Weinberg: The beginner’s guide to measuring defense
From Neil Weinberg at FanGraphs on September 5, 2014:
There’s a decent chance you’ve arrived at this page without a serious desire to hear more about defensive statistics. Trust me, I understand your frustration and your fatigue. Defensive stats like Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved are controversial in some circles because they are reasonably new and the underlying data is somewhat hidden from view. You hear words like “flawed,” “absurb,” and “subjective” surrounding them. You’re tired of it.
Yet I’d like to lay out why we have advanced defensive statistics and how they work in the abstract. You won’t get to the end of this post and decide that UZR has perfectly measured Alex Gordon‘s defense, but hopefully you will have a better appreciation for why we measure defense the way that we do.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/the-beginners-guide-to-measuring-defense/
Originally published: September 5, 2014. Last Updated: September 5, 2014.