Team URC Rankings for 2009

Thanks to the enormous advancements in Sabermetrics, and people like Bill James and websites like Fangraphs.com, baseball statistics have come a long, long way. There is now a stat for virtually every aspect of the game that takes fans beyond the numbers seen in a box score. The problem with some of these stats, is that they are too advanced and sometimes too complicated for basic fans who don?t have the desire or time needed to wrap their minds around the endless formulas and calculations. That is not meant to downplay the effectiveness of these new stats. It allows fans, and even players and the minds in the front office, to better understand the effect that even the smallest of stats can have on a game. The biggest advancements have come in defensive statistics, such as Ultimate Zone Rating. But just because we have new ways of understanding the game, doesn?t mean there aren?t still smaller statistics out there that can help us get a clearer picture of a team or a player. That is exactly whataims for, and it?s goal is to show how many extra runs a team gives up due to their errors or how successful the team is in not allowing those errors to cost them on the scoreboard. In relation to the team stat, it can show which players? errors end up being more costly than others. Just because a player leads the league in errors, doesn?t mean he is costing his team the most runs. In essence, the final number indicates the number of runs it costs per error, the lower the better.formula = (Total Runs - Earned Runs = Unearned Runs)/Total Team Errorsformula = Individual Errors*Team URC(Unearned Runs / Team Errors / URC) 1. Texas Rangers: 42 / 106 / 0.396 2. San Francisco Giants: 88 / 40 / 0.455 3. Colorado Rockies: 87 / 40 / 0.460 4. Philadelphia Phillies: 76 / 36 / 0.474 5. Milwaukee Brewers: 98 / 48 / 0.490 6. Boston Red Sox: 82 / 41 / 0.500 7. Minnesota Twins: 76 / 39 / 0.513 8. Cincinnati Reds: 89 / 46 / 0.517 9. Chicago Cubs: 105 / 56 / 0.533 10. Los Angeles Dodgers: 83 / 46 / 0.554 11. St. Louis Cardinals: 96 / 54 / 0.563 12. Arizona Diamondbacks: 124 / 71 / 0.573 13. Washington Nationals: 143 / 83 / 0.580 14. New York Yankees: 86 / 52 / 0.605 15. Cleveland Indians: 97 / 59 / 0.608 16. Chicago White Sox: 113 / 69 / 0.611 17. Houston Astros: 78 / 48 / 0.615 18. Pittsburgh Pirates: 73 / 45 / 0.616 19. Los Angeles Angels: 85 / 53 / 0.624 20. Atlanta Braves: 96 / 60 / 0.625 21. Detroit Tigers: 88 / 55 / 0.625 22. Seattle Mariners: 105 / 67 / 0.638 23. Baltimore Orioles: 90 / 59 / 0.656 24. Kansas City Royals: 116 / 77 / 0.664 25. Toronto Blue Jays: 76 / 51 / 0.671 26. New York Mets: 97 / 66 / 0.680 27. San Diego Padres: 94 / 65 / 0.691 28. Tampa Bay Rays: 98 / 68 / 0.694 29. Florida Marlins: 106 / 76 / 0.717 30. Oakland Athletics: 105 / 76 / 0.724 So as you can see, Texas was the best at not letting their errors cost them runs (under 40% of the time), while Florida and Oakland allowed those unearned runs to score over 70% of the time. The Nationals had the most errors in the league last year while Pittsburgh had the fewest, but both were ranked near the middle as far as letting those errors cost them runs. How do those numbers affect the players with the most errors last year? Here are the top-20 error-prone players from last season, followed by their error total and number of runs it cost their team. 1. Orlando Cabrera, MIN / 25 / 12.829 2. Everth Cabrera, SD / 23 / 15.094 3. Chipper Jones, ATL / 22 / 13.750 4. Elvis Andrus, TEX / 22 / 8.717 5. Miguel Tejada, HOU / 21 / 12.923 6. Jason Bartlett, TB / 20 / 13.878 7. Brandon Inge, DET / 20 / 12.500 8. Rafael Furcal, LAD / 20 / 12.471 9. Alexei Ramirez, CWS / 20 / 12.212 10. Christian Guzman, WSH / 20 / 11.608 11. Mark Reynolds, ARI / 19 / 10.879 12. Yuniesky Betancourt, KC / 18 / 11.948 13. David Wright, NYM / 18 / 10.884 14. Alberto Callaspo, KC / 17 / 11.284 15. Ryan Zimmerman, WSH / 17 / 9.867 16. Felipe Lopez, MIL / 17 / 8.327 17. Dan Uggla, FLA / 16 / 11.427 18. Adam Dunn, WSH / 16 / 9.287 19. Pedro Feliz, PHI / 15 / 7.105 20. Jose Lopez, SEA / 15 / 9.571 So as you can see with Elvis Andrus, the number of errors often doesn?t mean you are costing your team more runs than a player with fewer errors than you ? out of these 20 guys, his URC was third best after Feliz and Felipe Lopez. Don?t think that URC is meant to replace or exceed any other stat you may find; view it simply as another means to look at errors ? which can be a very misleading statistic.