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April 3, 2003

Breaking Balls

A Closer Look at the Twins' Outfield Defense

by Derek Zumsteg

I got two big questions out of my recent article sketching outfield fielding as a percent of fly balls, and both were about the Twins.

"What about foul balls? Weren't the Twins cheating the corner OFs over and letting Hunter cover more ground so the corners could get to fouls?"

That's what I read the Angels said in the post-season, but if that was true, it didn't work--the Twins didn't get more putouts, and Torii Hunter in particular would have been expected to catch a lot more balls than he actually did.

"What about the crappy off-white spotty roof of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome? Wouldn't it be possible for a team to play really good defense in such a hard environment and still look bad?"

Indeed, and that's something I can look at.

Let's check out the Twins' all-outfield putout rate on non-HR fly balls over the last 10 years. If HHH is indeed making it much more difficult for the outfield, we should consistently see them with a PO/FB-HR rate at the bottom of our anticipated range, around 65% rather than the 77% we saw the top teams of 2002 turned out.

Year  non-HR FB   OF PO     PO%
1993    1573      1109      71%
1994    1175      867       74%
1995    1401      998       71%
1996    1723      1223      71%
1997    1564      1035      66%
1998    1711      1200      70%
1999    1643      1122      68%
2000    1649      1137      69%
2001    1700      1222      72%
2002    1745      1202      69%