Good morning!
About a month ago, Jim took a look at Dominic Fletcher's defensive profile, noting that in fairly limited playing time he had already accumulated positive values by both Outs Above Average and Defensive Runs Saved. While OAA has him having cooled off somewhat since that post, he's still been a positive contributor defensively.
Looking at Baseball Reference's version of defensive WAR, Fletcher has managed to accrue 0.7 over 60 games: perhaps an above average final 15 games in the field would get him to a nice round 1.0 dWAR. Should he do so, then he would be another entry into this week's quiz: White Sox outfielders who racked up at least 1.0 defensive WAR or more over the course of a season. As it stands, there have been 34 player-seasons to cross that threshold. How many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- To qualify, a player must have logged at least 70% of his games in outfield positions, and, as already noted logged 1+ dWAR.
- I've allotted 15 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I've provided the season, the dWAR, and the position(s) of the player in question.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- From an offensive standpoint, not many of the players had black ink on their profiles other than one category: triples. Seven separate seasons saw the player lead the American League in triples.
- By overall WAR, the highest total is 8.2 (1954), while the lowest total is 0.6 (1991, RF).
- If you're curious as to what the worst dWAR logged in a season was, it's -3.1, done twice: Jermaine Dye in 2007 and Carlos Quentin in 2010.
- Andrew Benintendi's -1.6 dWAR is merely tied for 25th-worst all-time...with Gavin Sheets in 2022.
All data from stathead.com
