Defense Question

[fhomess]

I have two centerfielders in my online league with the following stat lines (in a 126 game season):

Player    G  GS  PO  A  DP  TC   E  Pct    Inn  Rng
Meech   126 126 281  8   3 290   1 .997 1144.3 2.27
Poutini 126 126 305 16   3 324   3 .991 1075.0 2.69

Based on that, it seems to me that Poutini's 2 additional errors are the only real argument that Meech was better than him defensively.

Here's the thing, though, OOTP gave Meech a zone rating of 29.5, and Poutini a ZR of 0.4.

How is that large of a difference possible?

For reference, StatsLab calculated Poutini's ballpark with a runs park factor of 1.06 and Meech's with 1.03.

[Huckleberry]

All I can think of is that Meech has a severe ground ball pitching staff while Poutini plays behind a fly ball staff. For Poutini to have that many more putouts and assists in fewer innings played and still have a much lower zone rating that's all that seems like it could cause that.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Meech must have made more difficult outs. See the definition of Zone Rating:

ZR - "Zone Rating" - developed by John Dewan, 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. A score above zero is above average and a negative score is below average.