[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

As discussed, I think this is probably more related to what metrics you use to evaluate. Our ZR is based on more modern fielding metrics - generally speaking, it will look at the various difficulty buckets and see what plays players are making. Converting a difficult ball to an out is much more valuable than making 10 or whatever routine plays.

Yes, I have definitely inferred that.

How exactly that mixes in with PBABIP and the range of difficulty of balls in play, that's a very complicated topic. You might have pitchers with a better BABIP cause softer contact, and more easy to field balls. But as demonstrated with the ZR above, if you have a below average defender, they'll still liable to flub those balls.

Thank you! This is exactly the explanation I have gravitated towards based on what I have seen in repeated sims.

So here's the issue (imo). If defensive awards are based more upon advanced fielding metrics (which btw makes perfect sense in the Statcast era where Pitcher BABIP is not a thing), then you can easily see how Pitcher BABIP can weaken the relevance of fielding ratings and the advanced metrics.

For example, let's take a typical fielder gets 70% "easy" balls and 30% "difficult" balls to field. That means that on every batted ball, there's a 30% chance for good fielders to provide value over mediocre fielders (these are obviously made-up numbers just for the sake of the point).

30% feels very significant. However, if you have a historical staff with really high BABIP rating, then that 30% number is going to drop for your team. Suddenly, your mediocre fielder might be successfully converting MORE batted balls into outs than a good fielder on a team with a poor BABIP staff.

In fact, if your staff is really reducing the number of difficult balls in play, then it becomes harder to justify choosing defense when you are trying to decide between defense and offense for a position player.

If you can concede that, then that's really the crux of the point.

At that point, by all available metrics (<<key phrase), the mediocre fielder had a better defensive season than the good fielder.

Also, many of the various awards and evaluation are not based solely on FIP-WAR. AI evaluation certainly will factor in pitcher babip ability, and lots of the all-star or awards voting can give credit to RA9-WAR. It may not be perfect, sure. But we're happy to continue to make things better.

I don't know how you would implement it, but I sincerely feel that awards should be based on on-field performance. If a mediocre shortstop converted more batted balls into outs, all other things being equal (errors, dps, etc) then he had the better season than a Mark Belanger who struggled to get outs because his terrible pitchers sent rockets past him all season.

If that seems unfair, then think about batters.They don't get Silver Slugger awards based upon how hard they hit the ball. They get them based on how their batted balls turned out, even against crappy defenses. In the end, a swinging bunt single counts more for the Silver Slugger than a screaming line drive out at the fence -- because it's still a hit and the line drive is still an out.