In 2024, the NBAA came up with new defensive award calculations. The growth and adaptation of analytics was exciting. Since 2009, the Boston Renegades have kept positional stats for defense. It was not hard, just took a little extra time. For years, the NBBA discussed methods to improve this and I was approached numerous times to learn the Renegade process. In 2024, the NBBA announced a change to the way it calculates the defensive all-stars. For the first time, they would not give out six awards to six players playing up front. Instead, they awarded the different positions on the field. They gave two awards each to players up front, in the middle and deep in the back. This was welcomed by many. However, they also introduced a controversial new position, called the utility player award (more on that later).
The “D” in defense stands for Different
For starters, in Beepball, every team uses a different defense. Point defenses typically play one person up front. Some teams play a double triangle. Other teams play a player straight up the middle in the 2nd layer. Some teams shift all the time. The Chicago Comets even rolled out a new “MLB” defense this year. Bottom line, players can play anywhere as long as they start within the 170 foot line and within the foul lines. They key question many had was how to we define Short, middle and deep with all the varieties of defense.
The guidelines were as follows:
- Short – players between 40 and 100 feet
- Middle – players between 101-130 feet
- Deep – players beyond 130 feet
I was then told that these are “loose” recommendations to help. We also needed to consider the layers as well. If the 2nd layer person plays at 95 feet with someone in front of them – they are NOT a short player. Lastly, the guidelines define the depth where the player starts, not where they end up. For example, if a shorty starts at 80 feet and runs back to make a play at 110, they’re still considered a short position. Simple, right? I asked where this was documented, and it’s not clear. After watching 13 games this year, I noticed every team didn’t fully understand it and there were inconsistencies.
Per game stats – Rob’s thoughts
Before we dive in, let me say I despise defensive per game stats. Per game stats are not a good benchmark because not everyone plays the same amount of innings in a game. If you play on a team with a coach who subs people in and out, good luck winning an award. If you play one inning on defense, and nobody hits the ball to you, you get credited with zero stops for the whole game, which will bring your average down.
Few Beepballers know that in 2011, I used our super star defensive player, Justen Proctor as a designated hitter in one game. We did this to get others a chance to play his position on defense and to get him at bats. I had a strong feeling this would be held against him for defensive stats. I knew the process would count this game as a DH against his defensive numbers. When the all-star team was announced, I was right. Per my request, the NBBA reviewed the scoresheet to see his DH status for this game. When this game was removed from his “per game” stats, he was an all-star (3rd place in fact). The answer to improve per game stats is to get an automated scoring system. When creating the software requirements, have the code track innings played for each player based on when they sub in and out.
What if we did it the same way since the 1970’s?
Historically, the defensive all-star award was given to players with the highest stop ratio per game. (I hate using the word put out – so when you see “stops” that’s my way of saying it quicker). This has always been a list of the top front/short players in the sport. Occasionally, this list is weighted toward guys playing a lot of weak competition gobbling up all the junk. It’s not designed to consider that making a stop against the speed and power of the best hitters in the league is very different than making a stop against a team that finishes with one win and whose best hitter hits .190 (this is a separate issue). Let’s look at the defensive stats for 2024 to see who the top defenders were.
| Rank | Name | Team | Stops | Games played | stops per game |
| 1 | Stanley Griffin | Cleveland | 68 | 10 | 6.80 |
| 2 | Dariuhs Sterling | Austin | 47 | 7 | 6.71 |
| 3 | Eric Rodriguez | Edge | 52 | 8 | 6.50 |
| 4 | Evan Van Duyne | Minnesota | 57 | 9 | 6.33 |
| T-5 | Marc Morris | Gateway | 48 | 8 | 6.00 |
| T-5 | Richie Flores | Bayou City | 54 | 9 | 6.00 |
This shows exactly the problem the league was trying to solve for. Every person on this list played up front and none of them recorded a stop in the 2nd or 3rd layers. Side note for Renegade fans – we played 5 of these 6 players in the 2024 World series (Sterling stopped us 8 times, Van Duyne & Rodriguez stopped us 7 times, Griffin got us 6 times and Flores stopped us 5 times.)
New Positional Stats – Middle Layer
To solve this, the league now has positional stats. This means we can see who made stops in the middle and deep layers. These stats are somewhat subjective. They are supposed to be based on the depth the player starts the play. I’m sure there is some Fuzziness to this as every team plays different depths and every team may understand these stats differently. Heck, I’m one of the stat heads in the league and until June, it was unclear to me how this would be implemented. If I didn’t get the memo, how many other teams may have been unclear? Regardless, let’s look at the scoring of the top six middle men in the league.
| Rank | Name | Team | Stops | Games played | stops per game |
| 1 | Richard Schultz | Chicago | 27 | 8 | 3.38 |
| 2 | Axel Cox | Thunder | 14 | 7 | 2.00 |
| 3 | Mike Finn | Austin | 9 | 5 | 1.80 |
| 4 | Dustin Youngren | Chicago | 14 | 8 | 1.75 |
| 5 | Alex Quick | BCS | 8 | 9 | 1.67 |
| 6 | Christian Keely | Cleveland | 16 | 10 | 1.60 |
Looking at this, we see new names here. This was the whole purpose of doing these new stats. Bravo for making it happen. Some key things to note, Schultz and Youngren appear on the list because Chicago plays a point defense, giving their second layers more options. However, Cleveland also plays a somewhat point defense with Griffin, and Christian Keely popped up. To see Cleveland have 2 of the top players up front and in the middle should tell you something about how well they played and contributed to their run to an 8th place position. Alex Quick is on this list and he has 6 unaccounted defensive stops that are not counted above (more on this later)
New Positional Stats – Deep Layer
| Rank | Name | Team | Stops | Games played | stops per game |
| 1 | Zephryn Victor | Braille Bandits | 19 | 7 | 2.71 |
| 2 | Josh Xiong | Minnesota | 13 | 9 | 1.44 |
| 3 | Zach Buehler | Thunder | 10 | 7 | 1.43 |
| 4 | Pat Lemke | Minnesota | 9 | 7 | 1.29 |
| 5 | Riley Schmitz | Minnesota | 5 | 6 | 1.20 |
| 6 | Justin Holland | Gateway | 7 | 7 | 1.00 |
Some things stand out here when I think about data integrity. I question the validity of how the defense is being measured here. I’m not saying there is a problem, I’m just saying, I question it. I question it because of how it was rolled out and its subjectivity. I question it because I’m trained to ask questions when data looks weird, as that’s one thing I do for IBM. What looks funny to me? The Bandits top defender was deep and this grass was so thick that many of the teams they played didn’t hit many out there. Minnesota has three players on this list. How can that be? Did Minnesota play with three deep players on thick grass? I do not know the answers to these questions but the data makes me ask these questions.
One other thing, we need to be aware of with these mid level stats and deep stats. We need to have a minimum amount of stops. I’m not sure how to do this (or what the actual rules are if they are defined) – but Doug Biggins made 2 stops in 1 game. I disqualified that because it was one game (as did the NBBA when giving awards).
Oddities in the stats
I dug into my questions a bit and wanted to look at the league as a whole as a barometer. I looked at the league average (20 teams) to see how the layers played out. As a league, we made 1,614 stops on defense. 70% were up front. 18% in the middle and 12% deep. By the way when I look at my Renegade history since 2009- we made 65% of our stops up front but this was some of the slowest grass we have ever played on.
| Defensive layer | League average | League Low /Team | League High/Team | Outliers |
| Short | 70% | 39% Braille Bandits & Chicago Comets | 83% Atlanta | BCS (57%) is the only other team in the league under 60% |
| Middle | 18% | 0% – Atlanta and Minnesota | 59% Chicago | All other teams between 11-26% |
| Deep | 12% | 1% Tyler | 45% Braille Bandits | Minnesota – 31% |
- The Braille Bandits and Chicago Comets made just 39% of their stops up front. Number wise this was 38 stops for the Comets and just 22 for the Bandits. The Comets played a new defense this year that favored their middle layers – so this may make sense. However, Zephryn Victor had 6 more stops than any other deep man in the league and he had 3 less stops than all his teammates playing up front. This is very rare on slow fields. Maybe this is right – I just want to question it and maybe we should look at the stat sheets for their games a little closer to see what can be learned.
- Two teams, the Millers and Chaos did not have a single defensive stop in the middle layers. The league average was 18%. With three Millers on the deep man list above, I question if all teams are all using the same guidelines.
Utility players – digging into this new award
I had to ask for clarity on how this position would be graded before the World Series started because it was unclear to me. It went through a few iterations before it got to the awards committee. It was confusing to me as I had heard it would look at offensive stats. Ultimately, I was told it looked at the player with the most stops on defense but additionally making at least 2 stops in at least two levels. They could not be named an all-star already. As soon as I heard this, I cried foul. It was dead read clear it would go to a shorty who may have played in another level.
The below table is the data used to choose the Utility player award. When looking at the column headers the one column that is confusing is “Utility Stops”. What the heck is that?
| Rank | Name | Team | short stops | Mid stops | Deep Stops | Utility stops | Total Stops | Games played | stops per game |
| 1 | Justin Romack | BCS | 21 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 24 | 9 | 2.67 |
| 2 | Romario Blake | Bandits | 8 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 14 | 7 | 2.00 |
| 3 | Alex Quick | BCS | 0 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 15 | 7 | 1.67 |
| 4 | Kalari Girtley- Jackson | Sirens | 0 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 7 | 1.57 |
| 5 | Joe McCormick | Boston Renegades | 3 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 12 | 8 | 1.50 |
| 6 | Joe Dejesus | NJ | 0 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 8 | 1.38 |
The scoring process
I did a little digging and found an easy to fix flaw in the way we compile the score sheets and capture the data in Excel. After looking at the Excel stat sheets, it’s clear when players make stops in a game at multiple levels, they were tagged as “utility” instead of short/middle/deep.
This could eventually be detrimental to someone who is close to winning a positional award. For example, Axel Cox won the mid-level award in 2024. If Indy had an injury he could have played up front for a few innings in a game after making at least one stop earlier in the game in his middle layer. If this occurred, he would have lost these middle layer stats to a “Utility” layer and Mike Finn may have won the award instead of Axel. I’m told that even though the stat sheets tag these as “utility” we did mark the layers in the scoresheet box to denote the actual layer. This means the data is available and the process is easier to fix.
Our scoresheets could be adjusted to help with this problem. The scoresheet in use till this year was one I created (with input from the scorekeepers) more than a decade ago, making me an expert on this topic. We could easily have a section on the scoresheet where defensive layer stats can be tallied without taking space away from other valuable information (I have an example of how this worked for the Renegades). The scoresheets should summarize the layer stats to make the entry of the stats into excel quicker and easier. Yes, we know this is more work for our volunteer scorekeepers, but as I mentioned above, I hope we can get to automated scoring someday to help make all of this easier.
The definition of Utility needs tweaking
This award as its written today will always typically go to a player who primarily plays up front and occasionally plays in the back. Let’s face it, a defensive stop in the deep layer is a lower percentage play and is harder to make than one within 70 feet because there is more space to cover, and by the time the ball gets out there – the player often has very little time to make a clean stop. All things equal, it’s easier to make a stop off a dribbler then making a stop on a ball hit in the air 150 feet.
The Utility proposal
I suggest using a weighted point value for a stop made in each layer. I think this weight should change each year because of the difference in the fields. The fields in St. Charles were different than those in Tulsa or Norman. Less balls made it to the third layer of the defense in 2024 because of the thickness of the grass. This weight can be calculated based on the new stat sheet (props to Josh Perry). This year the league made 1,614 defensive stops. We made 1,109 in the front layer, 287 in the middle layer and 198 in the deep layer. They have 20 credited to the “Utility layer” – which was addressed above. Since this is such a small amount – we can ignore it for this calculation. This means 70% were made up front, 18% in the middle and 12% in the deep layer.
With this math we can compare the back layers to the front layer and say that for every stop in the middle we make 3.9 stops in the front (1109/287). For every stop on the back we make 5.6 stops up front (1109/198). This can be used to weight the stops and give credit to utility players in a more even way so a front man does not win every year and we consider the complexity of the defensive positions (which was the whole goal of moving to this new system). Using this math, a defensive put out up front is worth 1 point. A middle layer stop is worth 3.9 points and a deep stop is worth 5.6 points. Then we must consider the amount of games played and divide the points by games played to get defensive points per game.
Resolving the Utility stat from 2024
Before getting to the results of this new formula, we must resolve the “Utility” tags from 2024. There were ONLY 6 players tagged with utility in a game (though Alex Quick was tagged as “utility” twice). I am able to resolve the following:
- Joe McCormick was tagged as “utility” against Cleveland when he was tagged with 4 stops. Two of these were deep and two were middle. I tracked these on our scoresheets
- Alex Quick played against the Renegades and was given 3 stops against “utility” in that game. We tracked him and he made 2 short and 1 middle.
- Neal Macdonald tells me Kalari played all her innings in the middle layer – but they have her tagged with 2 “utility” stops vs the Panthers – we will put them in the middle layers
- Richie Flores confirms that Grant Simpson played middle layer all week – we will put both his “utility” stops in the middle layer
I can’t resolve the following easily without access to the scoresheets:
- Kyle Ivy made 4 stops at “utility” against Bayou City
- Alex Quick made 3 “utility” stops vs Atlanta
- Jakesha Davis made 2 “utility” stops vs the Strong
Also – the definition of a utility player is someone who plays multiple positions. I’m also suggesting that in order to qualify for this utility player- players have to achieve either of these things (not just the first bullet).
-
- Make a stop in at least two layers BUT the amount of stops must be >1 in each layer
- Make at least 1 stop in all three layers (Only two players accomplished this in 2024)
Our new Utility player of the year
With this different methodology, we can focus in on the true utility players. They likely had no chance to win a positional award because they did not have a primary position.
| Rank | Name | Team | short stops | Mid stops | Deep Stops | Total Stops | Total points | Games played | points per game |
| 1 | Joe McCormick | Boston Renegades | 3 | 2 | 7 | 12 | 49.8 | 8 | 6.23 |
| 2 | Romario Blake | Braille Bandits | 8 | 0 | 6 | 14 | 41.6 | 7 | 5.94 |
| 3 | Joe Dejesus | NJ Titans | 0 | 9 | 2 | 11 | 45.4 | 8 | 5.68 |
| 4 | Jay Teagle | Oklahoma Lookouts | 0 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 33.8 | 6 | 5.63 |
| 5 | Alex Quick* | BCS Outlaws | 4 | 10 | 1 | 15 | 47.6 | 9 | 5.29 |
| 6 | Justin Romack | BCS Outlaws | 21 | 0 | 3 | 24 | 37.8 | 9 | 4.20 |
| 7 | Ethan Johnston | Gateway Archers | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 19.8 | 7 | 2.83 |
| ? | Kyle Ivy | Oklahoma Lookouts | 4 | ? | ? | 8 | ? | 7 | ? |
| ? | Jakesha Davis | Braille Bandits | ? | 4 | ? | 6 | ? | 7 | ? |
Some key things about the above table
- This would name either Joe McCormick or Alex Quick as the Utility player of the World Series. This would be fitting as these were the only two players in the NBBA who made stops in all three levels.
- Alex Quick could be higher on this list. We put him in as 4/10/1 (short/mid/deep)- taking a guess he made 2 stops up front and 1 middle – as he did against Boston. He stays in 5th place if he was 3/11/1 If he was 2/11/2 – he would finish second. If he was 2/10/3 – he would win the award.
- Kyle Ivy was credited with 4 “utility” stops vs the Bayou City Heat. He could qualify if he made more than 1 stop at either middle or deep. He also may not qualify if he didn’t make 2 stops at another level than shorty
- Jakesha Davis of the Bandits was credited with 4 stops in the middle and 2 “Utility” stops. She could qualify if she made more than 1 stop at either middle or deep (which seems unlikely since her 4 stops came at mid)
In Conclusion
The interesting thing here is only seven (and if Ivy, Davis qualified – 9) of the 239 players in the league qualified for this new award. This also speaks to the complexity of the utility player award. Some players struggle to learn multiple positions. Some players struggle to change their mindset within a game. It’s a credit to all of these players to be able to accomplish this . It’s especially incredible for both Joe McCormick and Alex Quick. They are the only two players in the whole league to make stops at all three levels.
I want to thank the following people for help with my fact finding: Neal McDonald, Demetris Morrow, Katie Mathenia and Richie Flores. I’d also like to thank Josh Perry for this new stat format within Excel, making it much easier to crunch data!