Before I get to the centerfielders, a question arises sometimes that I'd like to address. I'm sometimes asked when a fielder does well, especially an outfielder on fly balls, what about ball hogs? So for outfielders, I'd like to take a look at where balls get hogged, and who does the hogging.

The first graph shows the percentage of plays made on each Probabilistic Model of Range vector, each vector representing about five degrees. Data is all outs made by major league outfielders in 2008. Leftfield is represented by low number vectors, rightfield by high number vectors. Straight-away centerfield is vector 36 (click for a larger image).

There are two things to notice from this graph. The first is that there are very few vectors in which ball hogging might occur. There are only six, in fact. Second, centerfielder hog more balls from leftfielder than they do from rightfielders. This makes some sense, since most hitters are right-handed, meaning centerfielders are going to be shaded toward left most of the time.

The other thing I want to point out is that balls are hogged in places where fewer outs get recorded (click for a larger image):

So, it's tough for an outfielder to get a huge boost by ball hogging. They don't stray that far into another's territory, and when they do there are fewer outs to be gathered in anyway.

This also gives us a tool to use to look at individual teams if a question of ball hogging comes up.