Over at The Hardball Times, David Gassko has a new article up summarizing (and crunching) some of the zone rating fielding data from Baseball Info Solutions for the first ten weeks of the season. David mentions only the leaders and trailers in his article, and there's only one Blue Jay who gets a look in, Alex Rios who is the #1 overall rightfielder in the majors. I thought it would be worthwhile to grab the data and see how the rest of the Blue Jays have fared... many thanks to David and THT for obtaining the data and boiling down the numbers into runs above/below average.
Everyone should keep in mind the obvious caveat that ten weeks is too small a sample size to draw conclusions about ability. However, I think it's important to remember that BIS and its data collectors do a pretty good job with their data collection (which John Dewan and Bill James showed in the first edition of The Fielding Bible) so this is, given the limitations of ZR, a very good record of performance in the field over the first 40% of the season.
First Base
No surprise that Lyle Overbay ranks so well, I think (even though UZR doesn't track his best ability, saving errors on errant throws). Matt Stairs being above average so far is certainly a surprise, although again UZR doesn't track his worst feature - the inability to do the same.
Second Base
Hill ranked quite well, only one run back of Alex Cora for the best AL mark. This seems about right to me.
Third Base
I think most of you will be shocked by this. Personally, I am not... I have always thought Glaus was a decent third baseman despite being slightly less limber than a coconut tree - a strong, accurate arm covers many sins at the hot corner, and Glaus has one. He also has pretty decent hands into the bargain John McDonald, on the other hand, has marvelous hands on 98% of plays (about one chance in 50, his head gets ahead of his hands, but that's hard to complain about) but his arm isn't a wow.
Shortstop
Again, I don't think this is off. John McDonald has had a pretty good year by his own standards, and Clayton doesn't impress me in terms of his positioning or his ability to make plays in the hole. Clayton eats a lot of grounders.
Left Field
Well, if you think it's going to continue I think you're mad, but Adam Lind has, in my mind, been prefectly good performance-wise this year. I think he's been lucky at times with bad reads, but he does seem to get to a lot of balls you think he won't. He's not a patch on Sparky with the glove, but there is absolutely no way this kid is a pure DH as some have suggested.
Center Field
Yes, Vernon's had an off year with the glove. He almost never lets a high fly bounce behind him, something I've seen on multiple occasions this year. And he's never been particularly strong on balls hit in front of him, he had a good year last year in that regard but has slipped. But -4 runs below the average center fielder? Some of this is sample.
Right Field
I always hate comparisons like this, but the kid really is the new Clemente. I'll end on that note, because I'd rather not talk about Matt Stairs.
I'm sure there will be 80,000 comments from the peanut gallery on this one, so fire away, boys and girls...
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20070614151543513