Add new comment

1
Sandy - Raleigh's picture

Well, it doesn't help in terms of individual defensive assessment - but bbref does provide the BABIP numbers for pitching staff, both home and away.  The 2009 numbers so far?
Home: .287 --- Road: .282
While there is a major home advantage in opponent OPS -- and the bulk of that IS slugging and HR-related, (.361 slugging in Safeco and .410 away -- with a 29/39 home/road split in nearly identical PAs), the evidence in 2009 says ...
The defense at home is EXCEPTIONAL at preventing XBHs -- turning both HRs and 2Bs into singles.  But, the defense at Safeco (this year) is NOT producing a lower BABIP.  Of course, 2/3 of the Ms OF this season were brand new to the team, so experience in the Safe was minimal. 
The only certainties are:  The 2009 defense is drastically better than the 2008.  The primary difference in defense is in CF/LF.  The defense (in terms of making outs), is not significantly better at home than on the road. 
The lack of HRs -- and the reduced XBHs both support (to a degree) the concept that balls are getting "held up".  But, the evidence does not suggest that this is producing additional outs, (and thereby skewing RF results - or even ZR results).  Of course, if the "held up" ball theory is true -- then a potentially viable strategy is to play deep - and instead of attempting to steal outs on short balls, you steal bases from the opposition. 

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.