Earlier this season, Red Sox CF (and All-Hot Team honoree) Jacoby Ellsbury tied the MLB record for putouts in a game — and set a new club record — with 12 catches in one game. His speed on the basepaths and in the outfield is legend; in his still-young career, he’s stolen home (against the Yankees!), scored from second on a wild pitch, and is on pace to break the team’s club record for steals in a season, a mark that has stood since 1954. (For a jaw-dropping account of Jacoby’s speed in high school, check out this MLB.com article by Ian Browne.)

On the whole, Jacoby has been accepted as an above-average centerfielder, though perhaps not quite as gifted as the man he replaced, Coco “Did you see that catch Coco made?” Crisp. The speed helps — he always seems to be chasing things down out there. And leaping. I seem to recall a lot of leaping.

So imagine my surprise today when, in the course of a quibble with a coworker about the (in)utility of fielding percentage, I noticed that Jacoby Ellsbury has the second-lowest UZR of any major league centerfielder. Now, he’s not half as bad as the worst centerfielder, Vernon Wells, who weighs in at -20.4, but Ellsbury’s -8.5 is shocking. And appalling.

And while last year, in 546.2 innings, his UZR was at least positive (an even 3.0), that’s still nothing to write home about.

I can only conclude that I — along with Boston’s more sober-faced, straight-laced commentators — have been bamboozled, fooled, duped by our own eyes. From now on, I, for one, will be hardening my heart, pursing my lips, and looking past the smoldering eyes and impossibly white teeth (not to mention the washboard abs and oh-so-touchable hair) and observing young Ellsbury’s attempts at defense more carefully.

In a NYT article about a supposedly new method of quantifying defensive value:

“It’ll be neat to find out what the numbers are,” said Toronto Blue Jays center fielder Vernon Wells, who is known for smoothly tracking down deep fly balls.”

Umm, Vernon? You  had a -24.0 UZR/150 last year and are at -33.3 this year. Chances are,  you ain’t gonna like what you see.

Perfect evidence of why stats are so important to give a more realistic evaluation of defense, as opposed to just going on observation alone, can be found in the Baseball Tonight Web Gem leaderboards, which have finally appeared on ESPN.com’s “Baseball Tonght Clubhouse” page after weeks of claiming on air that the leaderboards were there when they were actually not.

Because which major league team is at the top of the leaderboards for most web gems by a single team? Why none other than the Washington Nationals, with 17 appearances by one of their players on Baseball Tonight’s web gem sequence. Yes, the same Washington Nationals who are in fact probably the worst defensive team in all of baseball, by any statistical measure.

I can only presume that the Nats players have to dive so much because they reach the edge of their range so quickly.

Nobody expected the Texas Rangers to be dominating the AL West this year, the way they have so far. Yeah, we all know about their explosive offense and their bevy of top prospects, but we also know that their pitching still sucks, and most of those prospects are at least a year away. 2010 was supposed to be the coming out party in Arlington, not 2009.

So how are the Rangers doing it? Well, the offense is just as explosive as ever, especially now that Josh Hamilton is back from the DL, but the pitching staff, which was last in the Majors last season with a horrid 5.37 ERA, is an at-least respectable 6th in the AL this year, at 4.54.

But pitching is not really the story here. If anything, the pitching is actually slightly worse this year. Staff ace Kevin Millwood’s hot start is a mirage of luck with BABIP, and this year’s team FIP of 5.03 is actually *worse* than last season’s 4.83.

The real story is that the Texas Rangers went from dead last in the entire Major Leagues in defensive efficiency to 5th overall this year and 2nd in the American league behind only the Blue Jays.

Betting big on 20-year old Elvis Andrus, who has been a revelation at shortstop and no slouch with the bat either, has allowed the Rangers to shift range-challenged Michael Young over to third base, which had been a defensive black hole for the Rangers last season, which in turn allowed them to shift Chris Davis over to first base, where he is actually a plus defender.

Combined with the luxury of having natural shortstop Ian Kinsler play second base, and some dude named Omar Vizquel on the bench ready to fill in, the Rangers have gone from one of the worst defensive infields in the majors to probably the best, and in the process have gone from a last place finish in the AL West to first place in the division so far this year.

Does this story strike you as familiar in any way? It should, because another team who brought in a new shortstop and then strategically shifted around a few other players, going from last to first in defensive efficiency, was the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, who rode their dramatic turnaround from doormats to dominance all the way to a World Series appearance.

And the Rangers aren’t the only team attempting to follow in the footsteps of the Rays this year. The Detroit Tigers *also* brought in a new shortstop (Adam Everett) and shifted a bunch of other players around to less challenging positions, leapfrogging from 11th in the AL in defensive efficiency last season to 3rd this year, and similarly going from the celler to the penthouse in the AL Central.

All of which suggests that we may still be dramatically underestimating the importance of defense to a team’s success. Especially infield defense.  I remember Rob Neyer pondering the value of defense at one point in the late 90s and estimating that defense was probably 10 percent of preventing runs, with pitching accounting for the other 90 percent, but recently I’ve started thinking more along lines of defense being about one third of winning ballgames, with offense and pitching being the other 2/3.

That number may be too high, and I’m not sure we’ll ever have a way to know for sure, but if fixing a few things on defense (and especially infield defense) can take these teams from the bottom to the top, then maybe teams are really still undervaluing its importance.

Following the emergence of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008, fans around baseball – and rightly so – began paying more attention to the value of defense. I’m sure that by now you’ve heard about the difficulties involved in measuring defensive skills ad nauseum. But just know that we are getting better. You know how we know? Because results are reflected in win-loss columns.

Take the Seattle Mariners for instance. The news around baseball on December 12th, 2008 was how the New York Mets upgraded their much-ridiculed bullpen by acquiring J.J. Putz from Seattle. Much less talked about was how good of a deal this was for the Mariners.

While Putz was certainly a very effective reliever, Seattle saw a chance to parlay his skill into something the team needed more – outfield defense. In the very same trade that brought Putz to Queens, the Mariners obtained Endy Chavez from the Mets and Franklin Gutierrez from Cleveland, two of the finest defensive outfielders in the game. Chavez would play left, Guttierez center, and Ichiro would move back permanently to right where he would be more effective. None of these three players would offer you much in terms of power. But the Mariners were OK with that. And, so far, so good.

As of this writing, the Seattle pitching corps has an MLB-leading 3.33 ERA. And I think a good chunk of that early success can be attributed to the OF who have not disappointed, leading MLB in OF Revized Zone Rating (a stellar .968) AND plays made out of their fielding zones (49), which is certainly no easy feat.

Predictably, their team offense does leave a bit to be desired with an AL-worst .308 OBP and a .370 slugging percentage (13th in AL). But this has surprisingly been offset very well by how many runs they’re not allowing to opposing lineups. Consequently, they lead the AL West with a 13-8 record, which is really amazing if you think about the lack of offense.

Now obviously it’s way too early to know for sure that their defense can keep this many runs off the board for much longer. However, I’m inclined to believe that the Mariners are for real. Sure, Jarrod Washburn is going to have more nights like he did on Sunday. But neither Carlos Silva nor Chris Jakubauskas (or whomever will take his spot in the rotation) is going to be this bad either. Plus, we know enough about Adrian Beltre to trust that he’s better than his current OPS+ of 16 suggests, which should offset the eventual decline of Russell Branyan’s performance.

However, even a believer like myself didn’t exactly predict this (alright, fine, I didn’t at all). I had little idea of just how much of an impact this defense would have. But like I said, we’re getting better at evaluating this stuff, and baseball’s going to be more fun as a result.

With Team USA set to go up against an extremely slick-fielding Japanese team tonight in their semifinal matchup to determine who goes to the championship game against Korea, USA manager Davey Johnson is going with a bafflingly bad defensive alignment.

First of all, it is highly questionable to go with an outfield of Ryan Braun in left, Curtis Granderson in center, and Adam Dunn in right.  Granderson is decent enough, but I am tempted to say that an outfield of Granderson in center and two completely immoble industrial-sized trash dumpsters in left and right would catch more fly balls.

But most baffling of all is Davey Johnson’s decision to go with worst-defensive-shortstop-in-baseball Derek Jeter at short while actually-pretty-good-defensive-shortstop Jimmy Rollins is the DH!

Actually, this is of course not baffling at all, since most crusty old baseball men still think Jeter is awesome at defense, but really, it’s hard to think of a defensive move more damaging to the squad’s chances of victory, other than putting Dunn at 2B or something.

I’m all for recognizing true defensive excellence in baseball. Far too often, we the fans ignore the runs that were prevented in favor of runs that were scored. Which is why I felt that Tampa Bay’s acquisition of Jason Bartlett from the Minnesota Twins back in November was a pretty good one. Not only were they able to get Matt Garza as well in that trade that sent Delmon Young to Minnesota, but Bartlett was a pretty good defensive shortstop in 2007. His 67 Out of Zone plays was good enough for fourth in MLB among shortstops, which helped make up some for his below average Revised Zone Rating (.804).

But this is 2008, and Bartlett hasn’t been as good this year. His RZR has remained consistent (.808), but even with the 100 fewer innings in the field, his OOZ is just 44, a 35% decrease. His Range Factor is also down from 4.67 last year to 4.22. And with an Adjusted OPS of 83, I really don’t think that he’s helping the team all that much.

So you can imagine my surprise to see that the Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America has voted Bartlett as the team MVP this season. Cue the confusion.

While it’s true that he’s still an improvement defensively over Brendan Harris who manned the position last year (which really isn’t saying much, by the way), it’s difficult to understand the logic here. What Bartlett has over Harris with the glove is canceled out by his deficiency with the bat. Harris had 13 Win Shares in 2007. Bartlett has 10 so far this year.

I do think that the BBWAA is on the right track in crediting the Rays’ W-L improvement over the past year to their defense. But I give just as much credit, if not more, to rookie third baseman Evan Longoria’s work at the hot corner. And BJ Upton’s markedly improved performance in center field deserves commending as well. And you know what? Longoria and Upton’s offensive contributions blow Bartlett’s out of those warm Tampa waters (full disclosure – I have no idea if Tampa’s waters are warm. I digress). It’s not even close.

I understand the tendency to point to free agent signings or trades rather than internal moves when we see vast improvements in a team’s performance. We look for what that “missing piece” was for success. And Bartlett fits the bill, I suppose, in that sense. But in the case of the Tampa Bay Rays, it was more Upton gaining experience and the performance of Longoria that we ought to be crediting.

This is another in our occasional series of posts wherein we update you on the status of the nonstop schadenfreude express which is the 2008 San Francisco Giants…

Philadelphia and San Francisco were tied at 4 in the bottom of the tenth inning. The Phillies had runners on first and second. Right fielder Geoff Jenkins grounded the ball sharply to the left of second baseman Eugenio Velez, who bent down to pick it up and…oops!…the ball went under his glove.

And that’s how the Giants lost Sunday’s game, with Howard scoring from second on the play.

Some Giants fans will point to the team’s talented young pitchers as reason for hope. But this optimism takes for granted that, when those pitchers induce ground balls and shallow pop-ups, that the fielders will be able to catch the ball and throw it to the appropriate base.

After yesterday’s game, we can no longer assume.

The Giants made three errors Sunday. The first was charged to shortstop Emmanuel Burriss, who threw wide of first base in the third inning. The second was charged to third baseman Jose Castillo. And then, of course, there was Velez.

Giants starter Tim Lincecum allowed four runs in six innings – none earned. But don’t feel too bad for Lincecum. He made a few mistakes of his own. He had two wild pitches. One led to a run.

Today, the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that fielding errors are the price you pay when you stack your team with young players:

Any team that pushes youth makes a Faustian bargain. There will be moments of uninhibited enthusiasm and excitement, but the payback will be lots of mistakes.

There’s some truth to this. A majority of the Giants’ errors this season have been made by the team’s younger players. But here’s the rub: just because you’re one of San Francisco’s younger players doesn’t necessarily make you young.

Castillo, who is 27 years-old, is in his fifth major league season and leads the team with six errors. Brian Bocock, who actually is young (23 years-old) and is filling in while Omar Vizquel is out, is second on the team with three errors. After Castillo, Bocock and Fred Lewis (who is 26), the Giants have no starters under 30. Moreover, the only reason those guys are playing at all is because of injuries to older players.

So let’s not pretend that the Giants are in the middle of a youth movement. The Giants are not a young team (they’re ranked 15th in average team age). They are not a good defensive team (they are among the bottom third of teams in fielding percentage and errors).

This weekend, all three games against the Phillies were decided by one run and two of the games went to extra innings. Of course, the Giants lost two of three — further proof that in close games defense makes the difference.

That’s more bad news for the Giants.