It hurts your head to think about how many throws you've missed, Lyle

This article was supposed to analyze how Doug Mientkiewictz was going to save the Yankee infield from a bunch of throwing errors this season.  While he certainly will, in researching the subject I came across a far more interesting phenomenon.

You see, Baseball Info Solutions tracked first baseman scoops from the 2005 season.  We could easily gather from this data that Albert Pujols and Doug Mientkiewictz were about twice as skilled at scooping out balls in the dirt as the average first baseman, while Ben Broussard might want to switch to a larger mitt.  We could also say with some confidence that Derrek Lee proved more adept at saving bad throws than did Richie Sexson in 2005.  But for the most part, the difference between first basemen's picking abilities appeared negligible.  

Of course, these saves are only half of the story.  We can't just look at saves per inning; we need to also know how many bad throws each first baseman could not save.  That's what I would expect from the inventor of the plus/minus system, anyway.  Fortunately, the main competitor for Baseball Info Solutions, STATS LLC, tracks clean scoops versus missed scoops for all first basemen.  Unfortunately, they do not make that statistic publicly available.

So how can we estimate how many bad throws a first baseman received using just the info we get from BIS?  Fortunately, our handy Hardball Times Baseball Annual provides us with BIS error splits for every major leaguer - how many of each player's errors were on throws - every year.  The number of throwing errors combined from a team's second base, shortstop, and third base positions can serve as a rough approximation of the number of bad throws that a team's first baseman could not save, provided that said first basemen monopolized the vast majority of a team's defensive innings at first base.  

So, let's take a look at aggregate infield throwing errors from American League teams last season.  I decided not to look at the National League because of the relative preponderance of sacrifice bunts in the senior circuit.  Sac bunts mean not only more chances for bad throws, but also more instances of second basemen covering first base and skewing the statistic.  Anyway, of the 14 American League squads, only five amassed more than 20 throwing errors from those three infield positions, and only one tallied more than 30.  Here are the totals for those five flagged teams:

Blue Jays 39
Yankees 29
Devil Rays 29
Tigers 28
Twins 26

It's worth noting that three of these teams also enjoyed the top three records in the American League, while the Blue Jays tallied a more-than-respectable win total of 87, so it's not as though infield throwing errors alone can prevent a ballclub from competing.  And as we can tell, the defensively-impaired trio of Jason Giambi, Andy Phillips, and Craig Wilson did nothing to aid the Gold Glove chances of overblown shortstop Derek Jeter or the Cy Young bid of groundball specialist Chien-Ming Wang.  Doug Mienkiewicz may very well justify what's sure to be a paltry offensive output on those grounds.

But what's going on with those Blue Jays?

Many fans may remember that Blue Jay shortstop Russ Adams went through a throwing error spell that often got compared to Chuck Knoblauch's.  And while he did commit 10 throwing errors in just under 600 defensive innings, even if Toronto had unrealistically been able to replace those 600 innings with error-free ball, they would still have finished tied for the lead in this dubious stat.

Lyle Overbay, who logged over 86% of Toronto's defensive innings at first base, may be partly to blame.  While he may have saved as many errant throws as the average first baseman, it appears that he also let far more roll right past him than he should have.

The evidence against Overbay became even more damning when I pulled out my 2005 Hardball Times Baseball Annual.  While logging almost 88% of the Brewers' 2005 first base innings, Overbay oversaw a whopping 37 throwing errors from Milwaukee's other three infield spots.  As previously stated, the NL data probably isn't as well-suited for this kind of analysis as the AL data, but we're certainly seeing a trend.

For the skeptics in the audience, let's look at the progressions on those Toronto and Milwaukee clubs.  The 2005 Brewers totaled 37 throwing errors out of the 3B, SS, and 2B positions, while the 2006 team tallied 33.  With a similar cast in the infield, Overbay allowed about four more balls to whiz by him than the ever-agile Prince Fielder did.  The Blue Jays went from 24 non-1B infield errors in 2005 to 39 last year.  Converted third basemen Eric Hinske and Shea Hillenbrand split those duties the year before Overbay took over, and neither is considered a good defensive first baseman.   

So when we examine those 2005 stats from Baseball Info Solutions and see that Paul Konerko, Mark Teixeira, and Lyle Overbay each saved 19 errant throws, we now know that while Konerko and Teixiera each saved roughly 49% of the bad throws that came their way (19/39), Overbay only managed to corral about 34% of his (19/56).

Now I'm not suggesting that Lyle Overbay and The Big Hurt switch positions, but rather that Overbay's decent-for-a-first-basemen offensive production better not decline as he enters his thirties.  Because he's not doing his teammates any favors over at first base.