Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The 2010 MLB All Clank Team - The Throneberry Awards?

As a card-carrying member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA if you want to sound cool), the organization has been abuzz with post season award voting. While it's always fun to look back on the great performances of the year, sometimes it's even more fun looking at those that weren't so good. And so the Flagrant Fan presents the 2010 All Clank Team. This "all star" team is made up with the players at each position that fumbled and bumbled their way around the diamond more often than any of their peers. Since you already know the Fan's stance on fielding metrics and how unreliable they can currently be, this team had to also look at other factors to get an overall feel for who really stunk the most in the field. It was a tough job but somebody had to do it. Without further ado, here are your All Clank all stars.

Catcher

National League: Ryan Doumit. It doesn't seem possible that a catcher could have a worse year behind the plate than Doumit did. He should probably change his name to Dumbmitt. Ooh...that was harsh. Sorry. But he only threw out 12% of attempted base steals, he made six errors, added nine passed balls and was rated the poorest fielding catcher by both B-R and Fangraphs. Wow! When those two sites agree on a fielder, that's something! Fangraphs rated him a -15.3 in the field. Woof.
American League: Jorge Posada. If you come to this site with any kind of regularity, could you have expected anything but? How about eight errors in only 83 games behind the plate plus 8 passed balls. He thew out a paltry 15% of base steal attempts. Doesn't receive well and calls a questionable game. Other than that, well....he's hip hip Jorge.

First base

National League: Ryan Howard. Howard really regressed this year in the field, and judging from his past, that's not a good thing. Fangraphs has him at a -12.6. The next closest to him was Troy Glaus of the Braves at -8.2. Howard made 14 errors, which is high for a first baseman.
American League: Michael Cuddyer. This really isn't Cuddyer's fault as Justin Morneau got hurt and somebody had to play over there. Cuddyer didn't make many errors (3) but B-R and Fangraphs both gave him whopping negative numbers in fielding ratings. Konerko was close, but his negative numbers were lower than Cuddyer and spread out over twice as many games.

Second base

National League: Skip Schumaker. Again, this isn't Schumaker's fault. Tony LaRussa insisted on putting this square peg in a round hole. Sixteen errors later, Schumaker scored low in metrics on both B-F and Fangraphs. And unfortunately, Schumaker didn't hit like in the past either.
American League: Chone Figgins: Why would you move an all star third baseman to second base? Dumb, dumb dumb. Nineteen errors were six times as many as Cano. B-R and Fangraphs both agree on the negativity of his fielding season. Plus, he stopped hitting. Awful season.

Shortstop

National League: Hanley Ramirez. Easily led B-R and Fangraphs in negativity at short. It's hard to figure. He never scored this badly before. Was it leg troubles? Head troubles? What? He's better than that.
American League: Jason Donald. This was a pretty tough feat to accomplish in only 46 games at short, but he pulled it off. Those 46 games led to a .954 fielding percentage and he racked up more negative fielding points in a short time faster than anyone else in baseball. If you insist on a full season, then it would be Jason Bartlett, which is a big surprise, but then again, he was just off this year in so many ways over the previous year, it really makes you wonder.

Third base

National League: It's a tie! For a short season, we go with Wilson Betemit, whose name is ironic because everyone in baseball has a betemit than he has. For the long haul, we go with David Wright. Yup. The superstar made a ton of errors and though he was slightly better than 2009, B-R and Fangraphs both give him terrible scores.
American League: Mark Teahan. Teahan might have been the worst player in baseball this year. It got so bad that Ozzie Guillen didn't even want to look at him. he made ten errors at third in just 52 games there. Just brutal.

Outifeld (just one award per league since it's so hard to untangle their positions)

National League: Ryan Spilborghs. Fangraphs had Matt Kemp as the worst, but B-F didn't agree. Both sites agreed that Spilborghs was second, so that works for the Fan. Jonny Gomes was close behind.
American League: Carlos Quentin.  B-F and Fangraphs heartily agree on this one. Quentin's dismal play in the outfield more than replaced Jermaine Dye. In fact, if the White Sox signed Dye, they might have won more games.

There you have it folks, your 2010 MLB All Clank Team. Give them a hand.

1 comment:

Josh Borenstein said...

Konerko is a very underrated first baseman. Saves his infielders from a lot of errors. Just goes to show you the fielding metrics are wrong again. Surprise, surprise.