Errors By Position
July 19, 2004Thanks to www.retrosheet.org, Baseball Mogul has access to over 50 years of detailed play-by-play data. One interesting breakdown is the share of errors by position. Some of these numbers are obvious. For example, first basemen make a lot more fielding errors than throwing errors. But some are somewhat surprising. For example, center fielders have fewer fielding errors and fewer throwing errors than corner outfielders, despite having many more chances.
Over the last 3 years, almost exactly 60% of all recorded errors are fielding errors (and 40% are throwing errors). Within each group, here are the breakdowns by position:
| Fielding | Throwing | |
| Pitcher | 11.2% | 12.6% |
| Catcher | 4.7% | 13.7% |
| First Base | 12.2% | 5.7% |
| Second Base | 14.4% | 13.0% |
| Third Base | 18.4% | 22.7% |
| Shortstop | 17.1% | 23.0% |
| Left Field | 7.3% | 3.2% |
| Center Field | 6.7% | 2.9% |
| Right Field | 8.0% | 3.3% |