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Plus/Minus Rankings

John Dewan released the best and worst defenders at each position according to his plus/minus system. If you aren't familiar with the method of the rankings, here's the explanation from the site:

A player gets credit (a "plus" number) if he makes a play that at least one other player at his position missed during the season, and he loses credit (a "minus" number) if he misses a play that at least one player made. The size of the credit is directly related to how often players make the play. Each play is looked at individually, and a score is given for each play. Sum up all the plays for each player at his position and you get his total plus/minus for the season. A total plus/minus score near zero means the player is average.

Effectively, it's a system that tries to quantitatively measure scouting reports. These are the Dodgers that made the list:

Loney: +2. Not terrible for only half the year, though it doesn't really mesh well with the scouting reports of how amazing his defense is. If he would have played the whole year, he would have finished around +4, which is as effective as Carlos Pena.

Nomar: -18. This was only for his time at first, making him by far the worst first baseman in baseball since he managed to accumulate this in 67.3 games and only finish four ahead of last place Dmitri Young who played 99.1 games at the position.

Kent: -13. Fourth worst second baseman in baseball. Actually a bit surprised he did this well since his defense seemed particularly bad this year.

Furcal: Didn't make the leader board. Just a terrible year all around for him.

Pierre: +5. Good for ninth amongst center fielders, but eighth was a good way away at +11. Seems to agree with my theory that he has absolutely no defensive instincts but his legs still let him cover a lot of ground.

Ethier: +16. Easily the second best defensive right fielder in baseball. Austin Kearns was at +16 as well, but he played almost twice as much in right as Ethier did (154.3 games versus 87.2). Franklin Gutierrez destroyed the field with a +22 in 67 games.

These numbers have the Dodgers about where I thought they were as an average to slightly below average defensive team. Hopefully we can phase Nomar out next year to bring the team up a bit.