So here’s fun little bit.
If you were paying attention a bit ago, you know I’ve learned that the game logs have some zones I was unaware of—specifically “S” zones. They are labeled S1, S2, and so on until S 7, and S8. Doing a touch of research, The numbers represent areas of the outfield just above the walls, starting with “1” being down the left field line, and going around the fence to “8” being the right field line. Which is interesting because when I look at those, I find they represent fly ball outs that would have been home runs if not for the defender.
Which makes my ears perk up.
Meaning that my cool little script, which is still kinda cool after all these years, is missing just a little bit of mojo. I shall need to figure out how to add this into the old PAA metric.
While I’m not sure how to do that properly right now, I can still use the output to gather a little data. So that’s what I’ve done. The question, of course, is: how many times has a BBA outfielder saved a home run for his pitcher? (Or to turn the tables, how many times has a batter been robbed?)
The answer is that, at the time of this writing (May 10, 2065), thirteen different fielders have robbed twelve different hitters of home runs. Charlotte and Long Beach fans have watched their pitchers be saved twice, so far. Bikini fans are the only ones to see their hitters robbed more than once, and they’ve had it happen not twice, but thrice (twice to rookie Hector Jimenez).
I’m not sure what to make of it all (the data is quite small, after all), but for the fun of it, here are the instances of outfielders who have robbed hitters of homers. I did do a quick run of looking at the ranges of center fielders who did the deed, and as you might expect, it’s a collection of the better ranged guys out there.
I suppose that the main takeaways are that these things actually exist, and that on the basis of a tiny bit of data, they are another advantage of fielding well-ranged outfielders.
| M | D | Inn | Half | PitchTeam | Pitcher | BatTeam | Batter | Zone | Fielder | OF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 5 | 8 | 1 | CHA | Kelly Calhoun | CPF | Dan Morris | S3 | 8 | J. Bedreddin |
| 4 | 7 | 7 | 2 | SFB | Augusto Gonzalez | VAL | Juan Silva | S5 | 8 | J. Sitton |
| 4 | 8 | 1 | 2 | CCJ | Ian Tolley | CBH | Santiago Rodriguez | S4 | 8 | E. Reyes |
| 4 | 9 | 3 | 2 | TWC | Jerry Stone | CHI | Jeff Feagin | S3 | 8 | B. Peyton |
| 4 | 20 | 2 | 2 | CHA | John Miller | LV | Roberto Hampton | S2 | 7 | J. Trujillo |
| 4 | 22 | 7 | 2 | JAX | Rich Tidwell | NO | Mario Romero | S4 | 8 | J. Hernandez |
| 4 | 26 | 8 | 1 | LBC | Yurochka Erenkov | POR | Roberto Compton | S5 | 8 | K. Al-din |
| 4 | 27 | 5 | 2 | HAW | Harry Spurlock | BIK | Abhijana Swamy | S4 | 8 | C. Sanchez |
| 4 | 30 | 8 | 2 | MTL | David Uribe | JAX | Isoruko Takimoto | S7 | 9 | J. Marzuq |
| 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | LOU | Roberto Rodriguez | BKP | Hector Garcia | S7 | 9 | G. Canales |
| 5 | 2 | 7 | 2 | POR | Cheslav Evgrafov | BIK | Hector Jimenez | S7 | 9 | B. Fredrick |
| 5 | 7 | 3 | 2 | NSH | Eric Stevens | BIK | Hector Jimenez | S2 | 7 | C. Cramer |
| 5 | 7 | 4 | 1 | LBC | Nicodemus Tzannetakis | YS9 | Tony Bunce | S1 | 7 | P. Vargas |
