The Trenton Thunder are our second to last team to examine defensively by way of TotalZone rating. Here's the stuff you need to know:

TotalZone invented and calculated by Sean Smith of Baseballprojection.com. "Runs" is relative to league average. The meaning of specific numbers varies from position to position, but in general, +10 is a very good fielder, +15 or more is outstanding. Below -10 is not very good at all. Runs/150 estimates runs saved per 150 games, and is shown for players with at least 1/3 that playing time at a position. This article describes preliminary work in translating across levels.

The article describing the translation is a must read for fully understanding what these numbers represent, but in short, infield numbers are slightly more reliable than outfield ones and sample size issues are in play with any infielders with less than 350 chances and outfielders less than 1000 (2 full seasons roughly). Also these performances are relative to their league, so a AA third baseman would be slightly worse than a AAA third baseman. Reading the whole article is definitely recommended.

Infield

Outfield

Well the biggest controversial nugget here is the Eduardo Nunez numbers for sure. Well after ticking defense off the list of things Nunez might do well, I guess we just have batting average, and thank goodness that's so important! Oh, wait. This isn’t a sample size thing either. He’s had WELL over 1000 chances in his career at SS and never posted a TotalZone rating above 0. That’s pretty clear. Now while I think that Nunez probably has a lot of nice skills as a baseball player, at some point those skills just have to turn into results. MAYBE they’ll develop in the future, but its really extremely unlikely at this point.

Colin Curtis grades out as a very nice defensive outfielder at this point, at least in LF anyhow. He’s been solidly above average for his career there- not terrific certainly, but very solid. I wouldn’t get too worked up about the Edwar Gonzalez numbers either. Edwar Gonzalez is probably a good RF but most likely not THIS good- not that it matters as he’s certainly a non-prospect.

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