How Byron Buxton’s Glove Went from Good to Great

I was invited to appear on Ben Lindbergh and Michael Baumann’s podcast over at The Ringer this week. Among those topics discussed was the challenge of scouting in today’s game (a topic which Jeff Sullivan has recently explored) and the difficulty with macro-level planning in the midst of a record home-run surge (about which I wrote earlier this week).

The game is being played at the extremes, featuring more home runs than ever and more strikeouts than ever. When players are changing skill sets and approaches so quickly, how must evaluators evolve? While speed and strength will never go out of style, what skills should gain and lose value in the eyes of evaluators? Michael noted that perhaps it’s adaptability that should take on greater weight in evaluation. In an era where it’s more difficult to predict what’s next, anticipating how the game (or the ball) will change might be a player’s best tool.

Along those lines, it might behoove evaluators to place more weight on players who are curious. In an age with endless data from Statcast and other sources, asking the right questions can help an athlete better understand and improve his own performance. That’s trickier to evaluate, of course: it requires getting to know the individual and/or performing other types of due diligence. But those traits can make an impact.

Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy are among the players who’ve used new data, in part, to inform changes they’ve made to their swings and approaches. That curiosity (and lots of work), in part, elevated those players to stardom. And while the benefits of data have mostly been tied to the offensive portion of the game, we now have some evidence of Statcast helping an individual defender.

Byron Buxton has always been an elite athlete.

He once threw a football 82 yards. He would probably be in the NFL or NBA if he weren’t playing baseball. He’s the fastest player in the majors, according to the Sprint Speed leaderboard. Buxton (30.2 feet/second) and Billy Hamilton (30.1 feet/second) are the only two major leaguers exceeding 30 feet per second at top speed.

Buxton has always been an elite athlete, but he’s wasn’t always an elite defender.

He is this year.

He entered the season with 7 career Defensive Runs Saved across 1,100.2 innings in center field. He leads center fielders with 26 DRS this year — and trails only Mookie Betts (31) and Andrelton Simmons (29) overall — in 1,075 innings in center his season.

His UZR/150 number this season (13.9) is better than double that of last year’s mark (6.4). He leads in a new Statcast tool Outs Above Average with 24 entering play Thursday, after ranking 14th (10 OAA) last season.

He’s always been capable of making highlight plays and still very much is:

He’s always made the highlight plays, but now he’s simply getting to more batted balls: he’s recorded 112 out-of-zone plays this year after entering the season with 90 in just about the same amount of innings.

As Buxton told Jared Diamond of The Wall Street Journal, he’s getting to more balls, in part, because of player-tracking data. After last season, along with help from the Twins’ staff, Buxton examined his defensive measurements. The result? A sense that his first-step quickness, a Statcast metric that isn’t publicly available, could be better.

Reported Diamond:

So over the offseason, he spent a couple weeks at his old high school in Baxley, Ga., focusing intensely on trying to improve an area that not long ago couldn’t have been quantified.

“I picked up on the numbers and I was like, ‘Well, I can be better than this, I can do this better,’” Buxton said. “So I started picking out the small things that I felt like I could get a little better at.”

Sprint speed only tells us top speed. An outfielder’s range also includes first-step quickness, the accuracy of that first step, and overall route efficiency. Everyone knows Buxton is fast. The eye test tells us that. Statcast confirms that our eyes are not betraying us. But by focusing on his first step, both the quickness and direction of it, Buxton has essentially used Statcast to improve what we have collectively often referred to as “instinct.” While some of that instinct is innate, perhaps some of it is also learned and can be improved through practice. Buxton’s remarkable defensive campaign of 2017 seems to be loud proof of that.

While players are suspicious of some elements of the big-data age, player-tracking data can help improve performance; it can help the player if he’s curious and adaptable and open-minded. They are perhaps characteristics upon which evaluators must now place a greater emphasis. If the game’s best athlete can benefit from the data, everyone can benefit from the data.