Baseball fans are often split into two schools of thought: those who rely on statistics and numbers, especially the new-age sabermetrics to form their opinions and the old-school fans who are perfectly content relying on the time-proven eye test. When it comes to Javier Baez, though, there’s little debate amongst Chicago Cubs fans that he’s an elite defensive presence.
Those who wanted further validation when it comes to their opinion of Baez got it this week when Statcast unveiled a new defensive metric: Outs Above Average.
According to Statcast, four items form the basis of the new metric.