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A couple interesting things will come of this data becoming more avaialble.
The reliability of UZR and DRS (Fielding Bible metric) over other defensive metrics just went WAY UP. UZR and DRS are one of the few metrics that adjust for the difficulty of each play based on the location, speed, and angle of hit balls.
We'll finally have xBABIP for pitchers. Up until now, we could only use a pitcher's track record (which can be quite accurate after a larger sample considering context).
Bref is based on DRS and Fangraphs on UZR, so both are going in the right direction for hitter WAR. FIP is not going to cut it for pitcher WAR in the future and Bref's simple RAs is better with a larger sample.
One area where I disagree is assuming the Ms had a good defense because of the fact that they had a high MPH staff that led to high BABIP. The park itself depresses BABIP which balances it out, including average FB/GB (their team UZR was -13.5 in 2008).
So the the 2008 defense as a whole was probably about league average, although Ichiro and Beltre carried the team.