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What what? Shortstops play defense too? How about that. Unfortunatly for my exercize, defense is almost impossible to measure objectively. I’m not ready to accept defeat, however. Therefore, here is the chart o’ stats. Check out Offense here. And now the stats:

2003	g	po	a	e	dp	fd%	RF	ZF	WS	1000	gb	A%	DEEdgar	131	166	368	15	72	0.973	4.19	0.870	3.62	3.23	1710	0.222	0.7119Nomar	131	177	386	15	70	0.974	4.38	0.852	5.29	4.64	1792	0.222	0.6973Jeter	96	128	213	12	42	0.966	3.59	0.780	1.45	1.75	1648	0.180	0.6959Tejada	136	202	429	16	79	0.975	4.70	0.824	6.01	5.09	1774	0.242	0.7334C’bera	137	239	392	16	91	0.975	4.79	0.870	6.56	5.65	1733	0.226	0.7121Furcal	129	196	394	28	86	0.955	4.67	0.812	3.83	3.42	1826	0.226	0.7133

Nuts and Bolts
The obvious numbers are on the left again. Games, Put outs, Assists, Errors, and Double plays are all forms of the accounting I mentioned earlier.

fd% is fielding percentage, which is figured by taking PO+A/PO+A+E. This is an inaccurate metric. Fielding % has alot of subjectivity in it (errors are the only completely subjective stat in baseball. You are penalized for plays the scorer thought you should make.) Errors also happen when you screw up a play that you might have had no business making in the first place.

RF is Range factor, which created a nice little fued between Rob Neyer and Peter Gammons a few years back. This is the ESPN version which is (PO+A)/9. Again, this is inaccurate because it doesn’t take pitching staff descrepencies into affect. A strike out, fly ball staff will have less groundballs, which mean less balls hit to shortstop. Less chance for the shortstop to make the play.

ZF is Zone factor, which also has alot of subjectivity involved. This metric, devised by STATS, Inc., measures a “zone” for each defender, and then they track the amount of balls fielded by the player in that “zone”. It’s nice window dressing, but because the “zones” are never really defined by STATS, they can’t be tracked by the player in the stands, and a player with exceptional range can make a play in another player’s zone, and he won’t get “credit” for the play. If I understand it correctly, which I probably don’t.

WS and 1000 are Win Shares, and Win Shares/1000 innings. Both are Jamesian inventions, and Win Shares have been talked about ad nauseum. The reason for adjusting for 1000 innings, is to keep from penalizing a player that only played 500 innings. The best example is above. Derek Jeter missed more time then the other guys, so if I just listed Win Shares, his totals would be terrible. As it turns out, his glove provides enough evidence for that. Something to remember…Win Shares do not measure fielding skill, rather how much the a player’s glove work contributes to his team winning. The Win Shares are provided by Baseball Graphs

GB is the amount of ground balls the team’s pitching staff had induced. A% is finally my own work. That is figured by taking the Estimated GB each staff has gotten for its shortstop, and then adjusting it for innings by LHP (Lefties get more groundballs to short and third, a faction of more righties in the lineups). Then I simply find out on how many balls each shortstop got an assist on. I hope that this has some accuracy in it since it doesn’t penalize shortstops on high strikeout staffs, or high flyball staffs.

DE is Defensive efficiency. This is for the team level. This is simply the amount of times that a team converts a ball in play to an out. I’m not sure who invented this metric, but Baseball Prospectus tracks DE all season right here.

Thoughts
*By any measure of objectivity, Derek Jeter is a good centerfielder waiting to happen.
*Furcal has an almost unholy amount of errors thus far. While 28 isn’t quite Offermanesque, it is a great great number.
*Renteria’s numbers generally don’t hash it out with his reputation as a very good glove man.
*Going by eye, I would say that Nomar has superior range at shortstop. I remember seeing him chasing balls into short left, jumping in the air, and slinging the ball across his body right to the first baseman to beat the runner by a step. That is why you can’t go by your eye. Whoever you see most often is the player that you are going to rate higher. Yankee fan Defenders of Jeter say that to appreciate the captian, you need to see him play every day. I would say, if you saw other shortstops everyday, then maybe you would see the obvious hole in the glove. That always pisses off Yankee fans. Try it, it’s fun.
*Orlando Cabrera put together the best season in baseball history at shortstop in 2001 according to the Win Shares method with 13.47 shares in 1407 2/3 innings.
*Miguel Tejada is one hell of a defensive player, by eye or spreadsheet.

Sooooo…who is the best defensive shortstop?

Orlando Cabrera is extremely slick with the glove. He plays on a horrible turf in Montreal. Insted of breaking down, or dutfully flopping on the ground in a futile attempt to grab a groudball, Cabrera is where singles go to die. And you know what, because he doesn’t embarass himself with the bat, he could fill the job as Everyday Shortstop on a contender, or a team with money (Baltimore are you listening?). Also, I purposely didn’t mention Alex Rodriguez simply because he hasn’t been in any stage of analysis so far, save for me coming up with clever names to reference him without actually calling him by name. He is a very good defensive shortstop in the Cal Ripken model. Cabrera is more in the Dal Maxvill with Greg Gagne’s bat catagory.

The rank:
1. Orlando Cabrera - Montreal
2. Miguel Tejada - Oakland
3. Nomar Garciaparra - Boston
4. Rafael Furcal - Atlanta
5. Edgar Renteria - St. Louis
6. Derek Jeter - New York

One man’s opinion of the best shortstops not named ARod:
1. Nomar Garciaparra - Boston
2. Miguel Tejada - Oakland
3. Derek Jeter - New York
4. Orlando Cabrera - Montreal
5. Rafael Furcal - Atlanta
6. Edgar Renteria - St. Louis

Thanks for sticking through me for my first To Be Continued episode…hopefully there will be more on the way.

In case you missed my recent rants, here are all the ones from the weekend that aren’t related to shortstops:

8/29 Tale of Two Shortstops
8/29 Manny out
8/29 Sox 10 Yanks 5
8/30 New York 10 Boston 7
8/31 WTF!?!?!?!?!
8/31 A few words of Clemens