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And one with which I wholeheartedly agree. And I think that this is the fundamental problem with my previous evaluations of the potential for great defense to win many ballgames. I still don't think pitching is 80% of the defensive puzzle the way that James assumes, nor that defense is less important in net than offense. BUT...people have looked at the defensive wins my evaluations have claimed (4.7 for Cameron in 2003, for example) and said - "wow...that can't be right - you're saying that if you had 8 fielders as talented as Cameron at each position, your team would win 37 games from defense ALONE??" I've always blinked and said, "I guess that's what I AM saying..."
The answer is...no...because there are a limited number of balls in play and 8 great fielders will be robbing plays from each other like crazy and all of their values will go down.
And that calls into question the entire notion of rating defense skill in a team-based construct and treating dWAR as bankable commodities. EVEN THOUGH defense is a team sport, I think we need to figure out (somehow) how many plays each fielder would have made with an all-average team defense and pitching staff if we truly wish to compare players historically. But then we need to make a change to a team-specific context for the purpose of projecting. GIven that Brendan Ryan covers X plays to his right more than normal per chance, how many runs is that if the third baseman steals Y chances in 2013?
This may actually be a big part of why defensive performance appears to be so chaotic.