I don’t generally like pushing the “Raul Ibanez is a crappy fielder” thing too often.  It’s true, and I brought it up when I needed to, but now that he’s gone I’ve tried to keep the posts about him warm and fuzzy, because I’ve been a big Raul fan since he first debuted in the mid-90s and he was one of the few players that I feel sentimental towards.  Lame, I know; but it is what it is.

Anyway, Raul gave a few interesting quotes to Geoff Baker recently regarding defensive metrics.  Personally, I was impressed with what he had to say, mostly because it sounded a lot more intelligent than you’d expect from the average player.  That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he said, and it has drummed up a quick response from the Mariners blogosphere.

I’m not really eager to join this debate right now, so I’ll just direct you to some good reads if you’re interested:

• Geoff Baker’s blog post that started all of this.
• USS Mariner: Post 1, Post 2
• Pro Ball USA: Post 1, Post 2
• I’m sure Lookout Landing will be on it soon as well. Lookout Landing

I’d like to know what you all think of this.

Update: Even The Book has caught wind of Baker’s post:

This article has some interesting quotes from Ibanez.  Of course, he is wrong on a lot of levels, but I have to give him tons of credit for being somewhat familiar with sabermetric defensive metrics and with sabermetrics in general.  I would venture a guess that less than 1 in 20 players has ever heard of the word sabermetrics, or if they have, they have no idea what it means.

The other interesting thing is how players assess themselves.  We have discussed this before.  It has to be one of the more difficult things for a professional athlete to do.  You are pretty much unable to see the forest for the trees, among other obstacles, not the least of which are pride and ego.\

I would love to sit down with a player like Ibanez or Granderson and just shoot the breeze about baseball in general and perhaps about sabermetrics and scouting.