More Center Field Stuff

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.