UZR is far from perfect (as any defensive stats), but I do think its just visually harder to see how a +9 can go to -9 or whatever in a single season as opposed to offense. Since we usually visualize offense as a rate stat and defense ONLY in relation to league-average, we often don't even think about offense in related to average.
I mean just looking at Hardy's offense (in relation to average) how would you explain it?
2005: -6.5
2006: -3.9
2007: 3.5
2008: 13.7
2009: -13.2
Thats how he performed offensively, but how do you make sense of this data? How can a guy be a 13.7 run offensive player one season and -13.2 the next? Are the offensive formulas flawed? I think players are lot more volatile season to season then we realize.
Also the position adjustments account for the average difference in defensive runs per position (which is why total raw UZR may be misleading).
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