“Data version” Golden Glove Award using the comprehensive defense index “UZR”
The “2021 50th Mitsui Golden Glove Award”, which will be given to defensive masters, will be announced on the 2nd. Players who meet the specified number of appearances are targeted, and it is decided by a vote of a professional baseball reporter who has a career of interviewing at newspaper companies and TV stations for more than 5 years. It is said that the image of the players and the team ranking will have an effect, but I would like to see what the result will be if they are selected based on the data. This time is the Central League edition.
The index used is “UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating)”, which indicates the contribution to defense in general. It shows how many goals the defensive has prevented compared to when the average player in the same defensive position in the league defends. We referred to the data of DELTA Co., Ltd. ((https://1point02.jp/)), which analyzes using Sabermetrics indicators.
After all attention is the second baseman section. Ryosuke Kikuchi, who has won the award for eight consecutive years, has “fallen” on the data. Yoshikawa at the top left a dignified number, and Tetsuto Yamada of Yakult was in second place with “7.1”. Ryosuke Kikuchi settled in 3rd place with only “0.2”. However, it is also a fact that the pennant race made a difficult hit ball out many times, and the result is noteworthy.
Except for Makoto Suzuki in the outfielder category, the faces of the actual winners in 2020 have changed completely. The battery was the Chunichi Dragons of Yanagi and Takuya Kinoshita, who won the double crown of the best ERA and the most strikeouts this season. In the first baseman division, all four qualified foreign players are in a weak battle with negative indicators. Marté was barely at the top.
In the shortstop category, the giant Hayato Sakamoto, who has actually been in the field for two consecutive years, ranked second with “5.0”. Kyoda, who surpassed by a small margin, was given a boost. The third baseman division was also a fierce battle, and the giant Kazuma Okamoto was second with “2.4”, 0.3 points behind Miyazaki. Yusuke Ohyama of Hanshin was third with “2.2”.
How much difference will be made between the actual results and the data? Attention is focused on the whereabouts of the votes cast by the masters who have made fans excited by the defense.
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