re apology for article in article grabiner apr germain harvard edu writes but it is subject to all kinds of bias and is almost completely useless for first basemen from the raw stats there is no way to tell which of a first baseman s putouts were made on throws from other fielders and which were made on his own plays likewise you can t tell whether a double play was or fielding runs thus gives a first baseman no credit for putouts or double plays only for assists and errors but ingnoring putouts is biased in yet another way range is not the only thing that makes a good firstbaseman the ability to field all sorts of balls thrown to him digging some out of the dirt stretching for others and so forth is important thus putouts do provide some information maybe what we need is a comparision of how many balls were thrown to the area of the first baseman vs how many he actually got jim mann stratus computer jmann vineland pubs stratus com
