Ok, good. That makes me feel better about Clemente's numbers when I look at them.
It was explained to me wrong, then. I suppose I should have just looked at the formulas right off the bat.
I knew certain positions got bonuses, ie catcher, shortstop and center (maybe second base, too), and that first, and the corner outfield positions (?) get a negative adjustment. Third should get a bonus, as well. Or is it neutral?
I guess I don't see the logic behind first being severely penalized. When I think of the greatest hitters in the game's history, I would assume that there are more great lefties than righties. One reason being that coming from the first base side of the plate is a somewhat shorter distance to run to first, therefore lefties should get a slight bump to average. That, and better head to head match ups with pitchers. I'd have to look at the historical numbers, but I'd almost have to think that there's a 3 to 1, or thereabouts, advantage with there being more righties than lefties on the mound, if not an even greater disparity. Therefore, left handed hitters have an advantage seeing a lot more right handed twirlers. They'll pick the ball up much more quickly than they would against a left handed pitcher. Righties will get penalized by the preponderance of right handed pitchers. Infield composition plays a role, too. Right handed pull hitters always have a shortstop and third baseman to contend with, and a second baseman can be pulled over to the third base side of the bag. Lefties only ever have second and first.
All that said, first base not only has to defend against left handed batters, they have to worry about men on first base. A second baseman can always shift to help them cut down on the pull alley to right, but the first baseman still has to guard down the line.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling trying to work all this out, and I'm going on about two hours of sleep. For the premium positions, I can see a slight positive adjustment. But I don't see the need for a negative adjustment for first base, if that's indeed the case.
When you start getting into zone rating, range factor, I question how they can do that from a historical perspective? Now all the games are archived, so a statistician can go in and watch a play from a billion different angles in high definition. You can't do that for games in the old days. A lot of the games only have information like "fly out to right field". It obviously doesn't tell a statistician anything about the ball's launch angle/trajectory, exit velocity, etc. How can you determine how good a fielder truly was, but first hand accounts?
Ugh. This is making my head hurt.