Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Excerpt: "Juan Lagares and Defensive Statistics"

"Lagares' defensive numbers at baseball-reference are absolutely insane. Per b-r, he's saved 60 runs with his glove so far in his career, better than one every three innings in the field. That's more than twice as good as Andruw Jones was in his career. At Jones's defensive peak, he was saving 30 runs a season while playing 1400 innings a year. Lagares is matching that in 60% of the playing time. Lagares' performance is six times better on a per-inning basis than Willie Mays's, far better than Mays at his peak. Per b-r, Lagares has had two of the top ten defensive seasons of all-time by a center fielder, and he hasn't played a thousand defensive innings in either of them."