What is Zone Rating?

Links (13)

Dodger Thoughts: Let's Go, Batter Up - We're Taking the Afternoon Off (In Our Minds)
Published 4/2/2007 at Dodger Thoughts
... You can throw out the regular-season records for this tilt: Dodgers at Brewers, 11:05 a.m.! * * * The Hardball Times is promising to regularly update John Dewan's revised version of Zone Rating during the season. For those who aren't aware, here's the key change: In the original Zone Rating, if a ball is hit outside of your zone but you range far enough to make a play anyway, that ball is added to both your plays made and your chances. The effect of this is to underrate players with outstanding range. Here's an illustration: Take two shortstops, call them Billy and Jason. Both players have three ground balls hit near them, two in the shortstop zone and one just beyond it, hit straight up the middle. Jason makes plays on the two hit in his zone but cannot reach the other ball. Billy makes one play in his zone, makes an error on the other, but makes a great play on the ball hit up the middle. The zone rating fo

Zone Rating on The Hardball Times
Published 4/2/2007 by Sean Smith at Statistically Speaking
... I did an article for The Hardball Times comparing the Zone Rating published by STATS for the last 20 years with a newer version, first published in John Dewan’s The Fielding Bible and now available on The Hardball Times.

Daily Dos(e), 4/03/07, Tom Petty Said It Best.
Published 4/3/2007 by Allen Chace <info@overthemonster.com> at Over the Monster
... Excellent piece by Sean Smith at THT about the NEW and IMPROVED Zone Rating system, whose data will be available on THT this season. Anyone have a guess as to who brings up the rear based on the new system?

Into The Woods: A Look At CFers And OOZ
Published 4/4/2007 by JP at Reds (and Blues)
... or Sean Smith’s terrific article at THT. THT’s ZR is based on data from Baseball Info Solutions, and varies from the traditions ZR produced by STATS, Inc. and presented on various sites such as ESPN, CNNSI, etc.

A slurry of links...
Published 4/4/2007 by JinAZ at On Baseball and the Reds
... Sean Smith does a conversion of ZR into a +/- system (

Jeter's glove springs a leak
Published 4/19/2007 by Ed Valentine at Valentine's Views
... In the 2007 “Bill James Handbook,” there is a statistic called range factor. It is defined as the number of successful chances (putouts plus assists) times nine and divided by the number of innings played. Jeter’s range factor was 4.14 in 2006, which was 25th among the 30 regular shortstops in the major leagues.The Hardball Times touts something they call 'Zone Rating,' which measures how many plays a fielder makes vs. how many balls are hit into his zone. Using this system, 'Hardball's' experts have decided that Jeter is terrible.

Evaluating the 1st Round on Short Videos & Some Stats
Published 6/14/2007 by Russ <info@purplerow.com> at Purple Row
... Zone Ratings were released today and David Gaskko checks in to see

McDonald Under the Microscope
Published 9/11/2007 by Jonathan Hale at Jays Nest
... , which has one major benefit over the “old” Zone Rating- it considers plays that a fielder makes on a ball OUT of his zone separately. The normal zone rating just gives the fielder a bonus, and it ends up not giving enough credit for spectacular plays. ...

Fielding Statistics are Pretty Useless
Published 9/27/2007 by halejon at The Mockingbird
... As long as everyone used the same zones, using larger ones wouldn’t make a difference for figuring out a player’s relative ability. However, the two systems also differ by 15 on how many plays Glaus made, with STATS crediting him with 207 plays (281 chances, .737 ZR) and BIS 192 (144 in zone, 48 outside of it). So who’s right? In the article by Sean Smith mentioned in their reply, he points out that most putouts (which are mostly fly balls, line drives, etc.) don’t count as “plays” for the purposes of Zone Rating (unless a player fields a grounder and steps on the bag). Troy Glaus had 197 assists this season, so according to STATS he made an additional 10 plays by way of the putout. However, according to BIS, he completed 5 fewer plays than assists. In that case there had to be some unusual assists, such as a deflection to John McDo ...

Braun's Defense Should Cost Him Rookie of the Year
Published 9/28/2007 by Kyle Smith at Doberman On The Diamond
... His zone rating is .865, which is third in the majors, behind the Mets' Jose Reyes and the Giants' Omar Vizquel. As for ...

Published 12/14/2007 by Aaron at AaronGleeman.com
... Zone Rating measures the rate at which a player turns a ball hit into his defensive zone into an out, which is essentially the goal of playing defense and combines the ability to get to a ball with the ability to actually convert it into an out. For instance, if 100 balls are hit in a shortstop's zone and he converts 85 of them into an out, then his Zone Rating is .850. Here's how Everett has fared in Zone Rating on a year-to-year basis among all MLB shortstops: 2007 ZR 2006 ZR 2005 ZR ...

Published 12/17/2007 by Aaron at AaronGleeman.com
... That's the good news. The bad news is that Lamb's defense is another story. While the Twins are looking at Lamb as their everyday third baseman, several other teams were reportedly interested in signing him as either a first baseman or designated hitter. And with good reason, because Lamb's numbers at third base have been nearly as ugly as Adam Everett's numbers at shortstop are impressive. While Everett is among the MLB leaders in Zone Rating and Revised Zone Rating every year, the opposite is true for Lamb. ...

How much better is Soriano than Murton?
Published 30 days ago by Colin Wyers at GoatRiders of the Apocalypse -
... , and they say that Murton is a three run falloff from Soriano over a full season. I think that's a bit conservative - Sean is projecting Zone Rating, which doesn't measure arm strength. Soriano has an ...