Ozzie Smith was a shortstop in Major League Baseball, and was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was a light hitting, slick fielding dynamo, short and skinny, former Mustang (Cal Poly, baby)...
His defensive wonders were highlight-reel worthy before Sports Center was around, but is there a way to measure his defensive prowess using statistics? Possibly...
This is something that appeals to the number-cruncher in me, so my apologies to those who find this lame and boring...
There are stats that tell us how many groundballs were hit to the shortstop during the season (actually, the stats cover every out of an entire season, but we're looking at shortstop only). From this, we can add up all the groundballs to short for every team, then divide by the number of teams to get an average number per team. If any team is substantially above the average, our conclusion is that their shortstop had good range, or was an excellent--at least above average--defensive shortstop.
One problem here is: what if a team with above average play at shortstop has inflated numbers due to groundball inducing pitchers, like sinker-ball throwing righties, or hard throwing lefties? This is a problem, and you can either accept it as part of the limitations of statistics, or not accept it, and claim all this as illusion or fraud.
However you feel about the limitations of stats, one thing that is shown is that Ozzie had substantially above average numbers almost every single year of his career, and, it turns out, is the only shortstop is pro-ball history to be at +500 plays relative to his teams' leagues and contexts...what that says is that Ozzie Smith got to 504 more grounders at shortstop than an average player playing in the same leagues and years as him, throughout his career...
You know what they say: "three types of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics", but this only seems to reinforce our pre-conceived notions and memories of our slick fielding Wizard of Oz.
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