We bloggers are spur-of-the-moment, react-just-to-react types, you know? We live for the present. And for the snark. And dogmatically defending metrics because we just can’t handle uncertainty.
Sometimes, though, we like an “evergreen” series of posts. Even we dwellers in the ephemeral like to have something we can fall back on. In my case, I have chosen to do catcher fielding rankings on (somewhat) monthly basis. It seems like a good idea for an easy, quasi-monthly post, but then I realize how clunky my spreadsheet is, and how it needs to be touched up and checked every time, and how the first post of the year, especially, is brutal since I have usually forgotten how a lot of it is set up. SIGH. Blogging: it’s hard, y’all.
I started doing the catcher defensive rankings at the end of 2009 for a now-defunct site, and even though I think there are catcher fielding metrics available now that are probably better, this is somewhat expected of me and people seem to like it, so I am going to try and stop apologizing for it. (For some of that, here are last year’s final rankings.) Anyway, it is always fun to start them early enough in the year so that someone surprising will end up on top (or bottom) and people will throw a fit about it. So forget sample size qualifications, true talent-versus-observed performance reminders, and methodological admissions (brief notes about the method can be found at the very bottom of the post — please read that before complaining), let’s get to it!
