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Pinch Me

I have no idea how I missed this, but thanks to Avkash at The Raindrops and Jeremy at Jeremy Heit's Blog for bringing it to my attention.

Mark Hale of the New York Post has written a refreshing article about Mike Cameron and what his defensive contributions will bring to the Mets. Now, many a sportswriter have written a thing or two about defense. Unfortunately, many a sportswriter have also written a thing or two about how good Derek Jeter is with the glove. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Much of today's baseball journalism relies much more on coverage than on analysis, which is fine for your average fan. The thinking fan, however, is less interested in regurgitated quotations and simple metrics (i.e. batting average and RBI) than the average fan. That's not to say that one is better than the other, but that sabermetrically-inclined individuals like myself yearn for more than the average newspaper article or Joe Morgan commentary can give us.

Thankfully, there is an abundance of great websites dedicated to such studies, helping to further the understanding of baseball. For a while, sabermetrics had its niche in old Bill James Abstracts, Rob Neyer columns, and websites like Baseball Primer and Baseball Prospectus.

Then, a number of mainstream writers at ESPN.com began mixing sabermetric staples into their articles and broadcasts. Most notably, Peter Gammons and Tim Kurkjian. Of course, some people still don't get it.

Despite the enlightenment of some folks at ESPN, local sportswriters, at least in the New York area, have remained old-school in their expression of statistics and performance. That is, until Mark Hale took it upon himself to bring everyone up to speed. Now, I've been known to rip Mark Hale in the past. However, he earns a big notch on his SABR belt for his article on Sunday.

Eschewing the traditional, anecdotal defensive evaluatories like "he has a great arm" and "I know what I see", and even less complex defensive metrics like zone rating and range factor, Hale dives right into Mitchel Lichtman's (aka MGL) UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating). Check out this article and this article for a detailed explanation of Lichtman's methodologies.

While some sabermetric tools (like OPS) have found their way onto the airwaves of ESPN and even onto the backs of Topps cards, Mark Hale has taken a huge step forward by writing an actual article featuring something as bold as UZR. I commend Mark and the Post for taking this leap of faith, and I can only hope that the response is positive and that this inspires other writers to include more advanced metrics in their work.