Personally, I lean pretty heavy on looking at 1-BABIP when judging a team's defense. That's basically the rate the team converts balls in play into outs. It does not require looking at film or the judgment of official scorers and is consistent measurement across ball parks. By that measure, the
Braves are 14th in MLB, the Nats are 2d. In the NL, we are 1st and they are 6th.
Now there are some quirks to this, depending on the park (the Rockies will always have a high BABIP and low 1-BABIP because Coors has huge tracks of land in the outfield), but given that Turner Field and Nats Park have
very similar hit park factors (12th and 13th -slightly above average environment for hits other than homers), it is tough to say the overall fielding of the Braves is anything but middling on the year, while the overall fielding of the Nats has not been near the best in baseball.
