Friday, December 06, 2013
Fielding Primer
?Chris does a good job at hitting all the touchpoints. There's UZR, DRS, TZ, FIELDf/x. Here's a part on Fielding Scouting Report.
The problem with scouting reports is that, outside of a select few baseball insiders, very few have access to this information. Prospect analysts, like Parks, can relay what other scouts have told him, but most of the actual reports will never be seen by the public. In order to combat that, Tom Tango, a respected analyst who works under a psuedonym, created the Fans Scouting Report (FSR).
Tango said the idea behind the FSR stemmed from Bill James crowdsourcing ratings for players back in the 1980s. Fans would mail James letters detailing their own ratings of players. Tango wanted to revive the idea. "With the internet, the reach was far higher, and the feedback is instantaneous," he explains. Fans can grade players based on their instincts, speed, first step and arm strength, for example. The final calculation of all those figures results in an overall rating of that player's defense. Tango adds, "of all the things I've been involved in, I think this is the one I'm most proud of." The FSR can be found at FanGraphs and on Tango's personal site, Tangotiger.net.
As with every other method of player evaluation, there are flaws in the FSR. The data is coming from fans, not experts, which can lead some reliability issues. While some analysts choose not to look at the FSR, Zimmerman said that he has turned to them when he didn't know much about a player. Tango believes there is value in the project, saying the FSR gives a "completely different perspective" than the metrics. He adds that all metrics have uncertainty, so it's up to each person to "weight them as best you can."
Chris also uses the term "flaw" a few times. It's not a flaw. It's a system limitation or constraint. Flaws are problems that can be corrected. Targetting 20-30 fans for each team as opposed to 2-3 pro scouts isn't a "flaw", or a design bug. And it's more than a design feature. It is the actual design itself!
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