We felt that what might help a lot in the large-scale evaluation of the overall significance of defense is an absolute measure. As far back as 1981 we had developed and published such a measure, and we now present it on this site. But it does, we feel, help illuminate this dusky corner of the game. Three outfield cans of corn look the same in the box score as three running, diving, rolling outfield catches, but the fielding abilities manifested do differ. The men who caught the cans of corn might well have been able also to make the hard catches, but we do not and cannot know based on what actually happened.
Good pitchers do make for at least the appearance of good fielders.
All that said, fielding measures that encompass the performance of an entire team, especially over a full season, will average out an awful lot of individual detail. Well, let's see what we have and what it seems to show, then return to the large issues. It is, in the ideal, to turn every possible out into an actual out. That is, there are certain batter-pitcher confrontation outcomes on which the fielders can have no effect. They also include the home run, the ball that leaves the playing field altogether.