The beginning of this topic – team defense in football and baseball betting.

On the other hand, usually the most common used method of defense evaluating is a notion, which is very close to the idea of “Fielding Percentage” and its individual components, but they, unfortunately, are not adequate at all. “Fielding Percentage” is the total number of Assists (A) and Putouts (PO) of a player (team) divided into Assists (A), Putouts (PO) and Errors (Е), made by the same player (team).

For instance:

If Miguel Tejada has 256 putouts, 473 assists and 20 errors, his “Fielding percentage” is equal to:
.973 ((256+473)/(256+473+20))

This kind of evaluation is so imperfect that you can write a multivolume treatise about its restrictions. To save your time, let’s describe only some main items.

Our first problem concerning “Fielding percentage” is that this index by its nature is subjective. It means that only one official referee can define whether the players should be blamed for an unsuccessful attack. Two different referees would be able to give two different inferences about the same game situation, only because of their subjective interpretations. Very often “Fielding percentage” imposes a penalty on the players, which have more wide playing range.

Let’s concretize the last thought. Imagine for a moment that a hitball is between short-stop (SS) and the second base (2B). In perspective, not to spoil the statistics of “Fielding percentage”, the short-stop would theoretically allow the ball to play easily, instead of to make an attempt “to dive” for it and then to make a bad throw. In the game it is obviously that the bigger sector is “protected” by a player, the better player is.

But in fact «Fielding percentage» can indicate the player who has a worse playing range, but the better position in the stats list. I call it a fruitless effort.