You know, Stats devotes a lot of time with zone ratings and has spent a 
considerable amount of space of essays on Griffey and Alomar (I won't talk 
about Griffey now but I will in the future) detailing how their stats are so 
indicative of how good/bad they are. All those years of putting down Alomar 
and a lot of pages detailing how they *couldn't possibly* be wrong and then 
this year -- virtually nothing.
HOWEVER, after all these years, they did change their methodology AND for the 
first time EVER, the following has entered into their book "A second sacker's 
ability to flag down grounders depends not only on his range but on his 
*positioning*" Note that this does NOT relate to anything about Alomor but 
the sudden plunge of Biggio to last place on the second basemen's list. They 
wrote that Biggio dove for balls that McLemore and Reed might have been in 
position to field cleanly. So far they've conceded that positioning has 
something to do with it, just when will they finally admit that fielding 
surface AND pitching staffs are just as important? Anyone that ever saw the 
Cubs play when Bowa was winding down his career understands how important it 
was to them that the grass was so high. On any other surface, Bowa would have 
been revealed as clearly past his prime but the slow grass of Wrigley kept 
him in the game longer.
I predicted last year that the change to a different surface AND a different 
pitching staff would cause Alomar to go from mediocre to the one of the best 
in baseball and it happened. What you see happening with Biggio is similar to 
what happened to Alomar in Toronto. They don't strike out as many as the Blue 
Jays did, however, there were a lot of rockets coming off their opponents 
bats. While Houston had its problems at two positions, I find it hard to 
believe that Bagwell, who was 4th in baseball in 1995 (and tops in MLB from 
93-95) would suddenly drop to 12th in 1996. I also find it hard to believe 
that Alomar would suddenly become one of the best in baseball after all those 
years at the bottom. That IS, I find it hard to believe all this IF I were to 
believe that ZP had any validity.
As I've said in the past, it's time for Stats to begin to use TWO versions of 
their Zone Ratings: the first would be an overall rating based on *their* 
zones and the second would be based on where the fielder was *actually* 
positioned when the ball was pitched.
One thing that should be noted is that Alomar's replacements had mixed 
results. Cedeno had a better average than Alomar did in 1995, however, that 
was due to the change in methodology while Perez did have a better overall 
average. A third, didn't do as well.
--- TrekEd 1.00
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