Evaluating the Tigers through a Sabermetric lens

Showing posts with label Best of the Best. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best of the Best. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Best of the Best: Defensive Single Seasons in Tigers History

I'm currently engrossed in learning how to use MySQL, a database program, which will help me do some great lists of the best _____ in Tigers history. Whenever I get it figured out and the code working, I'll be creating a series of the ten best Catcher's in Tigers history, ten best first basemen in Tigers history and so on and so forth. Those will all be in the side bar to the right, just  below the 'about me' in a section called Best of the Best.

In lieu of that, however, I bring you a different list that didn't take any database code.

Sean Smith's released Wins Above Replacement numbers for every player in the major leagues since 1871. You can peruse them at his site and, if you like 'em, support him by donating $25 to use them however you'd like. I did that and got the hitters and pitchers files. That is what I'll be using to look back into plunge into Detroit Tigers history. What I'll be focusing on here, is defense.

Sean Smith has created TotalZone which he uses to judge defense through play-by-play box scores from Retrosheet. You can read his methods here.

So this begs the question: Who had the greatest defensive season in the history of the Detroit Tigers? Find out the answer after the jump...