Jose Iglesias is a shortstop capable of doing some pretty terrific things on a baseball field. I say that now because there’s going to be plenty of .gifs in this post that paint Iglesias in a not-so-positive light, and it can be a weird feeling to make a player look bad based solely upon which clips you’ve hand-chosen to show, so here, look at all the incredible things Jose Iglesias is capable of doing on defense. There. Those are the kinds of plays that earn you a reputation.

And Iglesias has certainly earned a reputation. He had earned the reputation before he ever stepped on a big league field. He was named the best defensive infielder in the Red Sox system by Baseball America from 2009 to 2012. In 2010, he was named the best defensive shortstop in the entire Eastern League, and received those same honors in the International League each of the next two seasons. From that same publication’s scouting report of him in 2010, as the No. 1 prospect in Boston’s farm system a year before his MLB debut:

Iglesias is an exceptional defender who could challenge for a Gold Glove in the big leagues right now. He plays low to the ground, using his quick feet, lightning-fast hands and strong arm to make all the plays. His instincts and body control also stand out, and he made just seven errors in 57 games at short last season. He’s fearless in the field, almost to the point of overconfidence, but he makes more web gems than mistakes.

The reputation was what it was, and it’s since carried over to the big-league level. And yet, in about two full season’s worth of major-league playing time at shortstop (1,991 innings), Iglesias has but three Defensive Runs Saved to his name. Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs Above Average actually has him below average, crediting him with -0.8 runs saved over the course of his still-short career. Ultimate Zone Rating is the only defensive metric with anything more than an average assessment of Iglesias’ defense, and even that pegs him as a +13 defender over two seasons, which is certainly good, but still comes up short of the perennial Gold Glove types around whom Iglesias’ name is mentioned.

Understandably, folks have been skeptical of these assessments. It’s something our very own Neil Weinberg addressed last fall. As a community, our understanding of how to properly evaluate defense has always lagged behind other facets of the game, but the good news is, it’s getting better every day! It’s still far from perfect, but between the arrival of Statcast and advancements made by Baseball Info Solutions and Inside Edge, we’ve got more pieces to the puzzle than ever before. And they’re already helping explain some of our outliers, guys whose performance by the metrics have never aligned with the scouting reports or eye tests. Like Dexter Fowler, who we discovered was playing more shallow than any center fielder in baseball, and that it was killing his defensive metrics. The Cubs realized this, and have repositioned him. Let’s see if we can’t use some of these same advancements to better figure out the Jose Iglesias mystery.

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You’d rather have the Rangers’ problem than the Braves’ problem. See, the Braves problem is that they just don’t have enough competent players to field a competitive major-league baseball team. The Rangers problem seems to be that they’re soon to have too many competent players. An embarrassment of riches isn’t necessarily a problem, per se, but it’s something of an inefficiency, and it’s the kind of thing that can result in at least one deserving employee feeling less than pleased by his role in the workplace.

Nomar Mazara wasn’t supposed to be in the big leagues this soon, but Shin-Soo Choo’s strained right calf accelerated Mazara’s timeline, and now that the 21-year-old rookie is here, it doesn’t seem like he’s going away any time soon. In Mazara’s first game, he homered. Through his first 17, the preseason consensus top-25 prospect has run a 127 wRC+, showed a knack for controlling the strike zone, impressed scouts with his ability to adjust, and even made an impact with the glove. The Rangers are in the business of competing for a World Series championship this year, and when a team is in the business of competing for a World Series championship, it does so by fielding a 25-man roster comprised of its best 25 players. Nomar Mazara is one of those players.

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Lorenzo Cain has had a rough go of it so far. That much we can say with absolute certainty. Cain’s coming off a seven-win season in which he finished second runner-up — behind Josh Donaldson and Mike Trout — for the American League MVP, and there was also that whole world championship thing. The Royals weren’t — and aren’t — a team built around stars, but if there was a star of last year’s champs, Cain was the guy. It was also something like his breakout season, and while Cain isn’t young at 30 years of age, he’s certainly not old enough that we entered the offseason wondering whether he could sustain most or all of that breakout. Cain was the de facto star, and there was little reason to believe he wouldn’t continue being the de facto star.

Through 20 games of Kansas City’s victory lap, he’s been anything but. The only number you really need to know for now is 64, which is Cain’s wRC+ in 83 plate appearances. It’s a bad number. We know that. The bigger questions are ones like, “Why is the bad bad?” and, “Is there any good in the bad?” and, “Am I being the best version of myself?” We probably won’t get to all of that, but we’re going to try.

Let’s start with a good thing!

A good thing: Lorenzo Cain is walking a bunch! That’s a good thing. Because walks are good, and he’s doing them a lot. It’s not like Cain has just totally lost control of the strike zone and is suddenly going all Josh Hamilton on everything. When Josh Hamilton started going all Josh Hamilton on everything, it was almost like a flip switched and his career was put on hold until further notice. There’s beating yourself, and there’s getting beat. Beat yourself and the opponent doesn’t even have to do any of the work. Cain, at the very least, seems like he’s making pitchers work. This has been one good thing.

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It was barely a month ago that we ran our annual positional power rankings series. Perceptions of players and teams ought not to change too much after just a few weeks of baseball, but the neat thing about having projections is around is that they update themselves every night. Never by much, but they’re constantly re-evaluating to reflect whatever’s happened by the appropriate amount. In this sense, they’re like an overreaction guide, holding your hand through the early goings of a season and letting you know just how much to make of Player X’s early-season struggles/successes. Like, for example, if you’re wondering whether to freak out about Rich Hill, you look to see how much the projections have changed since the start of the year, and you listen to the projections when they tell you that it’s perfectly OK to freak out.

And just as the projections can be used as a guide to gauge how much early-season performances mean for players, they can do the same for teams. Team projections are just a composite of a bunch of player projections, after all. And while no one individual has improved their projection nearly as much as Hill, something stuck out to me while doing the research for that post:

In the interest of full disclosure, the Rays don’t possess the most improved rotation, overall. That’d be the Phillies, by a sizable amount. I’ve written about the Phillies and their ubiquitous curveball usage, but frankly, while it’s fun that they’ve seemingly accelerated their rebuild with an already-good rotation, it still doesn’t really matter, in the scope of 2016, that the Phillies have the most improved rotation. But for the Rays, who have the second-most improved rotation with another gap separating them from third, it does matter, because the Rays aim to compete.

When we ran the positional power rankings, we split the starting pitching rankings into two halves. The Rays made the cut for the first half, but just barely. Just over a month ago, the forecast had the Rays’ rotation ranked 15th, with a projected group WAR of +13.0. Now, the Rays are ranked eighth, with a forecast that would put the group around +15 WAR over a full season. It only took 21 games for the projections to give the Rays’ rotation an extra two wins in the future, based on what they’d seen.

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As I begin writing this post, the three most-searched names in the FanGraphs search bar are Jake Arrieta, Rich Hill, and Clayton Kershaw, or, the three greatest pitchers in baseball.

I kid. Mostly. Hill faced a righty-heavy Tigers lineup in Detroit last night and threw seven shutout innings while striking out eight, walking none, and allowing just four hits. It’s the kind of start that’s become commonplace for him since September of last year, and it’s the kind of start that, if commonplace, makes you one of the best pitchers in baseball. I don’t know if Rich Hill is actually one of the best pitchers in baseball. I don’t think he is, but that’s kind of what this is all about — Rich Hill is making us think now.

Last year, we saw the four starts, and they were amazing, and we reconsidered everything we knew about baseball, and then the playoffs happened, and the offseason happened, and six months went by, and it seemed like more than enough time for 36-year-old, injury-riddled, never-done-anything-remotely-like-this-before Rich Hill to lose everything he gained during those four starts in Boston. That’s the fear with any player who ends a season on a hot stretch, that whatever that hot player had in September will have worn off by next April. That fear felt especially appropriate in this particular scenario, given Hill’s history.

And then Spring Training happened, and Hill was awful. And then he was forced into an emergency Opening Day start when Sonny Gray fell ill, and Hill only lasted 2.2 innings. At that point, it was over. Hill was cooked. Whatever happened at the end of 2015 was a total fluke, a gift from above, and Rich Hill was back to being Rich Hill.

And then he rattled off another four-start stretch that rivaled 2015’s. Back to Rich Hill. Thirty-four strikeouts in in 23 innings, eight walks, five earned runs. Over Clayton Kershaw’s last nine starts, he has a 1.85 FIP, and over Hill’s nine starts during that same time period, Hill has the better strikeout rate, the better home-run rate, the better ground-ball rate, and the better ERA.

So I wanted to play a little game. Hill has been Kershaw’s equal since September of last year, but it’s not exactly a fair comparison, because Hill is (probably) pitching at the absolute peak of his career, and we’ve just compared him to a less-than-peak (but still amazing) Kershaw. To make a truly fair comparison, we need to go peak against peak. In the interest of full disclosure, I originally thought this might work with Kershaw, but then I looked at Kershaw’s best nine-starts stretches and realized how foolish I am. Kershaw isn’t a human. But Max Scherzer is a human! And also one of the best, I don’t know, five pitchers in baseball? Based on those two statements alone, he became our new subject. Let’s play a guessing game, pitting Scherzer’s career-best nine-start runs in particular statistical categories vs. Hill’s last nine starts. Click the .gif below each question to reveal the answer.
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My step-sister and I were sharing a bottle of wine on the balcony of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship this winter when I saw my first shooting star. It was bright green, and it was glorious. I allowed myself to become irrationally excited, for the shooting star is a somewhat common natural phenomena that had somehow avoided my person for nearly two-and-a-half decades. Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, we saw about a dozen more regular shooting stars. I suppose they’re a bit easier to spot when you’re in the middle of the sea, free from the light pollution of civilization, and also the regular old chemical pollution, too. A few weeks back, I saw another shooting star while driving home from work. In the middle of Ohio. Sometimes, that thing you perceive to be special turns out to be not so special after all.

But that’s not the case for this triple play turned by the White Sox last week! No sirree!

That’s the ol’ 9-3-2-6-2-5 triple play. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s the first of its type in recorded history. And when I say “recorded history,” both now and throughout the rest of this post, I’m talking about since 1974, the furthest date back for which we have complete event data.

And so down I went, into the rabbit hole. With data provided by Jeff Zimmerman and independently verified and updated by yours truly with the help of the Baseball Reference Play Index and SABR’s triple-play database, I found myself with a spreadsheet of all 161 recorded triple plays since 1974 and each putout, in order. The first question I asked myself after “Was that White Sox triple play the first 9-3-2 triple play ever?” (answer: yes) was, “Well then, smarty pants, what’s the frequency of all the different triple-play combinations?”

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You know about the Cubs. It’s the team that entered spring training as the consensus World Series favorite. It’s the team with the already impressive collection of young stars who tacked on with a splashy offseason. It’s the team that already threw a no-hitter. The team with the potentially historic blend of discipline and power. Maybe you’re tired of hearing about the Cubs already. Maybe you think the coverage and attention has been overkill. Or maybe you think they’re deserving of more coverage, and more attention, considering they’re 14-5 with a run differential (+64) nearly as large as the next two best teams by that measure combined (Cardinals and Nationals, +74).

Whatever your stance, you’re getting one more Cubs post for the time being, because for all the attention the lineup and rotation has received, there’s another area in which they’re deserving of attention, an area that often goes overlooked but that can very much matter. In addition to the lineup having a top-five adjusted batting line with the most runs scored, the rotation being the best in baseball by ERA and second-best by FIP, and the defense leading everyone in Defensive Runs Saved, the Cubs have also been the best base-running team in the sport. Not only is it a continuation of last year’s success in that department, but it’s something that was seemingly improved by one offseason acquisition, and perhaps more importantly, amplified by another.

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It’s possible that more has been made of defensive positioning over the last five years than the prior hundred before it. Infield shifts are something we actually track now, and if the early season is any indication, the usage of those infield shifts is on the rise for a fifth consecutive season. Players and managers discuss them openly, television broadcasts take note — some going so far as to display the position of every fielder on the screen — and we see the benefits (and occasional drawbacks) of the shift on a daily basis.

But nearly all the attention we’ve paid to defensive positioning has gone to the infield. There’re more holes in the infield, less margin for error when the shift doesn’t work, and baseball is slow enough to adapt to any sort of change that it should come as no surprise we had to take this one step at a time. But now, slowly but surely, teams have begun shifting more in the outfield, and before long, the outfield shift, just like the infield shift, will become accepted as standard practice, rather than something that demands attention when it happens.

But shifts aren’t confined to lateral movement, the way we most often see. Players are free to move in and out, too, and thanks to new Statcast data, this is the kind of thing we’re starting to see measured and quantified.

Enter Dexter Fowler. Fowler was the center fielder behind Jake Arrieta for Arrieta’s no-hitter last night. Fowler’s been arguably the best player in baseball this year, owing to positive marks in the batter’s box, on the bases, and in the field. Fowler’s long been an above-average hitter, and he’s long been a plus base-runner, but the defensive marks haven’t been so kind. You could make the case the defensive marks are the thing that’s prevented Fowler’s reputation from exceeding “nice little player” to “borderline star.” An above-average hitter who runs the bases well with a reputation as a plus center fielder is a borderline star. But Fowler hasn’t had the reputation as a plus center fielder, because the tools we use to evaluate defense in this day and age have considered Fowler one of the worst defensive outfielders in baseball since he entered the league.

Since 2009, Fowler’s first full season, 28 players have registered at least 3,000 innings in center field — the kind of sample we prefer to have before working with defensive metrics. To contextualize Fowler’s place among his defensive peers, I took that pool of 28, weighted Defensive Runs Saved and Ultimate Zone Rating equally, and prorated the figures to roughly a year’s worth of playing time. The worst three regular center fielders over the last seven years, by the numbers, are as follows:

1. Matt Kemp, -11 runs saved per 1,000 innings
2. Dexter Fowler, -9
3. Angel Pagan, -4

Fowler stands 6-foot-5, 195, has good speed, and overall looks like an elite athlete, so his consistently league-worst defensive metrics have always been puzzling, the kind of guy the eye-test crowd uses as an example against the metrics by pointing at him and going, “Just look at him!” Which, I can’t blame them. Fowler looks like he should be fine defensively. It’s always puzzled me, too.

Which is why I was immediately captivated by this tweet from Mike Petriello last month:

Fun with #statcast data: There’s a 28 foot difference in raw avg positioning from deepest CF (Kiermaier) to shallowest (Jones/Fowler).

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) March 23, 2016

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Possible headline from 2013: Tyler White Is Mashing

Possible headline from 2014: Tyler White Is Mashing

Possible headline from 2015: Tyler White Is Mashing

Possible headline from right now: Tyler White Is Mashing

The best rookie hitter in baseball this year has not been Trevor Story. The best rookie hitter in baseball this year has been Tyler White, by nearly 60 points of wRC+ over Story. Maybe you haven’t heard about him as much because his last name doesn’t make for a convenient headline, but it’s happened. Tyler White is mashing, just like he has at every single level at which he’s played.

Despite that, less than a month ago, right before the start of the regular season, I wrote a post tossing some cold water on the White hype train after he’d won the Astros’ first-base job out of Spring Training. It’s not that I didn’t want to believe White could continue his mashing ways. I naively want to believe every player can succeed. It’s just that I’d found some historical precedent that compelled me to believe White’s skill set wouldn’t do a great job translating.

A brief recap of the aforementioned post: White is a first baseman, one who has typically relied moreso on controlling the strike zone for his minor-league success rather than hitting for great power. To determine the implications of that sort of profile, I looked at the historical precedent of first baseman who entered the league with plus walk and strikeout rates but below-average power, and found that those types of guys typically have had trouble translating. It’s a skillset that’s fine for a player who offers defensive and base-running value, but without more pop, these types of guys have had trouble sticking at first base at the major-league level. The article concluded as such:

From this one method of evaluating things, he looks like a good major-league hitter, just maybe not for a first baseman, and one whose approach works better in the minors without additional power. Then again, the next time he fails to exceed expectations with the bat will be the first.

Well. He’s exceeding expectations again. And it’s because he’s hitting for power. In 15 career major-league games, White’s already hit five homers, after having never hit more than eight at any one minor-league level, or more than 15 in any one minor-league season. His .380 isolated slugging percentage is top-five in baseball.

Now, of course, it’s been two weeks. You’ve already had that thought at least three times while reading this article. The projections already view White a bit differently, but, because it’s only been two weeks, not too differently. ZiPS has bumped his estimated true-talent ISO from .130 to .151. Steamer went from .149 to .156. The rest-of-season projections haven’t changed drastically, but the rest-of-season projections are never going to change too drastically after just two weeks. What has changed drastically is the updated projections.

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