Who's The Best Scooper Around?

Not that kind of scoop!

Anyway...

My dad forwarded this email to me. It's from Chuck Miller at STATS, LLC.

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If first baseman scoops determined the World Series champion, the Mets have seemingly taken the crown. I think this is a very small part of a team’s overall success, but it’s interesting to see the result of your data collection efforts.

1B Scoop Leaders, through games of 08/25/08

Minimum 21 Scoop Attempts

Division leaders are bolded.
Wild card leaders are italicized.

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I'm not sure where they draw the line for what's a scoop attempt and what's not (though it would seem obvious), but I thought this would be of interest given some of the complaints about Prince's defense. He's no prize scooper, but he hasn't been the worst this year either. One attempt every two games isn't anything to lose sleep over, but getting better at it can only help both Prince and the team.

EDIT: What does and doesn't constitute a scoop is indeed obvious after all. Catch the ball in the dirt, you did well. Don't catch the ball in the dirt, you fail. From STATS:

Successful Scoop – 1B scoops a ball in the dirt while keeping foot on first base (regardless of whether runner is safe or out).
Unsuccessful Scoop – 1B fails to scoop a ball in the dirt while keeping foot on first base.
Block – 1B successfully scoops the ball while off the base.

Obviously, blocks aren't listed above, but they do keep track of them, I guess.