If I told you that “there was a throw to a base” or I told you that “there was a throw to first base” (with less than two outs), which bucket would you think had more men on base, on the average?

That being said, if it is closer to .7 runs per “swing” (error or out), that’s fine by me. I don’t think it will make any (other than de minimus) difference at all, keeping track of what “bucket” the error is in, to be honest.

Ben, from the article:

“However, in the long run, we can assume that a certain fixed percentage of bad throws from each infield position will always result in an error while another fixed percentage of those bad throws have a chance to be “saved” by a skilled (OR TALL) first baseman.”

“What UZR does not measure for first basemen, because the requisite data is not readily available, are the theoretical runs saved or cost by virtue of a first baseman’s skill at successfully catching ERRANT THROWS OR THROWS IN THE DIRT. FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD, I CALL THESE “SCOOPS”, EVEN THOUGH THEY NECESSARILY INCLUDE POOR THROWS THAT ARE NOT IN THE DIRT.”

You said:

“These stats are interesting, but mostly it tells us two things we already knew…”

You could have saved me a few hours if you told us exactly how much this information “that we already knew” was worth. 1 run a year? 10 runs?

You also could have saved me some time if you told me which players, independent of their height and handedness, were particularly good or bad at saving errors. There are tall lefties in the data who were not good and short righties who were good. But apparently you knew that already.

You are right in that a few of the things that UZR or “scoops” does not capture is a first baseman’s skill at starting the DP (although I do have a metric which looks at that, which is debuting on Fangraphs soon – “turning the DP by infielders”) and throwing to other bases, like home plate or perhaps to second or third on a bunt. But you probably know that too. Can you share with us all of the players who are good or bad at that (other than J.T. Snow) and exactly how many runs that kind of skill is worth?

;)

I don’t know why you would suppose that. Infielders hold runners on 2nd and/or 3d all the time and throw to first with less than 2 outs. They also throw to first when runners are in motion and there is no chance for a play elsewhere. But you are correct that the run value for an error on the throw is closer to .7. Not for the reason you gave, but because an error on the throw can either put the batter on or not and can also either advance the batter beyond first or not. The run values for these four buckets vary from .35 to .75 and average .445. That added to the average run value of an infield out ground ball of .258 gives .703. As you said, no big deal, your conclusions are still the same. However, dividing into 4 buckets might result in a slightly greater spread between the very worst and very best first basemen as the very best may be able to prevent the batter and other runners from advancing more often than the very worst first basemen.

Peter, an error is worth around .5 runs and an out around .27. I used .8 runs per “difference between an out and an error,” the same as you would use for a regular defensive system that tracked missed balls versus outs. I suppose that a throw to first suggests that no other runners on on base unless there are 2 outs, so maybe the value of an error on a bad throw to first is closer to .4 runs. So maybe .7 runs is more accurate. No big deal though.

And whoever mentioned that my Helton example was backwards, you are correct of course. Thanks for pointing it out.

I would guess also that the height advantage might be lessened if these plays were taken into account.