LA Angels Monday News Crash: Left Field

Do I think Guzman has better defensive ceiling at short than Neto? Yes. I think he has better range, and equivalent or better footwork. And I think that’s supported by scouting, by advance metrics, and by having watched 30-40 games with him at SS personally.

My problem with your PoV is that you keep citing fielding % and fielding % alone, and then making categorical statements about that player’s overall defense. Who is the audience for statements like that? Calling it “fielding numbers” as if it were some holistic measure of defense is like looking at Trout’s batting average and calling it “offensive numbers” and deciding he’s having a crap season.

And when you type “advanced-stats cult”, who do you imagine your audience is for that? If most baseball professionals largely ignore your stat in favor of much more robust data, isn’t that the opposite of “cult”? It’s the mainstream – the tiny cult of fielding percentage is something for senior citizens who still resent computers, radar guns and digital photography encroaching on the mid-20th c small ball experience.

We have Statcast and Trackman, we have decades of historical plays and software to assess play likelihood, we have OAA, FRV, UZR and DRS. Fielding % is just one dude in a press box asking himself whether he thinks a play “should have been made”. That’s it. Entirely subjective, and varies from individual to individual – most certainly in sparsely populated minor league parks.