An early Christmas for many of us is the arrival of Strat's Range Rating Previews.

The Range Ratings have always been of special interest since they're so wildly subjective and we never know what to expect. The rest of the player's card we can make educated guesses with all the stats that are available to us. But unfortunately the Range Ratings are not entirely based on stats at all.

In the often referred to (by the Beacon) "Glanville Letter", an attempt was made to claim that Strat doesn't look at the Gold Glove winners, past ratings or offense, but rates players based on stats. That of coarse was nonsense. Whatever formula Strat used wasn't any better or worse than whatever the Gold Gloves used.

Here, the concern is the ever growing number of 1 ranges awarded.

The Beacon has tracked the 1 ranges regularly through the years. They were fairly easy to predict as the following article below discusses. Here's a look at some of the seasons, some because they're notable, but mostly because they aren't.

                2001        2004        2008             2023

C               3               3              3                    6

1B             4               5               6                   3

2B             4               3               2                   9

3B             2               2               2                   5

SS            3                2              4                  10 

LF            4                 0              1                    6

CF            5                5              8                   15

RF            5                2              3                     7 

TOTAL  30            22         29               61

The number of 1's didn't vary much for decades until the about 2012 when the number topped 40 for the first time.  I mean, everyone wants to have as many 1's as they can get, but half the starting CF in baseball?

A third of the Shortstops? This has gotten out of hand. I can only assume it's caused by a greater use of defensive stats as opposed to guesswork and giving the 1 to the guy that got it last year. Obviously there's a problem with that. Perhaps there's a need to resort to grading on the curve? Instead of looking at a specific number as the threshold for earning the 1, they need to limit it only to the TOP 3-4.

I haven't looked in depth to see what the overall Range is. Maybe it's still at 3. I questioned whether the average was 3 years ago and found, much to my surprise that indeed it was. Ironically at that time the concern was that the average would be higher than a 3! Complete Ratings 2004.

One of my concerns, besides the simple reason that it diminishes the excitement of having a rare 1 rating,

is that it's just gotta affect the game somehow. How can Strat increase the number of 1 ranges stealing hits by the hundreds, and not have it affect the cards/stats? X-Plays come up with 28% of the rolls on the pitcher's card, and 14% of all rolls. That's significant. 

Last season, Adames a 1 range, had 187 X-plays. He made 13 errors and allowed just 1 hit getting the out 173 times (93%). Bichette, a 4 range, had 197 X-plays. He made 30 errors and allowed 59 hits getting the out 108 times (55%).  Of coarse the difference between a 1 isn't as great as this compared to a 2 or 3,

but the point is that X-Plays come up a lot and 1's create a lot of outs. A whole bunch of 1 ranges will result

in whole bunch of outs. 

Thus is my concern.

(Note -Pitchers are not included with any of these discussions)

For many years we could make a reasonable guess as to who would get 1 ranges based on the Gold Glove awards. Strat would generally give the two Gold Glove winners a 1 range, and there would be an additional 

1 or 2 awarded at each position as well. We would refer to these as the "bonus" 1s. That would give us

around 24-30  players with 1 ranges. (as shown in the charts in the section above).

This format worked out pretty well for many years. We had a pretty good idea who would get 1's once the 

Gold Gloves were announced at the end of October. Of coarse until the last decade, the Gold Gloves themselves were awarded under questionable circumstances. It seemed that reputation, past awards

and offense (ahem...for a fielding award?) were the primary factors in determining winners. And since Strat followed suit, they simply repeated the mistakes of the Gold Glove panel (who by the way were kept anonymous). Eventually the Gold Gloves changed their voting format somewhat and required that defensive stats actually become a part of the equation. Also around that time Strat decided to distance themselves from the Gold Gloves. While the percent of Gold Glove winners getting 1's in Strat was around 90% for decades, it slowly slipped to 75% and in 2013 was just 67%. With the Gold Gloves' shift to defensive stats, the correlation between Gold Gloves and 1 Ranges should be closer together again. Maybe?

2023 GOLD GLOVES vs STRAT'S 1 RANGES

Strat's Ranges shown with the Gold Glove Winners 

C           J Heim          1              G Moreno   2

1B         N Lowe         2              C Walker     1

2B         A Gimenez    1              N Hoerner   1

3B         M Chapman  1              K Hayes      1

SS         A Volpe         2              D Swanson  1

LF         S Kwan         1              I Happ          2

CF        K Kiermaier   1              B Doyle        1

RF        A Garcia         2             F Tatis          1

UT***  M Dubon       2-2            H Kim          1-1-2

***Because there really isn't the expectation that UT players will get 1 ranges, and since it's a relatively new position in the Gold Glove Awards, I do not count them when figuring the percentages here. 

Of the 16 Gold Glove Winners, 11 were given 1 ranges by Strat. That's 69%.

So it seems that this really hasn't changed much in the past 10 years. They question then is, "who was right and who was wrong?" There's no definitive answer as there's too many factors to consider. 

I'll answer it anyway.

Looking at the Defensive Runs Saved and Defensive Wins Above Replacement, those Gold Glove winners getting 2's from Strat that should probably have gotten the 1 range along with the GG were Volpe and Moreno. In fact Moreno leads all catchers in nearly every defensive stat. On the other hand, N Lowe,  Happ and A Garcia were deserving of their 2's, and in Happ's case, despite his numerous flashy plays, was more deserving of a 3. 

THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS.....

If you have a player that wins the Gold Glove Award, you have a good chance they will also get a 1 range from Strat. But only about a 69% chance. As for getting a 1 or a 2, that's 100%.

2023 FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS vs STRAT'S 1 RANGES

Another source of defensive ratings that are of interest are the Fielding Bible Awards.

There are several factors making these awards particularly pertinent. For one, the panel is known, comprised of sports writers, statisticians and sabermetricians. Among them Bill James, Peter Gammons and Strat's own

Hal Richman. 

And while the Gold Glove voting is secretive, the voting here is open and they show every player getting someone's Top 10 vote. So rather than the GG's 3 finalists, we can see 15+ of the top vote getters. 

And as noted, Hal Richman's votes are right there for us to view.  

So here we'll look at how the Fielding Bible Award winners compare to Strat's Range ratings .

Strat's Ratings shown with the Fielding Bible Award Winners 

(Note that the Fielding Bible Awards have just 1 winner so I use the TOP 2 vote getters here)

C         G Moreno     2          P Bailey          1       

1B       C Walker       1         C Santana       2

2b        A Gimenez    1         M Semien        1

3B        K Hayes       1          R McMahaon  1

SS        D Swanson   1         W Adames      1

LF         S Kwan         1         D Varsho        1

CF        K Kiermaier   1         B Doyle          1

RF        F Tatis           1         A Garcia         2     

UT***   M Betts      1-2-3       J Berti          3-3-4-4

Of the 16 Fielding Bible Award Winners, 12 were given 1 ranges by Strat.  That's 75%.

So FBA winners have a slightly better chance of getting the 1's than do the GG. 

Strat really had no respect for Berti. Dubon ranked 4th for the  FBA's UT position.

Since Hal's votes can be seen when looking at the Vote Tally, let's see how Hal's top 3 did in Strat.

C          Bailey    Murphy     Heim                          all 1's

1B        Walker   N Lowe    Goldschmidt               N Lowe got a 2, the others 1's

2B        Gimenez  Stott   Semien                          all 1's

3B        Hayes  McMahon  Machado                    all 1's

SS       Swanson  Adames   Franco                      all 1's          

LF        Kwan  Varsho  Jankowski                        all 1's

CF       Doyle  Kiermaier  Robert                         all 1's

RF       Tatis    Betts   Verdugo                             Verdugo got a 2, the others 1's

UT    Betts   Edman   Dubon    Betts  RF 1 - 2B 2,  Dubon CF 2- 2B 2,  Edman 2B 2 - CF 2  - SS -3 

Of the 24 listed as Hal's top 3 at each position (no UT), 22 were given 1 ranges by Strat. That's 92%.

Of interest when looking at the entire vote tally is that  most of these were obvious choices. Nearly all of Hal's top 3 were at least among the top 10 overall.  But in some cases Hal and the FBA differed. Such was the

was case with E Tovar, B Turang and A Bregman. Hal ranked all 3 high but were ranked 7th or lower overall.

They still got 1's from Strat.  On the other hand, some that ranked high overall but were ranked lower by Hal got 2's. Like with C Santana and A Garcia who ranked 2nd and 3rd overall but were still rated 2's. 

While I don't know if Hal officially has any input into the ratings as I can't imagine he's sitting up at night applying ranges to 1000 players, it does appear that his views, at least among the top defenders does matter. So this is something I'll check out more closely in the future.

LASTLY....

Of the 80 players (top 10 places of the 8 positions)  Hal didn't have 15 listed among his top 10.

Most notable is P Alonso who ranked 5th overall, including some #1 votes. He was left off Hal's top 10

and Strat gave him a 4. Y Diaz ranked 10th and was also omitted by Hal but got a 2. A Riley ranked 4th

overall, was off Hal's list and got a 2. A Thomas and Mullins were neglected by Hal and got 1's. So apparently Strat has it out for the Polar Bear but others that rank high on the FBA will safely get nice Range ratings.

Article and research submitted to the Beacon by Jim Walsh  WIS #10

2024 FIELDING