I have seen a lot of complaints about Rowand's defense since joining the Giants. So when I ran across a link to Tangotiger's The Scouting Report, By the Fans, For the Fans, I decided to check what the fans said about Rowand's defense in 2007 and 2008.
Rowand was pretty close to what he was before, with basically the same agreement level:
Rowand - 2007 - 2008
Overall - 60 - 62
Instincts - 63 - 70
FirstStep - 65 - 64
Speed - 63 - 59
Hands - 74 - 76
Release - 54 - 55
Strength - 37 - 50
Accuracy - 41 - 36
Ballots - 34 - 50
Where the league average is fixed at 50, with one standard deviation equal to 20 points. Thus, a player with a trait value of 70 is in the top 16% of the league.
His agreement level was 0.68 in 2007 and 0.67 in 2008, pretty much the same. There appears to be some degree of disagreement relative to other players, most other players were in the 0.70-0.80 range, and thus his relatively low agreement level is a bit smaller than other Giants players rated.
He was rated above average in most categories. In fact, the only category he was rated below average in both years was Accuracy, which was one of the major complaints I had read that fans had a problem with Rowand's defense. He was also rated below average in Strength in 2007, as well, and while he surprisingly was rated average for 2008, this was also a problem I had read about, that fans were disgruntled with.
According to Fangraph's Fielding calculations, Rowand was very bad on offense in 2008, with a UZR of -12.0 and UZR/150 of -11.1, that is roughly one extra loss per season because of his defense. That combined with his poor hitting resulted in his Value Wins to be basically 1 win for a total of $3.7M value for 2008.
However, it should be noted that for his prior four seasons, he averaged delivering $14.2M of value (much above his 5 year, $60M contract) and that in 3 out of those 4 years, he delivered value equal to or above his annual $12M salary. Based on those odds, Rowand was a good bet to make at the time, it was just that the bet didn't work in 2008. Hopefully, it will work going forward.
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