Bloops: Offense/Defense Number
Posted by Neil Paine on November 5, 2009
You've all heard of Bill James' "power/speed number", developed back in the Baseball Abstract era, right? (We have it here on the site, btw.) Well, over at The Hardball Times, Brandon Isleib applied the same technique (taking the harmonic mean of two numbers) to Offensive and Defensive Win Shares to come up with what he calls the "Offense/Defense Number", or a measurement of those who excelled at the plate and afield. In Part I, infielder seasons are examined (spoiler alert: Honus Wagner was awesome).
