OK, let’s run through the data now for the first basemen in this study.  The first thing we do is to find the team’s Runs Saved by turning Double Plays, and credit 10% of that to the team’s first basemen.   These are all the first basemen in our test group who played 500 innings at first:

            The 1996 Tigers had two first basemen who played 500 innings each, while the 1972 Rangers had none. 

            The only Gold Glove first baseman in this study was Anthony Rizzo, 2016, although Eddie Murray and John (I Don’t Mean to be) Olerud also won Gold Gloves, but not in the year they are included in the study.   On the other side, we happened to pick up the most notorious bad-fielding first baseman of the last sixty years, Dick Stuart, and two other notoriously bad first basemen, Cecil Fielder and Carlos Lee.  Just focusing on Rizzo and Stuart, Stuart as you can see is drawing from a field of 8.5 Runs, and Rizzo from a field of only 7.4, so Stuart starts out with a small advantage.  

            We put this number aside, and move on.   The next four things we look at are (1) the team’s Runs Saved by Range, (2) the First Basemen on that’s team’s Enhanced Range Number,  (3) the Team Range Outs, which is the sum of the Range Numbers for all fielding positions except catcher, and (4) the first basemen’s share of the team’s Runs Saved by Range.    The First Basemen’s Share of the Runs Saved by Range is the first basemen’s Enhanced Range number, divided by the Team Range Outs; I’ve said that several times, but it’s a confusing God Damned system, and I’m trying to be sure everybody can keep up if they want to. 

Here, you can see, Rizzo’s team, the 2016 Cubs, has more than twice as many runs to be attributed to the first basemen based on their range as Stuart’s team does.  

Next we look at the raw fielding numbers for all of the first basemen in the study, and sum up each player’s raw fielding numbers into one number, an individual claim number, and contrast that with the total for all of the team’s first basemen:

"The Formula" referred to here is PO + 2* Ast + DP – 7*Err, Formula 56.   For Dick Stuart, 1960, this totals up to 1,066, and his team’s first basemen total up to 1,653.   For Anthony Rizzo, this totals up to 1,574, and his team totals up to 1,692. 

Then we take the right-hand columns from all three of these charts, the 10% of Double Plays column from the first chart, the "Share" from the second chart, and the "Formula" and "Team Total" from the third chart.  The Individual First Baseman’s Runs Saved on the combination of these two elements is the first two numbers added together, multiplied by the third number, and divided by the fourth:

As you can see, at this point Anthony Rizzo is credited with saving 27 Runs, four more than any other first baseman in the study.   Stuart is at 12.

There is one more value to be added to that total, which is First Base Runs Saved by Error.    Here’s the data related to that:

What that means is, Dick Stuart in 1960 had 920 putouts, 77 assists, and 14 errors, which is a .986 fielding percentage.   The league average was .990.  Since the league fielding percentage at the position was .990, the baseline error percentage was .030.  A player fielding .970 would have been making errors three times as often as the average fielder.   Stuart had 1,011 defensive plays.  Had he made errors or .030 of them, he would have made 30.33 errors.  In fact, he made only 14 errors, which means that he was 16.33 errors away from being a complete error machine.  

The team total for all fielders was 307.7.  The 1960 Pirates are credited with saving 89.06 runs by error avoidance.   Stuart’s share of that is 16.33, divided by 307.7, times 89.06, or 4.73.  So Stuart is credited with 4.73 Runs Saved by Error Avoidance, and Anthony Rizzo is credited with 7.62 Runs Saved by Error Avoidance. 

We add this to the numbers we had earlier—27.48 runs for Rizzo, 12.02 for Stuart.   That makes this chart of the Runs Saved for all first basemen in this group with 500 or more defensive innings:

Rizzo is credited with saving four more runs than any other first baseman in the group.   Per inning, he actually ranks second in the group, behind Norm Cash, but per inning, Dick Stuart drops to 13^th among the 15 players.  This is actually per 1,000 innings:

Ryan Howard, 3^rd on the list of Runs Saved, drops to 10^th on the list in Runs Saved per inning.  He wasn’t really a good defensive first baseman, either. 

For what it is worth, Rizzo’s performance is actually more impressive than it looks, because it’s not an entirely level playing field.  Strikeouts prevent Runs Scored.  As strikeouts increase, Runs Saved by fielders decrease, because they are drawing from a smaller pool of chances.   Since the 2016 Cubs had far more strikeouts than any other team in the study, Rizzo is fishing Runs Saved from a significantly smaller pool than the other players listed. 

I should also note:  Tony Clark is being maltreated in this process because he had to share a position with Cecil Fielder.  Fielder was a terrible Fiedler, and the nature of first base statistics is that for most of them we have to add all of the numbers at the position together, treat all of the first basemen at the position the same.   Clark was actually better than he shows in these numbers.

These are the Runs Saved for the First Basemen of 1961; all players with 500 or more innings at first:

The Gold Glove Winners, Vic Power in the American League and Bill White in the National, were both third in their leagues in Runs Saved.   And these are the +/- Leaderboards for the two leagues:

An interesting note about the National League is that the league average worked out to EXACTLY .022222222, meaning that it worked out to exactly two runs every 90 innings.  First of all, it is amazing that, with dozens of different inputs contributing to the ratio, it would work out to be the exact ratio of two simple numbers (2/90.)  That never happens. But also, that’s PERFECT for baseball, because that’s exactly 2 runs for every 10 games, or one run saved every five games.   The AL ratio is slightly higher at first base, significantly lower at catcher.  This is the AL Leaderboard:

            So Vic Power, the most famous good defensive first baseman of that era, shows here as the second-best first baseman in the majors on a +/- basis, and Dick Stuart shows as the worst.   Otherwise, I’ll leave you to evaluate this any way that you choose to.  It ain’t perfect.

            The per-inning Runs Saved of Catchers in this study works out to be almost exactly twice the per-inning Runs Saved of the first basemen.   I didn’t plan it that way or intend it; it just worked out that way.  Catchers are credited with saving just a little bit more than 2 runs for every 5 games.