Something caught 95% of the time would be an easy play. To me routine is something that should be made. Either way that's how the plays are coded in the graphs above.
A team that positions it's fielders well I would assume would have a lot more plays caught and less hits allowed.
Now....post the same data on both players from the O side. Heyward will suck just as bad....for around $200 mil btw...
I also love how you took the "best defender in the game", instead of a more average one. The stats wouldn't be so glaring.
Nothing new under the sun.
You're still missing what the data is showing. The distance here is not the distance from where the ball lands to where the fielder is when it lands. It's the distance from where the ball lands to where the fielder was at the time the ball was hit. So basically the amount of ground the fielder would have had to cover to make the play. It's why as the hang time increases, the distance of the line between easy and routine also increases. Again, a ball that falls 80 feet away from a fielder is not an easy, routine, tough, or 'highlight' play no matter how long it was in the air.
Good questions.
Also, how often does the player in question throw to the right man (cut off as opposed to trying to gun a guy down at home to show off his arm). Is his arm accurate, not just strong? How fast does he get the ball out on it's way to hopefully the right man (ie. does he need to "load up" to flash his arm)?
The positioning question is also hard to quantify. Does the guy play short and run back or stay back and come forward - would have a significant effect on his momentum and acceleration going to a ball. Even positioning of the umpires could have an effect on limited plays.
As is tendencies of a pitching staff or particular pitcher (Greg Maddux for instance almost never had balls hit down the line, either side, so OF would "cheat" or lean to the inside providing increased momentum on going after a play that way (if they didn't get lazy because of Andruw). Also, the number of chances would vary which shouldn't theoretically effect an individual outfield performance but would due to boredom and decreased attention over the progress of a game which at minimum would slow reaction time and decrease range and possibly catch efficiency.
Also, park effects like size and configuration (Tal's hill), number of day games played, ability to pick a ball up quickly coming from home plate, air quality (Candlestick Park, Coors, etc), quality of the outfield surface, grass height, grass or turf composition.
And then you have the fan effect. Batteries being thrown, trash, insults and beer, souvenir hunters fighting for a ball.
Lots and lots to consider.
It doesn't matter. As thewupk said, WAR uses data on how much a baserunner is worth, on average, and uses that for calculations. WAR is not a hard and fast stat that shows literally how many wins you contributed to your team that season. It is designed to provide a value of how many wins, on average, a player performing to that level will contribute to his team.
It's why total team WAR can't just be added up to give you how many wins that team had that year. It may tell you how many wins they should have had, depending on how much you believe in WAR. But while one pitcher may get out of a jam, so none of those baserunners were worth any runs, another pitcher may give up a GS, so all of the baserunners were worth an entire run. Those are events not controlled by the play to which WAR assigns a value, so all of those baserunners are worth the same according to the formula. WAR doesn't care about what actually happens beyond a single play in a game. It just assigns value to that play based on data across all of baseball for how much those plays are worth on average.
Fangraphs uses an ARM score as part of its overall defensive rating. Here is what they say about it:
Outfield arm run values are also computed separately from “regular” UZR. They are based on the speed and location of batted balls to the outfield and how often base runners advance extra bases (advances), don’t advance the extra base (holds), or get thrown out trying to advance (kills). Park factors are used in arm ratings. For example, because the left fielder plays so shallow in Fenway and balls tend to quickly ricochet off the Green Monster, it is difficult to advance an extra base on a hit to LF in Boston. In Colorado, because the OF is so expansive, base runners advance more easily than in an average park. The UZR “arm engine” adjusts for those things.
As for superior positioning, I would think this could be captured by number of balls hit within X feet of the player. A player with superior positioning should see more balls hit relatively close to him. Isn't that what superior positioning is all about?