Article: Early Returns: Polanco's Play At Shortstop

I see your point - and I think a terrible FP% is usually a good indicator a player isn't polished/good at the position - but I believe it's a bit more complex than that. Some guys have a bad run of errors and it's hard to recover from a number that start abysmally low. Some guys are harshly judged or another player contributes to an error(s).

 

Then there's the fact that if a player is super-athletic and gets to the play but fumbles it, that *could* be ruled an error, even though another guy doesn't even get leather on the ball.

 

And that's the problem with fielding percentage. What's worse, a guy who occasionally kicks the ball but makes stellar plays at a 1:1 rate with his errors? Or the guy who almost never kicks the ball but doesn't ever get to those stellar plays?

 

The net result could easily be zero between those two players but advanced metrics try to factor in those differences while FP% is "eh, whatever, it's the judge's call".

 

And I'm not even bringing up how erratically errors are given/withheld in today's game. It's basically nonsensical. Some plays are required to give someone an error because a runner advanced on the play. What if no one is deserving of the error? Who gets saddled with that drop in FP%?

This is all true, except the bolded.

It's gotten to the point where it's ridiculously hard to be charged with an error.  Anything on the edge of anyone's range is going to be ruled a hit, not an error.  I seriously doubt anyone is racking up errors because they're diving for balls that are passed other fielders, and not coming up with the play cleanly.

There are occasionally errors charged to outfielders that really aren't their fault...they make a good throw, the ball kicks off the runner, and runner(s) advance.  Error charged, but no real misplay was made.

Outside of that, charged errors, particularly to infielders, can be reasonably assumed to be legit.  An out should have been recorded, and wasn't, or an extra base(s) gained that shouldn't have been.

And so errors are one of the things that need to be considered.  

I also find it ironic that people often scoff at errors because "it's just a judgement call, made by a human," but then turn around and swear by advanced defensive metrics, which rely on humans making judgement calls based on taped replays.