Staten Island Yankees TotalZone Ratings

Written by Sean P | 03 February 2010

We move on and up a level on our look at the most advanced defensive statistics readily available for minor league players. Staten Island is our next stop. Here again is the primer from the previous post in case you missed it:

TotalZone invented and calculated by Sean Smith of Baseballprojection.com. "Runs" is relative to league average. The meaning of specific numbers varies from position to position, but in general, +10 is a very good fielder, +15 or more is outstanding. Below -10 is not very good at all. Runs/150 estimates runs saved per 150 games, and is shown for players with at least 1/3 that playing time at a position. This article describes preliminary work in translating across levels.

The article describing the translation is a must read for fully understanding what these numbers represent, but in short, infield numbers are slightly more reliable than outfield ones and sample size issues are in play with any infielders with less than 350 chances and outfielders less than 1000 (2 full seasons roughly). Also these performances are relative to their league, so a AA third baseman would be slightly worse than a AAA third baseman. Reading the whole article is definitely recommended.

Outfield

Here again we're only noting players with significant playing time at each position. Angelini obviously had an awful season, starting out repeating in Charleston before falling so flat he landed back in extended spring training and eventually down to Staten Island. Despite these gaudy numbers, Angelini did make plenty of throwing errors and his chances at SS in Charleston were decidedly lackluster. Defensive has supposedly always been a strong part for Angelini though, so I guess thats something to take from his disastrous 2009. Paredes also committed a number of throwing errors, but the speedy 2nd baseman (set a club record with 24 steals in 2009) spent his first season ever at 2nd coming back from Labrum surgery (traditionally a SS/3B). Luke Murton is an interesting story, a former outfielder at Georgia Tech adjusting to 1B obviously did very well in his first pro season (.295/.374/.477; 153 wRC+).

In the outfield, some reports have Almonte as a plus defender, but this data is obviously contradictory. It is hard to tell since 128 chances is hardly enough of a sample to determine anything either way. Deangelo Mack and Neil Medchill both had good offensive as well as defensive years apparently. Mack is expected to try and make the transition to CF this season which should be interesting to watch.

Overall the Staten Island group was very strong defensively and along with their offense, it's easy to see why they won the league championship.