Importance (or not) of Fielding Ability

Billy Bean opined (cited in "Moneyball," among other places) that he
wanted to get guys on his team who could hit--he'd worry about their
lack of fielding skill later (or something like that). He obviously
bought into the argument (by Eric Allen?) that most batted balls can be
fielded by nearly everyone of adequate skill or they cannot be fielded
by anyone. Thus the effective difference between a great fielder and
an average one is far less important for team victories than the
corresponding difference in hitting ability.

Others have held similar dismissive views of fielding. Davey Johnson,
for example, when managing the Mets, would occasionally insert regular
3Bman Howard Johnson at SS when "fly-ball" pitcher Sid Fernandez was on
the mound. He thought Johnson's bat outweighed his lack of range at SS.

And yet I am not persuaded that fielding is of as little consequence as
many think it is. I have two concerns and two questions:

(1) All hitters make more outs than they hit safely (although a rare
few manage to get on base more than half of their plate appearances)
and hitters who hit less than, say, .220 don't hang around for long. So
I argue that the effective difference in hitting [arbitrarily,.320 -
..220 = .100, or any other metric] is of similar unimportance.

(2) Observing baseball games reveals that "big innings" are often (I do
not know how often)aided by defensive miscues that may (an error) or
may not (e.g., a throw to the wrong base or the failure of an infielder
to get to a not-hard-hit ground ball) be officially recorded as such.
Since sabermetricians already know how valuable outs are, it just make
sense that helping to accumulate them by superior fielding is of
greater value to a team than many today suspect it to be. I once
calculated that Ozzie Smith, at his peak, made one more play per game
than an average NL SS (I know this is confounded with pitching staff
and home field conditions). That difference, if atributable solely to
Smith's fielding, would correspond to a run saving of about .70 runs
per game (linear weights difference of preventing a single (-.46 plus
converting that to an out, -.25 = -.71), or a savings of -115 runs if
Smith played every game.

Two questions:
(1) Does Bill James's Win Share method shed any light at all on the
importance (or not) of fielding?

(2) Where am I going wrong in feeling that fielding is more important
than Bean and others in the business think it is?

Thanks,
JM

On 15 Apr 2005 17:50:19 -0700, "berrafan"
<jimmcmartinphd DeleteThis @adelphia.net> wrote:

>Billy Bean opined (cited in "Moneyball," among other places) that he
>wanted to get guys on his team who could hit--he'd worry about their
>lack of fielding skill later (or something like that). He obviously
>bought into the argument (by Eric Allen?) that most batted balls can be
>fielded by nearly everyone of adequate skill or they cannot be fielded
>by anyone. Thus the effective difference between a great fielder and
>an average one is far less important for team victories than the
>corresponding difference in hitting ability.

Don't take Moneyball as gospel of what Beane believes. A significant
number of the moves Beane has made over the past few seasons have been
to improve defense.