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Sure picks are great and so are foul tips but how many of those plays are way too easy? I played community college ball and there is a lot to be said for a great defensive 1B for sure. But making the throw and the fielding play on an assist is worth more in my books. Just my 2 cents. Chances double for an error. That is why best athletes play up the middle for great defence.
I view them as equal. A good defensive first baseman saves a lot of errors from the other infielders with his ability to make difficult picks, in those cases the putout is often the more difficult part of that play, same goes for catchers who are above average at catching foul tip 3rd strikes. This goes for outfielders too, the guys who get better reads on balls and have better speed catch more balls than those who don't thus giving them more putouts and less chance of throwing out someone trying to stretch a single into a double. Most above average fielders will get to more balls thus giving them more chances for either putouts or assists.
I think Assists should be worth slightly more than putouts as catching a ball compared with catching at throwing multiplies the chance of error by double.Or maybe we normalize the assists like you have shown and then lessen the putouts by a certain percentage?Nice work!
Here are the raw numbers of putouts and assists for seasons 2009-2013.I couldn't find by position stats for the other five years, 5 seasons does give a solid sample size.Recommendations will follow in a separate post.There were 2.67 times as many putouts as assistsPosition Assists % Putout %Pitcher 11.2% 2.0%Catcher 5.3% 25.8%First 6.6% 31.8%Second 28.2% 7.0%Third 18.8% 2.5%Short 28.3% 5.5%Left 0.6% 7.0%Center 0.5% 9.4%Right 0.6% 7.4%