Quote:
Originally Posted by HawkeyeCB
Why are errors useless? Yeah, they screw errors up a lot. But in the case of Edwin, a lot of his errors are completely earned. 
If someone historically has a lot of errors (and a low range) year after year, it's not because he's good at playing the field.
Don't get me wrong, there are better statistics, but over a career errors do tell a story. |
#1 is that they're subjective, dependant on the scorekeeper in any given field.
#2 is that they punish good fielders with range for getting to difficult balls even if they can't make the play. Meanwhile a poor fielder or one with limited range never comes close to a lot of balls, and because he only really gets to make plays on the balls hit right at him, isn't in a position to have the difficult attempts that get chalked up as errors.
Example. A ball gets hit 12 feet to the right of the Shortstop (right from his perspective). Shortstop A, possessing excellent range, gets to the ball and gets a glove on it, but can't corral it. The ball skips off his glove into the shallow OF. He gets charged with an error. Shortsop B, with poor range, comes up 4 feet short of that ball when he goes for it. It goes right clear into the outfield. Same end result for the runner, but he gets to avoid an error being charged to him purely because he's a worse fielder than the Shortstop A.
Also consider that John McDonald, all-around well regarded defender committed 31 errors over a 3 year stretch with the Jays. 31. Roberto freaking Alomar has almost 200 errors to his credit over his career.
I get that you can, under the right circumstances, use errors to illustrate a player's defensive prowess. Problem is that you can also use other, better stats (or just your eyes, since most defensive stats tend to have some flaw to them.) which don't have the potential for skewed results or false conclusions.
