Quote:
Originally Posted by zrog2000
If you're a Sox fan, then you should certainly know that Betts' arm hasn't gotten worse over the last 3 seasons, when he had 14 assists in 2016, 8 in 2017 and 5 in 2018. Teams stop testing arms when they know how good it is.
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Bett's arm certainly hasn't gotten worse. I agree. But Puig still throws out double digit runners just like every year he's been in the league. Do teams not know how good his arm is?
Edit: I went and found some stats on Baseball Reference that are pretty interesting (well, at least to me). Under the advanced fielding metrics, they have a section that shows different situations such as trying to go first to third on a hit to a particular rightfielder or how many times a runner was on 3rd with less than 2 outs and if he tagged and scored/was thrown/held up on balls hit to individual outfielders, etc. Anybody who was thrown out in those situations was consider a "kill." Under these attempts to take an extra base, Betts threw out 1.8% of these runners. Puig threw out 4%. That's the same ratio of their overall assists, too. In other words, runners were just as likely to try to tag and score, stretch a single into a double, go 1st to 3rd, on either player. But Puig threw out a little more than double the runners. It's only one season, sure.
I wonder if Betts assists have gone down partly because of zrog2000's reason that they've learned about his arm. After all, he was a minor league second baseman. Not the type of guy that you would imagine would have a strong arm. And he certainly doesn't have the "traditional" RF arm that Puig does, the long-distance howitzer. As can be seen in the video, Betts gets off his throws so quickly and accurately. He's not the wind up and throw a missile type of guy.
Anyway, I've hijacked this thread a bit. Sorry.