For the last seven years or so a new wave of baseball statistical analysis has overtaken the general managers in most Major League Baseball clubhouses. When Michael Lewis wrote “Moneyball” he reordered what the league considered valuable baseball players. The statistics that Lewis introduced to the mainstream turned the value of offensive players on its head. And through its two editions, “The Fielding Bible” has begun to do the same to defensive baseball players.

John Dewan just released the second edition of “The Fielding Bible” to the die-hard baseball fans who love statistics from scoreboards and to the baseball execs who are staying up late trying to catch up. Dewan is not the first to introduce baseball statistical analysis. In fact this very fielding analysis method was explained and popularized before by Michael Lichtman and his Ultimate Zone Ratings but the world was not ready for it. After the Tampa Bay Devil Rays unexpectedly swept into the World Series with one of the league’s smallest payrolls, the league is on notice and ready.

The first widespread wave of baseball statistical analysis was kicked when Michael Lewis’s book “Moneyball” was published in 2003 and drew a line in the sand between traditional scouting as a measure of a players potential versus the new camp of Sabermetrics which relied on a few statistics to determine player worth. This new method, which worked so well for the book’s subjects the Oakland A’s and their general manager Billy Beane, completely eschewed traditional scouting’s methods of observance, assessment of physique and traditional measures such as batting average. Instead, Beane was able to rely mostly on two offensive statistics to draft exceptional players whom the rest of the league ignored.

Now the most valuable players in baseball are being reordered again through Dewan’s popularization of statistics devoted to measuring a player’s defensive abilities called fielding analysis. The basic premise here is to come up with a method of evaluating a player’s defense based on the plays that he had to make and not that were made for him in the form of easy balls right to his position. Dewan, like Lichtman before him, judges each player by ball hit near him at different vectors (angles from the bat that translate to zones of proximity to the player) and further differentiates between easy to medium to hard hit balls. Famously, in the first edition of his book in 2005, Dewan dissected New York Yankee Derek Jeter and showed that despite his two Gold Gloves and his great reputation he was only an average fielder at best and that true talent lay with some then unknown talents.

The Tampa Devil Rays, of course, do not disclose how they choose which are valuable baseball players in their ranking but it is widely accepted that within the past few seasons they have deliberately used fielding analysis to put together a low cost and successful team. Last season it gelled as the Devil Rays made the World Series and consistently were one of the top teams in baseball in fielding. Other teams have not been far behind and several moves during the season and in the recent off-season signal a that teams have reassessed the most valuable players in baseball.