[IBL] IBL Range Ratings

[Doug Palmer]

I address this to all the IBL’ers as there may be one of you out there with
insight into my query.  I was going to address this only to Sean and Rusty
as I’m sure they’re the ones with the answers, but perhaps there are others
out there who have asked the same question in the past.

My question involves the range rating for the players and how they are
determined.  Maybe it’s because “range” is hard to objectively define, but
when I watch a game, there are certain players who seem to have a
reputation to be able to get to EVERYTHING hit their way, Nolan Arenado and
Manny Machado for example, are always on Sportcenter highlights getting to
balls that seem impossible to get to.  We’ve all seen the shots of Arenado
diving to a ball deep in the hole and gunning a runner out, or Manny so far
into foul territory that he’s practically in the dugout, yet nails the guy
at first.  But that doesn’t translate to this game for some reason.  Arenado
is a C range player and Manny is a D.
Now, relatively speaking, Arenado seems to be the best fielding 3B in the
IBL (range wise). His 8/C rating at third really doesn’t seem to be beat.  So
I headed on over to Fangraphs and looked at defensive metrics from last
year.  First, I wanted to look at UZR (ultimate zone rating) which is one
of the metrics that stats guys use to determine defensive prowess.  And I
get the following:

UZR shows that Anthony Rendon with his 13.6 rating is FAR better than Nolan
Arenado.  But Rendon is a 9/D thirdbaseman and Arenado is a 8/C.  Arenado
has a better range, so UZR can’t be the metric.  So I next looked at RngR
which seems to be a metric as to how many runs a fielder saves by getting
to balls in his vicinity.  And again, Rendon is far and away the best:




I looked at defensive WAR, Error Runs (ErrR) and nothing that puts Arenado
ahead of Rendon.  So then I looked at more 3B to see if any pattern arose
and I couldn’t.  The following players have a D range at 3B: Machado,
Rendon, Donaldson, Freese and *Jace Peterson* to name but a few.  Jace
Peterson?  He’s not even on any of these lists, but he’s a D range 3B.  Granted
Jace is a part time player and would have a limited sample size, but here
are his defensive numbers:



So I’m confused.  And if anyone knows how range is handled in PtP/IBL, I
sure would be curious to know.  And I apologize for the long email.  I
tried to be as brief as possible J

Thanks!

Doug Palmer

Baltimore Sand Crabs
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