Let’s Watch Kevin Kiermaier Not Catch a Fly Ball
How good is Kevin Kiermaier, defensively? Kevin Kiermaier is this good, defensively: Since 2003, 148 different players have played center field for at least 1,000 innings. Kiermaier leads all of them, so far, in UZR per 150 games. In case you’d like a second source, Kiermaier also leads all of them in DRS per 150 games. DRS actually likes him even more than UZR does. Obviously, because Kiermaier isn’t yet 27, we haven’t seen his decline phase. At some point, he will become a worse defender, because at some point, he will wake up and be a 75-year-old man. But Kiermaier is like an outfield Andrelton Simmons, except that, oh, by the way, Kiermaier can also hit a little.
It’s fun to examine the great ones. It’s fun to examine when the great ones are great, and sometimes it’s even more fun to examine when the great ones are not great. So I rolled over to Baseball Savant to check out Kiermaier’s plot of base hits allowed. This is a new feature, and an awesome one, and here’s what shows up for Kiermaier’s 2016:
By hang time and distance, pretty much everything here is some variety of a difficult play. Or, for many, an impossible play! There’s only one missed play that counts as either routine or easy, and you see it there within the red circle. Curious, I asked Daren Willman if he could tell me when that play occurred. He gave me the information I needed. What catch did Kevin Kiermaier miss? We rewind to early August.
The ball hung up for more than six seconds. That’s a lot of time, and it allowed Kiermaier to cover more than 100 feet of ground. Here’s a screenshot of right around where Kiermaier started, with a dot to indicate where the ball bounced off the fence.
And, the fateful moment, or thereabouts:
There’s a twist here, see. This shows up as a missed play for Kiermaier, but it’s not entirely clear this was Kiermaier’s ball to catch. Certainly, that much wasn’t clear to left fielder Mikie Mahtook, who mis-everythinged his leap. Kiermaier was right there, and it looked like he had a shot, but at the last instant, he held up, with Mahtook taking to the air. What we can’t tell from the broadcast or from the replays is whether either player called off the other. What we can tell is that Mahtook took charge. In most cases, an outfielder here will defer to the guy playing center. He tends to be the defensive captain of the outfield, so to speak. Mahtook defied convention, and Jose Bautista wound up with a double.
Why the miscommunication? It’s impossible for us to conclusively say, and it’s not like the Rays aren’t used to having Kiermaier in center field. But Kiermaier wasn’t used to having Mahtook to his right. This play happened early in the first inning on August 9. The first time this past season that Kiermaier was in center, with Mahtook in left: the first inning on August 9. It took two batters for that alignment to be exploited, and it might not be a total coincidence that Mahtook’s newest baseball future will take place with Detroit. When you get in the way of Kevin Kiermaier’s defense, a team won’t take it lightly.
This is how Kevin Kiermaier missed his easiest catch. The ball was a near home run, and another player tried to leap for it first.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Right, so (non-park-adjusted) distance and hang time aren’t really good enough to do this classification, are they? Coming near the wall (not part of this data at all) clearly affects how difficult this play is without even considering the interaction between the fielders.
Indeed! Part of Willman’s response:
“There’s still some issues when tracking balls that hit off the wall that should be resolved next season.”
I wouldn’t look at each batted ball as necessarily belonging to one guy. If you look at Kiermaier’s teammate, that ball was even more playable.
We’ll be giving the user even more filtering options, like “show me the balls where he was 2nd closest fielder”, or “show me the balls where he wasn’t one of the 2 closest fielders”. Something like that.
And yes, wall-balls are in issue. It’s one of our high priority items. And we’ll put a filter on those as well.
Kiermaier looks like he would have caught the ball had there not been another player in the way. If we ask Kiermaier, he might even say it would have been an easy play. In any case, the presence of the other player, not the wall, is what prevents Kiermaier from catching the ball, making this example a weak proof for the need for other park factors.
Another factor I want to see considered is angle-of-approach. This ball was over KK’s shoulder, on the glove side, which presumably is a harder play than if it was either directly in front of him, or on the opposite side, at the same distance + hang time. Would love to see what the data says.
Thank you for writing this. When I heard about that feature on Baseball Savant, I looked at Kiermaier’s profile and also saw that and wondered what that play looked like. The other thing that I found interesting was that he made roughly half the plays that were labeled “highlight”. He’s really fun to watch.
would have been a pretty strange play for Mahtook to cede to Kiermeier. looked like an easier play for the former, and he was there first.
July 22 vs A’s he muffed a fairly routine pop up in the eighth by Yonder Alonso, I would never have called “tough”.
You are correct! I don’t know why that play didn’t show up in the Baseball Savant plot. Oh well.
It’s because the Savant plot shows base hits, and the Alonso pop-up was called an error.
Usually,fly balls between outfielders are the center fielders ball. The exception shown here is when the center fielder has his glove hand away from the play, and the other fielder has his glove hand to the play.
If this is classified as an easy catch, baseballsavant just lost it’s credibility.
To be fair it’s touching the “routine” zone however I’d extend your argument that a ball up against the wall that will scrape the wall short of a nice play is not “routine” either.
However: if you read the article you’ll see that Darren Willman has already admitted the flaw with wall balls and is working on it for 2017. That’s pretty credible.
He did not, for example , double down and claim that his system was the MOST accurate on such plays and go on to denigrate those who’d claim otherwise despite “evidence” and “facts”.
Exactly. Seeing this kind of mis-evaluation brings into doubt other defensive stats. I once asked John Dewan, head of BIS, how many people he had evaluate each play, and he said, “50” and briskly walked away.
He briskly walked away from you? I can’t imagine.
You’re *still* trolling this site?
It underscores how great his defense is when this is the “easiest” ball he missed for a hit.