This afternoon, we looked at the offensive side of the Win Value equation. Linear weights are pretty widely accepted now, and since wOBA and wRAA match up so well with what people understand about offensive value (Albert Pujols had a good year, Jeff Francoeur did not), it’s not a big surprise that there isn’t much questioning that part of the formula. We get into a bit stickier water when we move to the Fielding side of things, however.

In the Win Values calculations here, Fielding is fairly straight forward – it’s simply a player’s total UZR at all positions for the given year. We talked a lot about UZR the last few weeks after it was added to the site, but if you’re looking for a more detailed explanation of the system, the introduction can be found in part one and part two. Essentially, it’s the best fielding metric publicly available, and while it’s not perfect (I generally give it an error range of five runs in either direction, meaning that a +10 could be anything between a +5 and +15), it’s a big step forward in defensive evaluations.

UZR, unlike the offensive component wRAA, is relative to the league average of the position for that player. We talked about this a few weeks ago in talking about how to read the UZR numbers. +15 in LF is simply not an equal performance to +15 in CF, as the players they are getting compared to are drastically different. This creates the need for position adjustments to account for the difference in quality between positions. However, when displaying the Win Values here, we’ve broken them out into separate components to be as transparent as possible, so the Fielding numbers do not include the position adjustment. We’ll get to those next. The fielding total is simply a sum of the players UZR from each position he played in the given year.

The current version of UZR on FanGraphs does not include a few minor things, such as the value of arm strength and turning double plays. Some of these will be added in soon as MGL updates the data, but the changes are going to be minor – despite the emphasis put on it by many, there just isn’t a huge difference betwee most major league players in terms of the runs saved through their throws from the outfield. However, if you feel like a particular player has an exceptional arm and should be rewarded for it, feel free to add in a couple of runs to make up for the fact that UZR doesn’t include that portion of his defensive value.

The other important point to make here is that you’ll notice that catchers have no values entered in the Fielding portion of their Win Values. Evaluating catcher defense is something we’re simply not very good at right now, and while there are strides being made (including a great article by Tom Tango in the 2009 Hardball Times Annual), there’s a lot of things that we haven’t figured out how to quantify yet. So, we’ve just left catchers alone, ranking them all as league average, and will let you all adjust their final win value however you’d like to reflect their defensive value relative to other catchers.

If you think Joe Mauer’s catching abilities and leadership are worth one win, just add one win to what we display as his win value here. Quantifying catching defense is something that we just haven’t figured out yet, and so we’re not pretending that we have. Consider it an opportunity to fill in the blanks.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the position adjustments and how the wRAA, UZR, and position adjustments add up.

So, you’ve probably noticed that the Big New Thing around here is Win Values for position players. David has added them to the player pages, the team pages, and even the leaderboards. Now, instead of sounding like a total nerd by telling your friends that Pujols is awesome because he had an .843 wOBA (not his real number, but not out of the question), you can simply tell them that he was a nine win player last year, worth about $40 million in 2008 salary. Nine wins. Forty Million. Everyone understands these numbers.

That’s the beauty of win values – we can express a player’s contribution to his team in ways that are both meaningful and easy to understand. As much as I love WPA/LI, it’s just never going to be something that the casual fan is going to understand without a good bit of explanation. Win values, though – I can tell my mom that Adrian Beltre is a four win player and she’ll understand in 30 seconds. And, without too much more explanation, I can explain that those four wins are worth about $18 million in salary, and so not only is Beltre worth his salary, but he’s actually something of a bargain.

Win Values are a big open door to acceptance of our particular brand of analysis among non-statheady fans, and even within our little insulated community, they’re still a big step forward over the commonly accepted performance metrics of the last few years. However, rather than just telling you that and having you trust us, we figured it’d be a good idea to explain how the win values are calculated and break down each part of the formula for you to see. So, this week, we’ll be looking at the calculations of each part and walking everyone through the steps to create a win value for a particular position player.

This afternoon, we’ll start with the “Batting” component. Sticking with the Adrian Beltre example, we see that he hit .266/.327/.457 last year. However, while that’s interesting, do you know how valuable that is just by looking at it? Me either. That’s why there’s wOBA, which takes all the results of a player’s plate appearances throughout the year and uses run value weights to sum up a player’s production at the plate in a number that is easily converted to runs above average. That number, wRAA, is found right next to wOBA on each player’s page. It is, essentially, a player’s value that he produces at the plate relative to a league average hitter. You can read more about wOBA in The Book, and we went into detail about it a while ago.

However, you may notice that a player’s Batting value doesn’t match his wRAA value on the player cards. That’s because the wRAA numbers on the site are not park adjusted, but to build a proper win value, you have to include the effects of a player’s home environment. Getting back to Beltre, he plays in a park that depresses run scoring, so the runs that he creates are more valuable than they would be if they came in a park where runs were more plentiful. So, while his raw offensive line may have only been worth 3.9 runs, when we adjust for Safeco Field, his Batting value goes up to 5.9 runs.

That number – the 5.9 in Beltre’s case – represents the amount of runs above or below average that each player created with their bat for a given year. This number is not position adjusted, as I detailed my issues with offensive position adjustments back in November. We’ll add the position adjustments in later, so it gets included in a player’s total value, but I think it’s incorrect to add it to the offensive total.

So, when you’re looking at the Win Values section, that’s Batting – offensive runs above or below average, not position adjusted, but adjusted for the run environment of his home park.

Man, having total win value numbers on the site is fun. The things you can find are endless. For instance, did you know that in 2002, Neifi Perez was worth 3.5 wins less than a replacement level player. Three and a half wins! Seriously, check it out.

The Royals made him their everyday shortstop and gave him 585 plate appearances. He rewarded them with a .236/.260/.303 line, which translates to a .243 wOBA, or 40 runs below an average hitter in that season. That’s really bad.

Of course, the Royals were paying Perez for his glove, not his bat. Unfortunately, he wasn’t too hot with that, either, posting a -12 UZR at shortstop and a -1.2 UZR at second base that season. He would have had to been Ozzie Smith with the glove to offset his horrendous offensive performance, but instead, he was more like Ozzie Canseco defensively, and that’s not a good combination.

Neifi Perez‘s performance in 2002 cost the Royals three and a half wins beyond just what fielding a league minimum, Triple-A shortstop instead. The going per-win rate in 2002 was $2.6 million, so Neifi Perez’s value was a staggering negative nine million. Oh, and the Royals paid him $4.1 million that year. Total loss – $13 million.

The Royals had a $47 million payroll in 2002. By employing Neifi Perez, they lowered their effective payroll to $34 million, because by having Perez on the roster, they needed to allocate $13 million just to get back to zero.

That’s a bad season right there.

Win Values are here! See the post below. Woo!

If I asked you to name one guy who doesn’t currently have a starting job in major league baseball (or will get one after he signs his new contract) but deserved one, who would you say?

I’d say there’s one guy who stands out from the pack, and that guy is Willy Aybar.

From 2005 to 2008, in his age 22 to 25 seasons, Aybar has accumulated 745 plate appearances, or a little more than one full season’s worth of playing time. His career wOBA is .339, thanks to a good contact/gap power skillset, making him an above average major league hitter. 2008 was his worst year from a raw statistics perspective, with his .321 wOBA and -0.18 WPA/LI. However, he was remarkably unlucky in terms of batting average on balls in play – a .267 BABIP that simply wasn’t supported by how he hit the ball. Chris Dutton’s BABIP predictor had Aybar’s 2008 expected batting average on balls in play to come in at .314. Had the distribution of his balls in play been normal, Aybar would have hit something like .289/.363/.460. He improved offensively in 2008, even if the results don’t show it.

Defensively, he’s played mostly third, but also some second and first, and UZR has him above average at all three positions. As a +2 third baseman over 1,000 innings, it’d be fair to suggest that he could be solid defensively there, and he potentially could handle second base. He’s done well at the keystone in limited time, and as we explored earlier, most third baseman who also play second don’t see a drop in performance when shifting from one spot to the other.

In terms of total value (now available on the player pages), Aybar has been worth +3.8 wins over a replacement level player in his major league career. That works out to +3 wins per 600 PA. And remember, that doesn’t account for his rotten BABIP luck last year.

Right now, Aybar’s probably a true talent +2.5 to +3.0 win player with upside – a 26-year-old switch hitting infielder who can play multiple positions and has untapped offensive abilities, but doesn’t have to improve at all to already be above average.

The Rays don’t have any room for him in their line-up, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they kept him around as injury insurance. However, Willy Aybar deserves a full time job, and hopefully he gets one.

“I apologize on behalf of Yankee fans everywhere.” — my friend Ryan.

If you haven’t heard, the Evil Empire apparently wasn’t done angering everyone this winter, so they topped off their off-season with a side course of Mark Teixeira. The rumored contract terms are 8 years and $170 million. I had him pegged for 7 years and $171 million back before the off-season started and we realized that this was going to be a pretty big buyer’s market. If this were a normal off-season, we’d call this pretty standard for a free agent contract, but it’s not a normal off-season, and now the Yankees have given out the three largest contracts this winter, and it’s not particularly close.

CC Sabathia: $23 million per year
Teixeira: $22.5 million per year
A.J. Burnett: $16.4 million per year

Ryan Dempster: $13 million per year

With the additions of Teixeira and Sabathia to go along with Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, the Yankees now have the four highest paid players in baseball. Including their luxury tax payments, the Yankees are going to blow by $250 million in spending on their 25 man roster for 2009. They’re spending in excess of $10 million on each and every single spot on the team.

If you’re a Yankee fan, congratulations, this is what it feels like to root for the casinos in Las Vegas. The rest of baseball are casual gamblers, and you’re the guys rigging the games in your favor. I hope it’s fun for you.

As for what this move means, Teixeira replaces Melky Cabrera in the line-up and pushes Nick Swisher into the outfield. That upgrade should represent something like 3-4 wins for the Yankees (it would be closer to five if Teixeira was replacing a true replacement level player), so they’re paying about $6 million per win for their franchise. Considering that adding Teixeira probably puts them from something like an 88 win team to a 92 win team, that’s a bargain for those four wins, because this signing pushes the Yankees from “contenders” to “best team in baseball” status. That’s a pretty big leap in terms of expected playoff odds, and the Yankees certainly understand how adding Teixeira should help them improve their chances of playing in October.

Teixeira gets to play on the east coast, gets a ton of money, and will have a chance to play on a winner for the rest of his career. The Yankees get an all-star caliber player who hasn’t yet hit 30. And the rest of baseball gets a reminder that the Yankees are playing with a ridiculous competitive advantage, and that they’re really just competing against the other 28 teams for 7 playoff spots.

Screw the Yankees. Go Rays and Red Sox.

Yesterday, we talked about center fielders and their relationship to infielders. Like with the 2B/3B conversation last week, the conclusion was mostly unsatisfying. We know how good outfielders are in relation to each other, just like we know how good infielders are in relation to each other, but trying to figure out the difference between infielders and outfielders is a much tougher task.

Some players, like Willie Harris, have skillsets that work a lot better in the outfield than in the infield, where speed is a much bigger factor. Other players, such as Scott Rolen, have the skills to be elite defensive infielders, but don’t profile as guys who would do nearly as well in the outfield. There simply isn’t a blanket statement we can make about the relative difficulties of playing infield and playing outfield that apply to everyone.

Right now, the best we can do is make generalizations that are true across large groups. In that way, perhaps the best way to think of position adjustments are similar to how we think of park factors. Safeco Field depresses offense, so when we look at park adjusted numbers, we give a bump to all hitters and downgrade all pitchers. However, Safeco doesn’t treat all hitters evenly, being brutal on RH bats and pretty friendly to LH bats. Despite this, we still have to conclude that the runs created by LH bats are more valuable, because of the depressed run environment, than they would be if the park was more hitter friendly to RH batters.

Likewise, we know that the pool of players that can play the infield is smaller than the pool that can play the outfield. Since the pool of potential outfielders is larger than the potential pool of infielders (especially 2B/3B/SS), we have to recognize the extra value that infielders provide by doing something that outfielders cannot do.

The position adjustments we have aren’t perfect – we know that. There are some players who could move between positions easier than the adjustments would suggest, and others who would be significantly worse than the adjustment level if moved to a tougher position. But, ignoring position adjustments because they aren’t perfect would be akin to ignoring park factors because they don’t treat all players the same, and I think we all agree that ignoring park factors would be a step back in the understanding of player valuation.

There’s a lot more research that can be done on the relationship between the 2B/3B/SS and CF/LF/RF groups of players. Now that FanGraphs has UZR data available, we’ll continue to explore these issues, and hopefully bring more light to the relative value of each defensive position.

This afternoon, we started to look at the relationship between center fielders and infielders. While CF, like 2B, is considered a premium, up-the-middle position, and there are some truly excellent defensive players who man center field, we don’t see a lot of in-season crossover between center fielders and infield positions. Besides a couple of utility players, there’s a pretty clear distinction between infielders and outfielders and how they’re used in MLB.

Last year, at an event we held for USSMariner.com readers in Everett, we talked to former Mariners’ scouting director Bob Fontaine about the distinction between infielders and outfielders. He pointed out that there’s a significant difference in how the two release the ball on their throws, and that it can be fairly easy for an infielder to adjust to the long throwing motion of an outfielder, but it is very difficult for an outfielder to change back to the quicker, shorter arm motion required of an infielder. He pointed to this as the main reason why we don’t see many players float between the two spots.

The fact that there aren’t very many players who move between the OF and the IF supports Fontaine’s claim. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t players who have made the move, and since the topic is of interest to me, I thought I’d take a look at these guys and how they’ve performed at various positions over the years.

Bill Hall is perhaps one of the best examples we can point to when talking about the various difficulties of each position. He came up through the minor leagues as a shortstop, and made his major league debut in 2002, playing both SS and 2B and getting emergency time at 3B. From 2002 to 2004, he was almost exclusively a middle infielder, but in 2005, J.J. Hardy and Rickie Weeks showed up, so Hall was moved to third base. He bounced back to SS in 2006 when Hardy got hurt, then moved to CF for 2007 when Ryan Braun arrived, and went back to 3rd base for 2008 when Braun moved to the outfield and the Brewers imported Mike Cameron.

Overall, Hall has amassed 800 innings at second base, 1,500 innings at third base, 2,100 innings at shortstop, and 1,000 innings in center field. His performance at the different positions are pretty interesting.

At SS, he’s got a career UZR/150 of +6.4. That’s very good. At second base, he’s -2.4, which is not at all what we’d expect (considering that SS are better than 2B, if he was a +6 shortstop, he should have been even better at second), and is probably just small sample size noise. But, the data still counts, so if we treat those 3,000 innings at SS/2B as a whole, we’d conclude that he’s something like a +5 second baseman/+0 shortstop.

If we think he’s a slightly above average defensive MI, then his +7.1 UZR/150 at third base is almost exactly what we’d expect. That helps confirm the suggestion made above. So, we have a pretty decent amount of data that suggests that Hall is a league average shortstop and an above average 2B/3B. So, how did he handle the adjustment to center field?

Well, according to UZR, he was simply average, +0.3 per 150 games. If this represented an accurate rating of Hall’s abilities in CF (and it may not – 1,000 innings is still a small sample for defensive data), then this would suggest that CF is more like SS than it is like 2B/3B.

Hall’s only one guy, though. How about some others?

Willie Harris came up to the majors in 2002 as a second baseman, and has played the majority of his career at the keystone position. However, as a speedy second baseman, he also was given a tryout in CF, and split his time between the two spots in 2004 and 2005. The Braves ended up using him in LF in 2007 and the Nationals followed suit in 2008, and he hasn’t played much infield the last three years. How has he performed between 2B, LF, and CF?

2B: 1,400 innings, -0.1 UZR/150. League average.
LF: 1,200 innings, +22.5 UZR/150. Among the best in the league.
CF: 900 innings, +10.3 UZR/150. Among the best in the league.

Harris is a guy who we’d look at as average defensively at second base and who never really sniffed shortstop. Unlike Hall, we wouldn’t have called him an above average middle infielder. However, he’s moved to the outfield and thrived, consistently posting excellent defensive numbers. Perhaps his skillset is just more suited to long strides and chasing down balls in the gap, but regardless, Harris makes it a tough case to argue that SS and CF are similar defensive positions, considering how successful he’s been in the outfield after a mediocre showing as a middle infielder.

There’s also Chris Burke, who we talked about on the blog last week. He came up as a second baseman and has performed exceptionally well there, ranking as a +10 defender in 854 innings during his major league career. He’s also been tried in all three outfield spots with widely varying results. He’s been good in the corner OF spots (+10 in 1,100 innings) and terrible in CF (-10 runs in just 498 innings). It’s hard to imagine that Burke could really be a terrific defensive 2B/LF/RF and an awful defensive CF, and the samples are small, so we can’t draw too many conclusions from his career.

Then there’s Alfonso Soriano, who as we all know was a pretty brutal defensive second baseman and got moved to the outfield in order to maximize his athletic ability. A career -8.8 UZR/150 guy at second base, he’s been 10 runs better than that in LF, racking up a +2.0 UZR/150 since the move to the outfield. This is identical to what the position adjustments suggested would happen, as there is a 10 run gap between 2B/LF on the spectrum. That he’s never been given more than a cursory glance in CF suggests that the Cubs believe that whatever problems plagued him at second base should keep him out of center field as well.

Hall’s career suggests that above average second baseman make average center fielders. Burke’s career suggests that above average second baseman make average center fielders. Soriano’s career suggests that below average second baseman make average corner outfielders.
Harris’ career suggests that his skills are just not suited for the infield, but that fast guys can be really good in the outfield, even if they aren’t very good in the infield. B.J. Upton and Adam Jones would agree with that.

Really, the only conclusion we can draw from all of this is that the infield and outfield are very different, and take very different sets of skills. Just because a player failed or succeeded at in the infield does mean that he will necessarily fail or succeed in the outfield, and vice versa.

The 2B/3B/SS pool of players has some players who could also play center field, but how many, and how well, we don’t have the answer for that yet.

Last week, we spent a few days talking about position adjustments, and specifically how 2B and 3B relate to each other in terms of defensive value. While there certainly wasn’t anything regarding a consensus reached (except for maybe that I’m nuts, which was a popular opinion among some), it was a worthwhile discussion, and one that I’m glad we had.

Today, though, I want to shift to talking about how center field relates to the 2B/3B spots and it’s placement in the middle of the position adjustment chart. Where do center fielders come from, and how good are they defensively?

Unlike second baseman and third baseman, a lot of major league center fielders have spent almost their entire baseball career playing the position. It’s the spot where they belong, because while they are excellent athletes with more than enough athleticism to handle shortstop, they come with one basic defect – they throw left-handed. No would deny that guys like Carl Crawford, Grady Sizemore, Denard Span, Juan Pierre, Darin Erstad, or a younger Johnny Damon had the speed, reactions, and athletic ability that would compare favorably to most shortstops, and they all are (or were, in Damon’s case) premium defensive talents. However, by virtue of throwing left-handed, they’re automatically excluded from the pool of potential 2B/3B/SS. Their positions are limited, thanks to handedness, to 1B/OF.

Of the 1B/OF spots, CF is clearly the natural landing spot for these plus athletes, since it has the largest quantity of opportunities with which to add defensive value. Not surprisingly, guys like Erstad, Pierre, and Sizemore have proven to be some of the best defensive outfielders in the game. If they were born as right-handers, there is a good chance all three would have ended up playing shortstop. These guys actually give us a pretty good proxy for what we should expect if we took a SS and moved him to CF, because for all intents and purposes, they are shortstops playing center field. By virtue of throwing left-handed, they were excluded from the SS pool, but they’re still premium defenders.

So, what about the right-handed throwing center fielders? Are they as good defensively as their LH brethren, or are they a collection of guys who were kicked out of the infield, such as B.J. Upton?

Interestingly, very few center fielders have backgrounds in the infield. Adam Jones was a shortstop in high school and the minor leagues, and we mentioned Upton, but as far as regular center fielders go, that’s about it. Carlos Beltran, Mike Cameron, Curtis Granderson, and Torii Hunter were all drafted and developed as outfielders, and there’s never been any thought of trying them in the infield, even though they aren’t excluded by their handedness and are definitely premium defensive talents.

Interestingly, MLB has pretty clearly laid out that infielders simply don’t play center field in their spare time. Last week, we ran through a pretty big list of guys who moved from second to third base with frequency, but there are only four players in MLB who played at least 50 innings at both SS and CF last season – Alexei Ramirez, Jerry Hairston, Alfredo Amezaga, and Willie Bloomquist. That’s one rookie who the White Sox were trying to figure out where he fit (since he didn’t come up through their minor league system) and three utility players for teams that weren’t contenders.

However, that could be simply a result of roster construction – teams carry four or five outfielders on their roster in a given season, so there usually isn’t a need for an infielder to move to the outfield within a given season. Do teams move players between SS/2B/3B to the outfield between seasons, when they’re putting their rosters together, and what do the results of those moves (or non moves) tell us about center field’s relation to the infield spots in the defensive spectrum?

We’ll look at those issues this afternoon.

Over the last few days, we’ve talked about the positional relationship between second base and third base. In trying to figure out which position actually has the superior defenders at it, we’ve looked at players who spent time at both spots, and their performance at both positions. Despite second base having a reputation as a premium defensive position, guys who play third base and then move to second don’t seem to perform any worse after moving, which suggests that perhaps the crop of second baseman isn’t actually all that much better defensively than the crop of third baseman.

However, there’s an issue of selection bias here. By looking at players who spent a decent amount of time at each position, we’re looking at players that major league managers have already decided have the ability to handle both positions at least well enough to play there on a limited basis. Our sample isn’t randomly selected, but is instead selected based on another person’s predetermined positive view of their defensive skills.

How do we get around the selection bias problem? After all, what we really are wondering is how players who haven’t been moved to 2B would perform if they were to be shifted, and for those players, we clearly don’t have any UZR data for them at second base. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have any information about them at all. We do have the Fans Scouting Report, which provides us some skill based info about what the fans of each team think about the respective abilities of these players, and allows us to compare skills across positions.

I took all second baseman and third baseman and sorted by speed, since that is the thing that most people agree is more important at second base than at third base. Not surprisingly, the fastest of the fast play second base, and the slowest of the slow play third base. This is what we’d expect. It’s the guys in the middle that are the ones that we’re mainly discussing, though, so I filtered only players who had a speed rating between 60 and 70 (remember, 50 is average). These are players whom, based on just their speed rating, should qualify as potential second baseman. This gave us 17 players. Of these 17, one is an SS playing out of position (Asdrubal Cabrera), seven are full time second baseman, six are full time third baseman, and three are utility players. That worked out pretty nicely.

In terms of their average ratings by skill, the 17 players were as follows:

Instincts: 73
First Step: 71
Speed: 64
Hands: 69
Release: 70
Strength: 60
Accuracy: 65

Now, here are the averages for the six third baseman who should qualify as potential second baseman just based on their speed score. In parentheses, I’ve put the number representing the 3B ratings above or below the average of the eight true middle infielders included (I’m throwing out the utility players).

Instincts: 83 (+7)
First Step: 74 (+0)
Speed: 64 (-1)
Hands: 80 (+7)
Release: 78 (+2)
Strength: 74 (+16)
Accuracy: 67 (-6)

According to the Fans Scouting Report, the fast third baseman have better instincts, the same first step and speed, better hands, the same release, much stronger arms, but the latter comes at a cost of some accuracy.

Overall, though, there’s nothing in the skills analysis of the Fans eyes to suggest that the six “fast” third baseman – Alex Rodriguez, David Wright, Adrian Beltre, Ryan Zimmerman, Evan Longoria, Eric Chavez – are inferior defensive players to the eight middle infielders on the list – Kaz Matsui, Asdrubal Cabrera, Orlando Hudson, Howie Kendrick, Aaron Hill, Chase Utley, Mark Ellis, and Akinori Iwamura.

However, there is one significant difference between the two groups. Yep, you guessed it.

Average 3B height: 6’1
Average 2B height: 5’11

Of players who were rated by their teams fans as having enough speed for second base, the tall guys end up at third and the short guys end up at second. There are no other disqualifying aspects of their ratings that would cause these third baseman to be unable to play second base. They’re just apparently too tall.

Continuing on with the second base/third base discussion, I figured it would be helpful to look at all the players who were given some kind of significant amount of playing time at both positions in 2008. Which guys did teams decide were good enough to be more than emergency fill-ins at both 2nd and 3rd, and what traits did they share that made them eligible to move between both spots?

Here’s the list of guys who got at least 50 innings at both 2B and 3B in 2008:

Willy Aybar
Ryan Raburn
Ronnie Belliard
Ramon Vazquez
Pablo Ozuna
Omar Infante
Nick Punto
Matt Tolbert
Martin Prado
Mark Loretta
Mark DeRosa
Marco Scutaro
Juan Uribe
Jose Castillo
Jeff Baker
Jamey Carroll
Ian Stewart
German Duran
Felipe Lopez
Donnie Murphy
Craig Counsell
Clifton Pennington
Chris Gomez
Chone Figgins
Brendan Harris
Blake Dewitt
Augie Ojeda
Aaron Miles

The list contains the usual assortment of utility players that aren’t all that interesting in terms of the discussion we’ve been having. Guys like Ozuna, Punto, Tolbert, and Vazquez are given roster spots that essentially require them to play multiple positions, so the fact that they did so isn’t a big surprise. The guys on the list that I find interesting, however, are Aybar, Baker, Stewart, Belliard, DeRosa, Carroll, and DeWitt. Let’s take a look at this group.

Aybar – 5’11/200 lbs, short and stubby body type. Played both 2B/3B in the minors, but spend 2/3 of his games at 3B. Played primarily third base in the majors, but has racked up 192 innings at second base over the last couple of years. His UZR at second base is much better than at third base (small sample size caveats apply).

Baker – 6’2/210 lbs, decently athletic. Was a 3B/1B/LF/RF in the minors, and up until this year, had just played those positions in the majors. Not particularly well, either, getting a negative UZR score at all four corner spots in his career. Was given 370 innings at second base this year, and while his defensive numbers suck there too, they’re better than we’d expect considering how little UZR thought of him at 1st/3rd.

Stewart – 6’3/205 lbs, good athete. Exclusively a third baseman as a professional until this year, when the Rockies gave him 93 innings at second base. His UZR was much better at second than at third, but again, the sample is tiny.

Belliard – 5’10/214 lbs, short and fat. Spent almost his entire career at second base, but split time between 2B/3B this year. Was just not good at third and downright awful at second. The epitome of the height bias – if he was 6’3 or 6’4 with the same mass and defensive skills, he’d never play second base, and people would scoff at you for thinking he could.

DeRosa – 6’1/205 lbs, decent athlete. Spent his early career as a utility guy, racked up lots of playing time all over the field. Basically the same defensive ratings at both second and third, and interestingly, not that different at SS either.

Carroll – 5’9/170 lbs, short and skinny. Had the worst arm ranking of any second baseman in the Fans Scouting Report, and has still racked up nearly 1,000 major league innings at third base. Really, if you think teams are sorting 2B/3B based on arm strength, explain Jamey Carroll playing third base.

DeWitt – 5’11/175, pretty good athlete. Like Aybar, a 3B/2B coming up through the system, with a majority of his time spent at third base. Spent most of his time at third this year, but got 193 innings at second base late in the year. UZR liked him at third, deosn’t like him at second, but again, that’s all very small sample stuff, since he was a rookie.

Overall, the list of guys who were allowed to play second base and third base leans towards the shorter end of the spectrum. The Rockies bucked the trend by giving Ian Stewart and Jeff Baker time at second base, and if UZR is to be believed, it worked. Overall, though, very few tall third baseman were allowed to play second base, and among those who spent time at both positions, there wasn’t a huge difference in their ratings at either 3B or 2B. For those who have been selected as worthy of playing both, they seem to be about the same at either one. While the tall guys can’t play 2B bias continues to show up, it seems that teams are okay with short guys (even ones with noodle arms, like Carroll) playing third base in limited roles.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the selection bias aspect of this group, and ask what we can infer about those who weren’t allowed to spend any time at second base.