re defensive runs from da comments in article qvdrninnd f gap caltech edu shippert cco caltech edu tim shippert writes the reason i bothered doing this dr stuff was to see if i could determine the answer to the age old question is jeff blauser more valuable than rafael belliard well it looks like just as doug trumped tim beating him to the net with his defensive analyses so tim has gotten in ahead of me the way i was doing it was a little different being me of course i used equivalent averages to work out how many runs a player was worth and i calculated both rate of performance fielding equivalent average and total performance fielding equivalent runs but i compared not to the average player but the replacement player and here s why because the positional adjustment comes built in to the system in the al of the average ss is runs above replacement rar cf b b lf rf b we may quibble with the exact numbers but the order looks substantially right in the equivalent average i have always set league average to i had decided in hitting that the replacement level batter has an eqa of the name of that replacement level hitter often as not is billy ripken i decided to let the replacement level fielder be the same distance from as but in the opposite direction as i have set it up that makes for an eqa of yes i can add runs are proportional to eqa squared the difference between squared and squared equals the difference to squared and i rounded off for simplicity an all replacement fielding team would have randy milligan at first willie randolph at second leo gomez at third walt weiss at short kevin bass in left hojo in center and eric anthony in right ugh so the total number of rar for a player is the sum of his batting and fielding rar i can rate them by total rar or rar per some number of batting outs like an average player has a total rar of about batting fielding total rar bat field bonds ventura sandberg thomas van slyke anderson grace raines lankford puckett pendleton alomar finley martinez e bagwell mack butler mcgwire sheffield griffey larkin devereaux grissom henderson walker listach justice lofton w clark baerga kruk d white o smith palmeiro gwynn sierra hollins carter j bell gonzalez notable entries in a per batting out rating nl top are bonds lf sandberg b van slyke cf grace b larkin ss justice rf sheffield b one at each position measured mcgriff despite batting rar fifth in league finishes out of the top due to a in fielding last by position galarraga stillwell hansen belliard blauser gad a rd in league may dascenzo anthony in the al much maligned rickey henderson was worth second only to frank thomas ventura edges edgar at third grebeck rates a potent griffey edges puckett as top cf listach nudges out lofton among rookies and alomar clearly outpoints baerga last by position segui sojo palmer lewis polonia cuyler v hayes all for now clay d
