Yes, his accuracy did take a hit – it’s tough to miss all those errors. But it’s his acceleration score (best proxy for what’s gen. called ‘range’?) that I thought might drop a bit more. We’ll see, I guess!

Has MLB told you that you’re go to get a plug from mlb.com? That’ll be fascinating. My guess would be Betancourt scores a bit better from those voters…

As for YuBet, his fall from grace was in two categories: a bit in footwork/release and a ton in accuracy.

In 2005, he was stellar across the board:
http://www.tangotiger.net/scouting/scoutResults2005_SEA.html
And in 2006, that was repeated:
http://www.tangotiger.net/scouting/scoutResults2005_SEA.html
Though his accuracy dropped the most (11 “points”), though it was still at a high level.

As of right now, his accuracy is well below-average. His footwork/release is right around average.

It’s possible that he just got lazy this year. But, you guys would know alot more about it than me.

Also, I’m wondering if a player’s usage as a ‘defensive replacement’ drives some of the numbers. Ellison has never received ‘above average’ rankings in the corners from the PBP metrics. Again, sample size and uncertainty mean your numbers are probably ‘better’, but I wonder how getting the tag of ‘defensive replacement’ influences people’s opinions/evaluations.

Ellison is average, Burke is way low, and Broussard is challenging the other two.

(Tech note: I had my “header” record in the original counts, where “1 to 7″ was for Yubet, “8 to 15″ was for Ichiro… by the time you get to Ellison, he got numbers over 100, which severely inflated his numbers. This would not have happened had I went through my normal process through a database. This was purely an Excel issue.)

Anyway, prelim results (subject to change) are that Ichiro/Beltre are still considered elite, while YuBet took a tumble to a slightly above-average for a SS. Ellison is considered an above-average fielder for CF, and way-above at the corners. Sexson/Ibanez are easily the two worst fielders on the team. Except for Broussard, everyone else is average to a nick above.

Look for the full report right after the season concludes.

The YuBet example is exactly why these reports are important. PBP metrics will show numbers all over the place year-to-year, and, because of their small sample, will NOT imply any kind of directionality (the uncertainty range around those numbers makes it that you can’t tell if someone is on a trend or not). However, *your* numbers don’t have that problem. Your uncertainty level around his evaluation is far lower, and therefore, if we see him going from an “82″ to a “66″ (or whatever the final numbers will be… 50 is average for a fielder and 60 is average for a SS), then we *can* conclude that something drastic did happen to him.