Brian Jordan is another one that is a bit higher than we might think.

I didnt expect Pat Burrell to be worse than Manny. I guess that is just Pat being Pat.

Keep an eye on Ryan Langerhans. This kid is excellent defensively and is a lot better than most people give him credit for. Along with Andruw Jones and Jeff Francoeur, he gives the Braves what may very well be the best defensive outfields in baseball.

re: Pat Burrell is onw of the worst defensive leftfielders

I am shocked and surprised at how low Pat Burrell ranked on this defensive chart. On many simulation programs he is rated as having good defensive range and he is usually assigned some defensive win shares. This program makes him very bad indeed, almost immobile.

Also, surprisingly, is the poor defense of Marlon Byrd, who the Phils put in Centerfield for two years. And we all thought he was good at defense. It turns out we were giving up a LOT of balls between the alleys for two years there between Burrell and Byrd by playing those two out there. That was a lot of runs not gotten to by our outfield.

Putting Rowand out there will solve some of the problem.

It might be prudent to consider putting Burrell at dH and playing a better fielder in Left field for the Phils when they can in AL games away.

--arthur john kyriazis
--Philly

I must say that your numbers for Manny Ramirez are startling, given that other defensive metrics showed him to be far and away the worst leftfielder in baseball last year. I'm sure we'll see the conversion to runs over at Chronicle of the Lads soon, but I expect that the 12 to 15 outs that Manny failed to record will show up at around -7 runs. That's miles away from the -47 runs that MGL reported as Manny's 2005 UZR. Throw in Manny's major league-leading 17 assists, and Manny (could it be?!) works out to be an average leftfielder.

it's hard to know how well different defensive metrics account for the monster. but having watched some games, -47 sounds ridiculous.

How much of Manny's -47 (or whatever) is due to the outfield space/wall situation in Fenway.

Not to turn this to a UZR debate, but considering how hard it is to compile good defensive numbers in left field at Fenway, I always thought Manny was underrated by UZR.

This isn't to say Manny isn't a poor left fielder, which he is, but I've been curious as to what he would look like if you teased out the 81 Fenway games. This looks like an interesting first step.

BoSox Bob,

It's difficult to believe any major league fielder would be -47 runs. In a very old baseball abstract, Bill James argued that the difference between the best and worst shortstops might be 25 runs.

If you look at it another way, Carl Crawford was +30, Manny -15. So many is -45 outs compared to Crawford. That's 1.6 games worth of outs, or about 8 or 9 runs. That seems correct for a left fielder to me.

On total defense, Win Shares gives Manny 2.9 to 2.2 for Crawford. Overall, that's about +1 runs for Manny.

You need to include the run value of the resulting hit (or ROE) as well as the out not recorded. So the total run impact of trading an out for a hit/error in the OF is about .8 runs. So the difference btwn Crawford and Manny (assuming the outs are correct) is about 36 runs, not 8 or 9. That's about 4 wins or 12 WS.

David, would it be possible to show Manny Ramirez's numbers at home and on the road?

Rally Monkey, it's possible. Remind me when I get finished with all the fielders.

Run expectancy (RE) provides a good way to see the impact of outs not made in the field. Suppose the first two batters of the inning hit balls that Jeter and Giambi should have fielded, but do not. Expected runs is 1.82 if it's 1st-3rd no outs, 1.47 if 1st-2nd, so call it 1.60. But if the plays had been made it's none on and 2 outs, RE= 0.11. So the difference is 1.49 runs, or about .75 runs for each play missed by an IF.