Over the past weekend, Statcast released the leaderboards for their fancy-smancy new defensive statistic called Catch Probability. From my understanding based on MLB's official definition, the statistic takes a look at the distance needed by the fielder and opportunity time needed to catch the ball to create a percentage likelihood that any batted ball will be caught. To make the numbers even easier to understand, they convert the percentages of a catch into a star rating on a 1-5 scale. Neat! Here's the percentages and their star equivalent:

0 to 25 percent Catch Probability -- 5 Star play

26 to 50 percent Catch Probability -- 4 Star play

51 to 75 percent Catch Probability -- 3 Star play

76 to 90 percent Catch Probability -- 2 Star play

91 to 95 percent Catch Probability -- 1 Star play

So if a ball hit into play is usually caught 91-95 percent of the time, it's considered a 1 star play. If the ball has less than a 25 percent chance of being caught, it's considered a five star play. For now, the only numbers available are for outfielders because infielders move all over the place and it's more difficult to measure them defensively or something.

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to look at the Twins outfielders and how they rate in this new defensive metric! For a point of reference, here's the actual conversion rate of every defensive play in the outfield since 2015 according to this linky at Fangraphs:

• 5 Star Plays: 8% caught
• 4 Star Plays: 42% caught
• 3 Star Plays: 68% caught
• 2 Star Plays: 84% caught
• 1 Star Plays: 93% caught

So since the beginning of the 2015 season, only 8% of plays considered 5 stars were actually converted into outs, 42% of 4 star plays were converted into outs, etc. Now onto the exciting stuff. I'm only looking at 2016 stats though. All numbers are from the leaderboard linked up at the top of this article.

Byron Buxton

Five Stars: 6 of 25. (24%)

Four Stars: 5 of 13. (38.5%)

Three Stars: 19 of 21. (90.5%)

Two Stars: 6 of 6. (100%)

One Star: 38 of 40. (95%)

Whoa. Looks like Buxton is a really good defender or something. Stunning. His 6 five star catches are good enough for eighth most in the league! and the 24% is way above the league average of 8%. Four star catch percentage is right around league average and if its three star or easier it's almost a sure thing Buxton is going to catch it. That's awesome.

Max Kepler

Five Stars: 6 of 32. (18.8%)

Four Stars: 8 of 14. (57.1%)

Three Stars: 13 of 17. (76.5%)

Two Stars: 16 of 21. (76.2%)

One Star: 24 of 28. (85.7%)

Hey look! Kepler had six five star catches too! That's neato burrito! He also had more four star catches and a better percentage of four star catches than Buxton. His two and one star percentages are a bit below average, but he still converts the majority of them.

Eddie Rosario

Five Stars: 2 of 27. (7.4%)

Four Stars: 4 of 9.(44%)

Three Stars: 8 of 11. (72.7%)

Two Stars: 19 of 21. (90.5%)

One Star: 23 of 24. (95.8%)

After seeing Buxton and Kepler's five star catch supremacy Rosario's looks less than stellar, but he's actually converted a tiny bit less than league average, which isn't bad at all. In fact, all of other conversion rates are a little bit above league average.

Danny Santana

Five Stars: 2 of 14. (14.3%)

Four Stars: 2 of 6. (33.3%)

Three Stars: 8 of 9. (89%)

Two Stars: 6 of 11. (54.5%)

One Star: 12 of 14. (85.7%)

Santana appears to be a bit of a mixed bag in the outfield. He snagged a couple five star catches and is waaaay above average on three star catches, but was below average on four star and one star opportunities and waaaay below average on two star opportunities. Which is interesting. I don't have an explanation for it. I'm not a baseball expert I just play one on the internet.

Miguel Sano

Five Stars: 2 of 3. (66.7%)

Four Stars: 2 of 8. (23%)

Three Stars: 1 of 6. (16.7%)

Two Stars: 6 of 9. (66.7%)

One Star: 9 of 10. (90%)

Look, we all know that Sano's two months or so in the outfield were a disaster, but look at that five star catch percentage! If you ignore literally every other percentage being below league average, you could make an argument that Sano is a great fielder! Something Dave Cameron did for Fangraphs right here.

Robbie Grossman

Five Stars: 0 of 19. (0%)

Four Stars: 4 of 13. (30.8%)

Three Stars: 5 of 11. (45.5%)

Two Stars: 5 of 8. (62.5%)

One Star: 18 of 24. (75%)

L.O.L. Grossman was below average on converting every type of batted ball into an out. Pretty much every one of those numbers is not fun to look at. this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who watched Grossman in the field though.

Logan Schafer and Darin Mastroianni each had fewer than 17 balls hit at them, so I'm not going to include them. Oswaldo Arcia played for four teams and his current team isn't the Twins so I'm not going to include his numbers either.

Buxton, Kepler, and Rosario Combined

Five Stars: 14 of 84. (16.7%)

Four stars: 17 of 36. (47.2%)

Three Stars: 40 of 49. (81.6%)

Two stars: 41 of 48. (85.4%)

One Star: 85 of 92. (92.4%)

I'm assuming this is going to be the starting outfield for hopefully most of, if not all of the 2017 season. Each of those numbers is above league average except for one star catches which is only 0.6% below average. Five star catches are actually at double the percentage converted of the league average. It's interesting that there were so many five star opportunities. My theory that I made up just now is that maybe our pitching allowed a LOT of hard hit balls last season. Regardless, it appears based on this new metric that the Twins outfield defense is definitely a strength and something that should be a lot of fun to watch going forward.