According to the stats on ESPN.com, Vernon Wells has a ZR of .963. This is really without precedent. It is so incredibly high that I cannot believe it to be true.Not seeing any Jays games, I asked Craig. He confirmed my suspicions that something must be wrong here.
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Just so you have some numbers to work with, the typical range should be around +/- .050 ZR. So, if the league average is .86, you expect to get .81 to .91 as your range. While it's easy to envisage Griffey Jr bringing up the rear at .768 (he's probably lazy), getting to 96% of all fly balls in zone is rather staggering.
There are 3 explanations
1 - Virtually all balls hit to Wells require little effort to get to.
2 - There is some weird scoring going on, where balls are hit in Wells' zone, but are recorded as being outside his zone.
3 - Wells is getting to tons of balls, especially outside his zone of responsibility.
Wells has 161 putouts. If he had 167 balls in his zone, his ZR would be .964. If he had 168 opps, his ZR would be .958. So, how does he get .963? The only way I get to that is 158 putouts and 164 balls in zone. ZR has some strange rules, so there must be something about 3 of his putouts not counting.
ZR also does something strange like not crediting a chance to a player if the ball was outside his zone, but he caught the ball anyway. So, it's possible that Wells got to 150 balls in his 164 balls in his zone, plus 8 balls that were "bonus" outside his zone of responsibility.
If someone knows the play-by-play scorers/stringers, I'd love to get an explanation here. Anyone have a lead? Email me at tangotiger@yahoo.com