04.14.06
Cannon for an Arm
Career Fielding: OF, ARM+ descending, all time, min 250 games
Is it possible that Jesse Barfield didn’t have the best throwing arm of all time? Sure, it’s possible. Is it possible to prove this? Not a chance. Jesse’s ARM+ rating of 202 is simply amazing. This means he gunned down twice as many runners as the average OF in his time! Wow. I believe that Barfield had the best outfield throwing arm ever. Yes, this is a highly subjective conclusion, as it is based on only one stat, assists per game.
There are a lot of factors that come into play when looking at assists per game. The most glaring problem is that baserunners tend to stay glued to the bases more often when a guy with a reputation for gunning out runners is in the outfield. So the strong armed OF has less chances to throw out baserunners than an OF with a poor arm does. Case in point, using the Single Season Batting query, check which OF had the most assists last year. Yep…. Mr. Defense himself, Manny Ramirez, with 17 assists. Why? Because everyone and their brother runs on Manny. For those 17 assists, I’ll bet there were 100+ runners that took extra bases off of ManRam over the course of the season. So you can see the inherent flaw.
The thing is, everyone knew Barfield had a cannon. It didn’t matter. He still led the league in assists from the OF from 1985 to 1987. If we could somehow measure opportunities for outfield assists, then create an Assists per Chance stat, I believe that Barfield would lap the field.
Yes, Clemente had an incredible arm as well, and was an amazing player, far superior to Barfield overall. But Barfield had the gun.
Note that King Kelly appears above Barfield on the list with an ARM+ of 203. I discount this, for a few reasons. #1 - It was the 19th century. #2 - Look at Kelly’s career Range+, 70! That is truly terrible, people. How could he have been this bad?The answer to this, again, comes from my bible, Bill James’ Abstract. Allegedly, Kelly may have played a VERY shallow OF at times, almost as a fifth infielder. If true, this would create a lot of Assist chances, but in turn take away a lot of outfield Putout chances. I can’t see how this would have helped the team. Think about all of those fly balls landing in the outfield behind him! Oh yeah, one more thing. Kelly owns the worst OF fielding average of all time (>500 G at OF), at 82.0%! This is even worse than his Range+ problem. Even if he did play shallow, what is up with this error rate? There must be some very interesting stories about the way King Kelly played the game. I may have to hunt down a book. 
