Quantifying defence behind the plate: Where does Barajas stand?


Fangraph's Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) has become one of the established methods for quantifying the quality of a player's defense at his position. One major shotfall to UZR is that it currently is not able to give an appropriate score to catchers; many factors influence how good a catcher is at his position which do not apply to any other position: SB/CS ratio, passed balls, reputation—will a player not attempt to steal because so-and-so is behind the plate?—to name a few factors.

chuckb writes on Beyond the Box Score about a metric that he's developed to rate a catcher's defensive value (and conveniently he attempts to put it in the same context as UZR).

So, where does Barajas rank among the cathers in the league? Ninths, at a cost of -8.663 runs per 150 innings. Ironically, he sits one back of Greg Zaun. Hanigan was rated the top defensive catching at -0.693 R/150 Hundley was last at -39.560 R/150. I found it amusing to see Posada in the penultimate position with a -34.564 R/150.

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