Chris Duncan vs Adam Dunn in the field

[nilodnayr]

Sure it is.

 

Tree's Point: UZR and other fielding stats are uselss.

Meph's Argument: Two things cause defensive stats to suck:

 

1. Year to year they're unstable and worthless. Being good or bad seems to have very little effect on if you will be good or bad the next year. Meaning IF they're accurate, they're useless as an indicator of future defensive value. We're better off ballparking it through a combination of scouts eye and a couple things here and there. Trying to nail down the value with an "exact" number is futile at this stage.

2. Each defensive stat, while based on similar methodology often come to drastically different results quite often. It's fairly common for a player to be -10 in one, and +10 in another, or -20 in one and 0 in another. This is akin to OPS placing a hitter as an average average, say OPS around 750, and then another metric, say EqA putting him as one of the top ten hitters in the league, around .310.

 

The combination of #1 and #2 makes Tree right.

 

Yeah, I don't disagree with most of that, that was just a long winded hyperbolized version of what TT said above.