Comments on: Is Citi Field Robbing Beltran’s Range?

By: Max

Max — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:56:07 +0000

I’d love to see an analysis of players who made a transition to and from the Coors outfield. How was their UZR affected as a group?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:22:35 +0000

How about being able to look at UZR from only games a player plays away from his home park. I love to see the top and bottom 10 at each position with that rule.

By: nrmax88

nrmax88 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:22:15 +0000

Beltran does play very deep, and he does have a lot of balls in front of him. That said, he takes away both gaps almost entirely, you can’t hit the ball over his head unless it is out of the park. I’m not sure about the bad outfielders effecting him, because going back to 2006, his corner outfielders have been pretty bad. Anywhere from Cliff Floyd, to Moises Alou, to Xavier Nady, to Lastings Milledge, to Shawn Green, the list goes on. I think the UZR numbers have to be flukey, because make no mistake, whatever the dimensions say, this park, so far, has played much more towards the pitchers then Shea did. The gaps are enormous, the walls are high, everywhere, there is no part of the stadium where it is even possible to take away a homerun, outside of portion of the fence in RCF where the bullpens are. Does a ball off a high fence effect UZR? I don’t know, it seems strange, because Beltran seems as good as ever in center field, and he routinely runs all the way into left and right field to catch routine fly balls to the corner outfielders.

By: nrmax88

nrmax88 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:16:57 +0000

We do prefer it. Unfortunately, the preference of the fans means little to nothing when Beltran calls a fly ball 5 or 6 times, and Angel Pagan comes flying out of LF, cuts in front of Beltran, and then moves out of the way with the ball less then two feet from his glove. It is like blaming an NHL goalie for allowing a goal when Johan Franzen is in front screening him. I have been reading articles and comments here for a while now, but never commented, and I just felt compelled to respond to you because you come off as a real pompous ass who is also wildly misinformed about the topic he is discussing. Good day sir.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:49:16 +0000

I’ve become increasingly skeptical of UZR’s park factors recently. There seems to be an increasing number of outliers. This year with Beltran, Wily Taveras in Coors, left field in Fenway, possibly left field in Safeco (though it’s still early to make conclusions on Ibanez, Endy Chavez is posting just good numbers as his replacement, when he typically is otherworldly.)

The sentiment that slow players with good instincts will do better than expected in smaller parks after posting poor numbers in large ones has a sensical foundation, but it’s not like Taveras or Beltran are slow.

As a Mets fan, my eye has Beltran looking close to normal this year. I’ve always wondered if he may have to move to right by the end of his contract as the years catch up to him, but I don’t feel that time is now. Attrition to his legs (his play has always been highly affected by even minor injuries to them) may have caused him to decline from great to just very good, and a couple mishaps such as the Pagan miscommunication may be toying with a small sample size, but not to the extent of taking him from great to terrible. Something else is messing with the numbers for sure

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:36:18 +0000

There actually were multiple instances. I do remember the one with Pagan as well.

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:18:10 +0000

The one thing I would say about Beltran is that he has always played a very deep CF for someone who is considered a top-notch OF. Gary Cohen used to talk about this a lot when they first brought him in. Lots of balls would drop in front of him that guys like Andruw Jones or even Mike Cameron would have gotten too.

I haven’t seen a ton of Mets games this year, but my guess is that with the corners being manned by generally bad OFs he’s playing even a touch deeper to try and cover more ground on balls hit deep in the gaps.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:08:22 +0000

Is it possible to run UZR for games in CitiField only for Beltran alone and then for all Mets opponents’ CFers combined?

If the latter doesn’t come out somewhere well below 0 would it be a reasonable bet that it is more Beltran than the park?

By: Ari

Ari — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:04:40 +0000

“At this point, every met fan would prefer a dropped fly ball over a collision with pagan or f-mart (I saw the pagan one, not the apparent f-mart drop). Especially, considering the fragility of all 3 players.”

Mets fans should prefer their CF takes charge of the OF and lets the other guys know to stay away from balls that are his.

By: metsinnats

metsinnats — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:57:20 +0000

I side with the other Mets fans, having seen a few games, in noting that a lot of the blame should be placed on his rotating OF mates. The more I watch him, the more I’m amazed by Beltran. Steve Phillips can suck it.