I've never been much of a stat guy. I find stats to be highly overrated and don't tell the whole story. This goes for any sport. But I was just on baseball-reference.com looking up Alcides Escobar and Starlin Castro's numbers. I'm both a Royals and a Cubs fan, by the way. Last year, I argued with a fellow Cubs fan that Escobar had more upside than Castro because Escobar is much better defensively and a better baserunner. But I'm looking at their dWAR and Castro is sitting at 1.4, while Alcides is at -0.4.

I watch both teams very closely. I will concede that I have been less impressed with Escobar defensively this year than last year. He hasn't made as many spectacular plays. And I will also say that Castro has improved defensively. He was very mediocre last year. But he's still average at best, defensively. Although I wouldn't grade Escobar as highly as I did last year, I'd still say he's definitely well above average. There is absolutely no way in hell any objective eye could watch both Castro and Escobar this year and come to the conclusion - without looking at any stats - that Starlin Castro has been superior defensively. No way..

So somebody explain to me how things such as dWAR, UZR, etc are calculated. I know I've seen some of you mention that these stats aren't accurately reflected over small sample sizes. I'm very clueless when it comes to defensive stats and when I saw the dWAR numbers for Castro and Escobar, I just shook my head.