09 Fielding Woes

by sdangler on Apr 27, 2009 11:51 AM EDT Comment 17 comments

To begin: SAMPLE SIZE, caveat, etc., etc., etc...

Is it time to worry about the Cardinals fielding? Sports Illustrated, in their '09 preview edition, specifically mentioned the Redbirds lack of fielding prowess. The fact that they lead the league in errors (on the front page of STL's MLB page) doesn't bother me as much as a glance at FanGraphs here. Check out the low UZR total for Greene & Schumaker. OUCH.

Even watching some games, you notice. Greene is terribly inconsistent, he doesn't know whether to charge a ball or lay back, and he bobbles many ground balls. Skip is still adjusting, but not adjusting well. Ankiel still routinely misplays line drives, despite his arm. Albert is even dropping balls (4 errors? he had 6 all of last year).

The hot hitting has somewhat overshadowed the poor fielding. Is anyone else concerned, or am I just nitpicking a 13-6 team?

0 recs | Comment 17 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

I am somewhat concerned

But I think we all knew, at the start of the year, that this team would be somewhat worse in the field than it was in 08. Removing Kennedy (possibly flukily awesome defensive year aside) and Izturis and replacing them with Schu/Ryan and Greene was likely going to knock at least 20-odd runs off our “prevention” tally. The rub, of course, being that the 09 MIF is probably going to be at LEAST that amount better on the offensive side of the slate, and that we have made notable defensive upgrades at 3B (Barden/Thurston almost certainly 5-10 runs better than Glaus, who is (despite a solid start to 08) a pretty average defensive 3B) and in the OF (Rasmus, who one hopes will eventually be our starting CF, is a great defender and better at any position than the current incumbents).

I should also point out that UZR (as you alluded to in your post) is absolutely worthless as a metric over such small sample sizes, even more so than any measure of hitting or pitching capability. Even the middle infielders have only had a couple of dozen plays to make thus far.

I think a lot of our defensive woes so far are due to errors, some of them rather woeful (Barden’s over-throw on a routine groundout on Saturday, Schu’s terrible LF drop on friday etc), rather than being due to a general across-the-board loss of range (which would be more worrying). What I’m getting at is that the fielding issues, whilst worrying, are more “one-off” events rather than the suggestion that the team’s global fielding ability is a lot worse than we’d thought. We knew we’d not be the same team in the field this year. I think there’s potential for positivity too – on Friday, Schumaker nearly cost us the game with that awful LF botch, but the rest of the team had made 3 or 4 very fine defensive plays up to that point that killed Cubs rallies.

Because chicks dig the intentional base on balls.

by Felonius_Monk on Apr 27, 2009 12:03 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Actually, thinking about it

As Izturis (08 model) was about +10 SS and Greene is average at best, and Kennedy had some sort of crazy +20 year at 2B, whilst Schu is probably (absolutely best-case scenario) maybe a -10 2B, our 2009 middle infield is likely to be 40 (!!!) runs worse than last years’ crew on defense.

Thankfully, Iz2 and Kennedy were absolutely abysmal with the bat (-13 and -6 runs respectively), Schu and Greene should make up some of the ground on that front (Skip’s 15 runs better than Kennedy’s 08 performance, although Ryan will probably have a significant amount of time at 2B as well, and Greene’s probably 15 runs better than Iz2, minimum, given that Iz2 had an unusually good year with the bat, and Greene’s consistently been a +ve contributor with the bat until his stinky 08).

Because chicks dig the intentional base on balls.

by Felonius_Monk on Apr 27, 2009 1:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I'm concerned

mainly because a disproportionate amount of these errors are coming on routine plays. Barden’s throw, Schu’s drop, Greene’s bobbles and overthrows, the fact that Albert has seemingly lost the ability to pick a ball out of the dirt or get his body in front of it to prevent extra bases from being acquired. Sure, those guys have also made some great plays, but solid defenders make all the plays they should and some of the plays they shouldn’t, not just a some of both types.

I’ll be interested to see how the UZR looks about halfway through the season, when we’ll have a large enough sample size to really get an idea of how we’re doing.

"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller

by fourstick on Apr 27, 2009 2:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Playing devils' advocate

couldn’t you argue that there’s less to worry about BECAUSE a lot of the plays have been routine howlers? It’s a lot easier to correct the occasional lapses in concentration that lead to a dropped FB or an airmailed routine groundout throw, than it is to correct (say) a total lack of range, or a diminishing level of athleticism (see Jeter, Derek). I don’t expect Barden or Schu will make errors like that again (they’re both definitely + defenders at 3B and LF respectively) and we know how good Pujols has been historically, despite some bad plays on his part, surely it’s more likely he’ll regress to his usual excellence than that he’ll stay bad in the field all year.

Because chicks dig the intentional base on balls.

by Felonius_Monk on Apr 28, 2009 6:02 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It's precisely because they're correctable

that leads me to be concerned. A team should be at it’s sharpest defensively coming out of spring training because they’ve been drilling defense every day for 6 weeks. There’s no time to practice heavily once the seasons starts to correct mental and physiological mistakes that lead to errors.

Range and diminishing athleticism you can’t do anything about — but a lack of focus this early in the season should be sign of concern, because you haven’t played 65 games with 6 total days off. You could easily argue the other direction, though, so your point is taken.

I’m not so concerned about the errors that have been charged to Albert himself, but more on the errors charged to other players because he was unable to dig the ball out of the dirt. John Olerud made Rey Ordonez look much better than he was by picking half his throws out of the dirt at first base — same goes for Tino Martinez with Jeter, and Derrek Lee with just about anybody.

"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller

by fourstick on Apr 28, 2009 11:53 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I'm not very concerned

UZR doesn’t become that reliable to assess fielding prowess until about 1000 innings. From what I have seen, Schu actually looks pretty good at second (by “good”, I mean better than Felipe Lopez). Greene has yet to dazzle me, but he certainly hasn’t looked like a below average defender. Pujols, despite the errors, has made a lot of really good plays and it’s not like we should be in doubt of his fielding abilities at all.

St. Louis Cardinals... defying win expectancy since 2008

by vivaelpujols on Apr 27, 2009 3:24 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

i will agree with an asterisk.

I don’t mind the isolated errors; bad throws happen, they just shouldn’t happen too much.

the one question I have is how good greene is — the dish on him on the boards at the time of his arrival was that he had a plus glove, maybe a step down from izturis, but a plus glove, and I remember the term “acrobatic” being used at least once. but looking back at his history, in only one of his last four seasons has he even had a positive UZR. in fact, he’s only twice had a positive UZR in his career.

am i missing something on his defense?

because he and skip combined could be pretty lethal if they both log negative UZR’s all summer.

the truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark/ it scares you witless, but in time you see things clear and stark -- macmanus

by tom s. on Apr 27, 2009 3:38 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

He's made a lot of great plays

He gets on Web Gems a lot, especially over the last couple of years, so I think people have a higher perception of him defensively than what the stats indicate. If you go look at the Padres SB Nation board there have been accounts of him missing an easy play and then making up for it by making a spectacular one, which is what I was alluding to in my comment above about great players making all the plays they should and some of the plays they shouldn’t.

Cal Ripken would be a good example of that — he rarely booted a ball or airmailed one over the head of the first baseman and would make a few plays that a normal SS wouldn’t get to, but not as many as someone like Alfredo Griffin, who would get to a lot more balls, but would also err on a standard play fairly often.

"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller

by fourstick on Apr 27, 2009 6:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

His UZR's haven't been great

But his Total Zone ratings have been good before last year. CHONE projected him to be +2 at SS this year.

St. Louis Cardinals... defying win expectancy since 2008

by vivaelpujols on Apr 27, 2009 7:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think he's maybe average at best as a SS

But I could be wrong. Like fourstick says, seems to make a few real gems but boot the occasional quite straightforward play. Looks like he has a real hose too, which might help him out of trouble on occasions.

I’m not sure how much I trust UZR as a measure of defensive aptitude, I still think there’s a lot wrong with defensive metrics (given how much some of them seem to vary on even fairly large sample sizes). I’m not worried about Greene yet.

Because chicks dig the intentional base on balls.

by Felonius_Monk on Apr 28, 2009 6:06 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

He does have a cannon...

but seems to misjudge hops a lot of times on balls hit straight at him. It seems like when he has to think about making a play he gets too much in his head, but when he simply has to react to a hard hit ball to his right, his ample athleticism takes over reflexively.

I don’t put a ton of stock in the defensive metrics either, even when they tell me similar things to what I see (like the fact that Jeter has been an average to below average defensive SS for most of his career). It just seems like there’s too much sway from year to year with some players.

"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller

by fourstick on Apr 28, 2009 11:57 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

the team is so new

they have to have time to develop defensive chemistry, communication, etc. I expect them to do better, but the defense has been very ugly so far, and if they don’t improve, things could get out of hand. but how about that offense!

4B - beer baseball bands blog
the thrill is still ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hot

by Cards Fan in Chitown on Apr 27, 2009 7:13 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

lack of Oquendo effect

WBC beats us again.

It’ll level out.

"But listen, and understand: more Molinas are out there. They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear." - THT

by Yadi2Second on Apr 27, 2009 11:43 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

In the same way that I do not expect our team to average over 6 runs per game.

I do not expect the defense to be this inconsistent in the future.

Space.

It's a problem we face.

So we never go anywhere.

We just stay in one place.

by hazel on Apr 28, 2009 2:06 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Fielding could be a concern

but right now, our offense is consistent enough that it should not be an issue. At some point, the team will need to start fielding better – you can’t have shields in place of gloves all season long.

When we traded for Khalil, we knew that he would be a defensive downgrade from Izturis, but I’d take Khalil’s bat over Izturis’.

Thursty doesn’t have much in the way of Major League experience, so give him a break.

Welcome to Baseball Heaven.

by zoomzoomj88 on Apr 28, 2009 1:26 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Our offense may be covering up our defensive liabilities

right now. But there’s little chance it will be able to maintain this pace all season long. However, it’s also possible that as our offense starts to cool down our defense could clean up. I’m not too worried about it 3 weeks into the season. Now if we’re in the same situation after another month…..

Patiently awaiting the day Colby Rasmus does this: .275/.381/.551/.932, 29HR, in St. Louis...and I'm wanting an Allen Craig call-up!

by RunninRedbird on Apr 28, 2009 3:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs