Preface
Part One: Motivations and Methods
1. The Big Picture
2. One Way to Measure Fielding
3. Measuring the Many Measures of Fielding
4. Summing Up Fielding Careers in One Number . . . and Attaching
Asterisks Thereto
5. Putting Top Players from Different Eras on 'Equal' Footing
Part Two: The Greatest Fielders of All-Time
6. Shortstop
7. Second Base
8. Center Field
9. Third Base
10. Right Field
11. Left Field
12. First Base
13. Catcher
Part Three: Fielding in the Context of Pitching, Hitting and Base
Running
14. (A Select Few of) Baseball's All-Time Greatest Pitchers
15. Incorporating Fielding Ratings into Overall Player Ratings
16. Conclusion
Appendices
A. Defensive Regression Analysis ("DRA")
B. Notes on the history of fielding analysis
C. Chart of alternative fielding systems
D. Career DRA ratings for all fielders with 3,000 innings or
estimated innings at one position
E. Single-season DRA ratings for all fielders since 1893 (Available
book's website)
F. Certain data used to develop DRA (Available book's website)
Endnotes
Glossary
Michael A. Humphreys advises on tax aspects of international capital markets transactions at Ernst & Young LLP.
The book of the season . . . comes from Michael Humphreys . . . who
has spent years meticulously extracting reads on historical
defensive performance from the flawed and fragmentary numbers we
have to go by, and he now offers the definitive work on the subject
. . . A careful, thoughtful system that will make you appreciate
all the more the genius of the late Yankees second baseman Joe
Gordon or the peripatetic and vastly underrated outfielder Kenny
Lofton . .
. A representation of the future of statistical sabermetrics, which
in years to come is quite likely to become more focused less on
telling the future than on wresting meaning out of the past." --
Tim
Marchman, The Wall Street Journal
"Excellent." -- David Schoenfeld, ESPN ("Sweet Spot" blog)
"Humphreys writes capably and makes the math-heavy parts as
readable as anyone could. The outcome should attract all dedicated
baseball fans and stat hounds." -- Library Journal
"Michael Humphreys does for fielding what Neil deGrasse Tyson does
for astrophysics: he takes an incredibly complex subject and makes
a reader who once felt dumb feel smart. He has cut through the
cloud of my unknowing and helped me to understand what major league
fielding really is and how it can be quantified. Wizardry is the
best book yet on the subject." -- Allen Barra, writer for The Wall
Street Journal
"Fielding is the hardest aspect of baseball in which to rate
performance. In his fascinating book, Michael Humphreys should get
the Gold Glove for historical fielding evaluation. With carefully
derived formulae, he rates Aaron, Clemente, Gordon and Hooper as
saving 100+ runs more than does Total Baseball, while Mazeroski and
Ozzie Smith saved their teams over 100 fewer. And that's just among
Hall of Famers! Taken seriously, as it should be, this book
will
substantially shake up our all-around rankings of players." --
Michael J. Schell, Moffitt Cancer Center, author of Baseball's
All-Time Best Hitters and Baseball's All-Time Best Sluggers
"Wizardry is a very engaging book. Out of all of the modern methods
of evaluating fielding, [the method introduced in Wizardry, DRA,]
is the one method where readers can duplicate the results. The
defensive runs produced by DRA match up well with [published
defensive runs estimates based on proprietary data]. While all of
these defensive metrics can vary widely from season to season, they
have their biggest impact when evaluating a player's
defensive career. In a perfect world, the gatekeepers to the Hall
of Fame will start to rely on defensive metrics such as DRA, rather
than how many Gold Gloves a player won, to assess a player's
defensive contributions on
the field."--Philip A. Yates, The American Statistician
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