense with a lot of logical fore-thought. The long and short of it is that the processes of the advanced metrics like UZR or John Dewan’s DRS systems aren’t necessarily the problem; it’s the data being put into it. There’s numerous biases that can enter the mix and that compounds things. Crap in, crap out, so-to-speak. If your data isn’t good, it’s almost going to ensure that there’s nothing of value that will come out of the formula.
One thing we do have, though, are outs and balls in play. I asked Colin, and he confirmed, that using Defensive Efficiency Ratio is the best metric for team-level fielding.
Now, since I don’t have any database skills at all, I can’t do a plays made/not made (which is essentially Sean Smith’s Total Zone metric that you find on Baseball Reference) on an individual level like Jeff Sackmann does, but I can use B-Pro’s Def Eff formula and apply it to the Big Ten teams from 2007-2010.