Danny Espinosa, Trea Turner, and the Value of Patience

When the Nationals decided to begin the year with Danny Espinosa as their starting shortstop, with top prospect Trea Turner beginning the year back in Triple-A, it was widely seen as another example of a team manipulating the service time rules in order to extend their controllable years over a valuable player. That narrative was seemingly reinforced when the Nationals stuck with Espinosa even after he hit .185/.316/.246 in April, especially given that Turner was hitting .317/.387/.463 in Triple-A at the end of the first month of the season. And as the two disparate batting lines were compared and contrasted, calls for Turner to replace Espinosa got louder and louder.

Trea Turner's at .357/.430/.529 in AAA. Danny Espinosa is hitting .182/.324/.200 and his OBP is inflated by batting in front of the pitcher.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) April 28, 2016

Yet the Nationals stuck with Espinosa. They pointed to his superior defense as a primary reason, also noting that Turner has some work to do with the glove, and stuck with that plan even after Turner came up and went 3 for 3 with a double and a walk after he got summoned to the big leagues while Ryan Zimmerman went on paternity leave. And now, as we reach the end of June, it’s probably time to admit the Nationals made the right call.

Since May 1st, here’s how the two infielders have performed.

A month into the season, Espinosa was being looked at as a particularly worthless player blocking a talented prospect, but since then, he’s hit nearly as well in the big leagues as Turner has in Triple-A. By finding his power stroke, Espinosa is reminding everyone that he’s a perfectly capable big leaguer, and the derision he received as being some kind of impediment to the Nationals success was misplaced.

And it’s not like this really should have been a big surprise. Last year, Espinosa put up a 94 wRC+ in 412 plate appearances, a perfectly reasonable batting performance for a guy who has consistently graded out as an excellent defender at a premium position. His career wRC+ is 89 in 2,632 plate appearances, so it’s not like last year’s performance was wildly out of character. And because his glove is legitimately excellent, anything close to league average batting makes Espinosa a quality big league starter.

For his career, Espinosa has been worth about 20 runs below an average hitter, but that’s over the course of four full season’s worth of playing time, so he’s graded out at about five runs below average as a hitter on a per-season basis. Overall, an average hitting shortstop is worth about 10 runs less than an average hitter over a full season, so Espinosa’s track record actually makes him a better-than-normal hitter for his position. And yet offense is the weak spot of his game.

He’s not Andrelton Simmons in the field, but he’s probably at least an above-average defender at the shortstop position. Because of Ian Desmond’s presence on the roster, Espinosa played mostly second base before this season, but graded out as a terrific defender at that position, putting up +27 UZR and +25 DRS in over 4,400 innings at 2B over the last five years. With his regular work at SS this year, he’s now over 1,000 innings at shortstop as well, and has graded out at +6 UZR/+3 DRS at that position. And he more than passes the eye test as well, with his grades in the Fans Scouting Report putting him in the same tier of defenders as Alcides Escobar, J.J. Hardy, and Didi Gregorius.

Fans were just as bullish on him at second base as well, and the Nationals clearly believed in his glove enough to shift him back to shortstop after Desmond left. The data, the scouting reports, and the opinions of those who watch him on a daily basis all grade him out as a plus defender, and we’re far enough into his big league career that it seems pretty likely that the consensus is right.

So Espinosa hits slightly better than the average shortstop, fields better than the average shortstop, and is an above average baserunner. There’s basically no component of the game that Espinosa is deficient in, unless you decide to focus solely on his command of the strike zone and ignore the ways in which he offsets that one specific weakness. And that combination of skills is why Espinosa has put up +11 WAR in his roughly four seasons worth of playing time, which grades out to about +2.8 WAR per full season.

Now, at age 29, as a guy who gets a lot of value from his fielding, he’s probably not a +2.8 WAR per season guy going forward. Our depth charts forecast has him putting up a 84 wRC+ over the rest of the season, so with regression added into the defensive forecasts, that grades him out as a +2 WAR player. And that’s basically the same overall level of production the projections would expect from Turner this year. At this point, it seems like swapping out Espinosa for Turner would be a lateral move at best, and if Turner’s defense is below average, potentially a downgrade.

And there’s no real reason to bench a league average player in order to promote another league average player, even if the latter has more long-term upside. By sticking with Espinosa, the Nationals have not only bought Turner more development time in the minors, but they’ve also created an organizational asset; if they really want to promote Turner and hand him shortstop for the second half of the year, they could potentially flip Espinosa to a contender looking for a quality middle infielder. Or, given that Espinosa has shown he’s worthy of a regular job, perhaps the team will simply install Turner at second base, shifting Daniel Murphy over to first base if Ryan Zimmerman keeps struggling at the plate, and putting a better defensive unit on the field.

By sticking with Espinosa, the Nationals have put themselves in a position where they now have a surplus of valuable middle infielders. Had they overreacted to the April performance and simply swapped Turner in for Espinosa, not only would they not have improved their big league standing, but they’d have fewer options going forward, given that Espinosa wouldn’t have any trade value after losing his job.

In the rush to criticize teams for manipulating the service time rules — and, of course, they absolutely do time the call-ups of top prospects around those dates — it’s important to keep in mind that not every decision to stick with a struggling veteran is the wrong one. And the fact that a veteran is blocking a talented prospect is not a valid reason to overreact to a small sample and ignore a track record of producing real value.

Danny Espinosa is not a star, and maybe Trea Turner will turn into one. But for 2016, the Nationals have correctly identified that Espinosa as their starting shortstop may very well be their best option, and not just their best option until the Super Two deadline passes. With a quality all-around game, there’s nothing wrong with the Nationals committing to Espinosa as their starting shortstop for the rest of the year.