Torii Hunter on (Data-Free) Outfield Defense
Torii Hunter is a bit of an enigma when it comes to discussing defense. The now-retired outfielder isn’t a big believer in shifts — or data in general — yet he understands the importance of positioning. A nine-time Gold Glove winner, Hunter had a way of being in the right place at the right time when he patrolled center (and sometimes right) for the Twins, Angels and Tigers.
Hunter was at Twins training camp earlier this spring, working with the club’s young fly-chaser mix. His tutorials were called for. Minnesota’s starting outfield projects to be still-wet-behind-the-ears Byron Buxton, flanked by former infielders Eddie Rosario and Miguel Sano. Compounding the trio’s inexperience are a large Target Field outfield and a pitching staff that induces a lot of balls in play.
Talking to Hunter a few weeks ago, I was struck by his paradoxical approach to positioning. Yes, you need to know where a batter is likely to hit the ball. No, data isn’t particularly helpful. Shifting is overdone, if not unnecessary.
When Hunter and I parted ways — our conversation continued beyond what was captured here — he smiled and said, “That was a good argument.” Regardless of how you define it, our back-and-forth elicited some interesting commentary.
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Hunter on the Twins’ outfield: “To get better defensively, you draft more athletes. And you need a great centerfielder. If you have a great centerfielder, that helps make up for lack of (defensive) talent in the corners. But Rosario in left field isn’t bad at all. I don’t know where that came from.
“With Sano, you don’t know the expectations, because you’ve never seen him play. You can’t automatically stamp him as not being a good outfielder. I think he’s athletic enough, he wants to learn, and he works hard. He’s going to make himself better. He’s going to try to make himself into one of the best outfielders in the game. Defense is something I’ve always prided myself in, and helping guys like him is why I’m here.
“But again, it starts with a great centerfielder. If you have somebody out there who can run it down, that takes some of the pressure off your left fielder and your right fielder. They know there’s someone between them who is going to get to a lot of balls, and I think (Buxton) is right up there.
“You can never stop learning defensively. For me — and everybody knows this — it’s knowing the pitchers, knowing the hitters, knowing the league. The more you play against certain hitters, the more you know what their tendencies are. The more you see your own pitchers pitch, the more you know what their tendencies are.
“I don’t think (Buxton) has enough time in yet to know his pitchers, or the hitters around the league. He doesn’t have that time and experience in him yet. The more experience he gets, the better he’s going to be. But right now, he doesn’t really have a weakness beyond that.”
On positioning and defensive shifts: “Whether balls are hit hard, or if they’re bloops, some of them are going to fall in. Balls are going to drop and they’re going to go over your head. Regardless. I know. I played the outfield for a long time, and I think I did it well.
“I think teams naturally shift in the outfield already. If a guy is a right-handed pull hitter, he’s rarely going to go down the right field line. If he’s 20 percent down the right field line, that means he’s 80 percent from right-center to the left field line. I can see where you’d want to to put the right fielder in right-center, the center fielder in left-center, and the left fielder along the left field line. You take away more of the 80 percent and let them have the 20 percent. That makes sense, but I still don’t believe in data.
“Baseball has been played all these years, right? To overdo things isn’t worth it. Look at Victor Martinez. The year they shifted on him, he had the best year of his career. So does the shift really work? I don’t know. It’s not proven.
“To me, if there’s a guy who the shift works on, he shouldn’t be in the big leagues. You never would shift on me, because you know what? I’m going to hit it to right field. If you can’t do that, you don’t belong here. But if a guy can’t go the other way, and you’re an outfielder, you better know that.”
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
I don’t believe in data but you need to know all the hitters and pitchers and their tendencies.
I don’t know what the word “prove” means.
Before we trash Hunter, I wonder if what he isn’t saying what a lot of players may think–and some fans as well–that advanced fielding metrics don’t always reflect what’s going on on the field. Hunter played his position very well and he talks about studying tendencies, knowing the pitchers, etc. so he’s obviously not rejecting analysis–just rejecting it in a formalized data-driven way.
But it’s so much more fun to just bash the guy!
The thing is you could spend years playing against guys and perhaps you learn their tendencies, or you could just look at the data and know from day 1. If I wanted to know how cold the Pacific Ocean is, I could get on a plane and fly to Los Angeles, or I could JFGI.
I think Hunter’s is partly a discussion of tacit and propositional knowledge and a rejection that baseball can be known propositionally by people “outside of baseball” the same way as it is by those who experience it. He has been clumsy with theory in the past, through homophobic or semi-xenophobic discussions, all of which indicate some difficulty with abstracting data or facts and understanding the world.
I think this is dead on. The contradictions in what Hunter is saying are easily understood if you know he’s the sort of guy that doesn’t take kindly to baseball outsiders (in this instance, the guys in the FO creating the positioning recommendations, many of whom never played) telling baseball insiders how to play the game.
Exactly. If you called it a “scouting report” and didn’t put a ton of numbers in it, he would probably say it was legit.
“Righty heavy pull hitter. Tends to pop up weak to right late in count.” would likely be fine with him, but “75% hard hit rate to left field. Pops to right 35% in 3-2 counts.” would be met with skepticism.
Yeah it has me intrigued as to what he actually means. Usually these player comments clearly lean one way or the other, but these are fairly contradictory. He’s like Fox Mulder, he wants to believe.
I think Hunter’s problem with defensive shifts is summed up in the last paragraph. Its not that he believes a shift won’t work, its that he believes a hitter will find a way to beat the shift so it isn’t worth shifting in the first place.
I think his hypothesis is true for some hitters, but from what I understand the data suggests that for many hitters that isn’t the case
“If there’s a guy who the shift works on, he shouldn’t be in the big leagues”
I was fine until that sentence. What if the player is in a bad slump? Most hitters, especially power hitters, are going to pull the ball more then usual when they’re struggling. I’m fine with him not using or liking data/shifts, but that’s just common sense. Yes, there are players I wouldn’t shift on, but use Chris Davis as an example who will always be shifted on. Only when he’s red hot will he beat the shift.
You know who has been killed by the shift? Joe Mauer. His doubles down the left field line are gone and the grounders to right don’t get through a hard shift, and he hasn’t done much to change. But there’s a pretty good chance Torii believes Joe is a big leaguer.
Next time I’m in an argument I’m just going to invoke the name of Victor Martinez and declare myself the…um… victor.
So Ortiz and others who get shifted shouldn’t be in the game. Got it.
Ironically, this means that former teammate Brian Dozier shouldn’t be in the league.
What doesn’t make sense to me (among other things) is that he says that if you can beat guys by shifting on them then they shouldn’t be in the big leagues as if that means you should not shift on guys. Well, guys who can be beating by the shift will surely make it to and stay in the big leagues if no one ever uses the shift to beat them.
Yeah, it is a very strange statement.
It’s almost like saying you shouldn’t throw curveballs, because if a guy can’t hit a curveball he shouldn’t be in the league.
I don’t think there’s a player I want to hear from less than Torii Hunter.
Why? He’s awesome. Universally beloved in the sport.
Racist, homophobic, and not very intelligent. Hunter the player is great, but I cringe anytime I have to read one of his quotes.
Exactly this.
Not really. He’s one of the few people willing to talk about race in a way that doesn’t always endear himself to white people but he’s certainly not racist. The reason you bring up racism is b/c he was speaking about racial issues and a white reporter used a comment out of context to imply that he thought Latino players weren’t black, or some such nonsense. It had the advantage of 1) getting traffic and 2) moving the discussion away from real racial issues in baseball. The comment itself, when taking in the context, was so inoffensive that a bunch of Latino ballplayers defended him.
As to the homophobia, this comes mainly from a radio ad he did in Ark for the Republican candidate, Asa Hutchinson, in which he mostly spoke about Hutchinson’s work for the African American community but also mentioned the GOP platform which included opposition to same-sex marriage. Hunter and Hutchinson’s views on SSM were the same as noted homophobic’s Mike Ross (his democratic opponent in the race) and Hillary Clinton. SSM simply wasn’t an issue in AK.
(you can listen to the ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ZM7nt4A3A)
Hunter did say in an interview before that that he thought a gay man would have trouble being accepted in a ML clubhouse (which the Cardinals are showing to be true) but also said he’d have no problem with that. The reason that got lost is the reporter cut two quotes together to make the sensational quote (which is why the quote is always “….”). Certainly, Hunter probably doesn’t have the most enlightened views of homosexuals but 1) it’s not as bad as reported and 2) not out of line with most ballplayers. As someone who has done a bit of advocacy for SSM in MN, I can say Hunter is not the Twins who you should be most offended by.
As to not being very intelligent, I have no idea why you think that. Most reporters have considered him one of the more thoughtful players in baseball and the Twins are likely to give him a position in FO. Sure, he didn’t graduate college but most ballplayers haven’t. I guess I hope you think he isn’t intelligent because of his views on SSM.
One small quibble: Yes, Eddie Rosario is a former infielder, but he was an outfielder first that the Twins attempted to turn into a 2B. With the emergence of Brian Dozier along with Rosario’s struggles at the position, he was sent back to the outfield before debuting last season.
The metrics also liked Rosario in LF so I don’t know where “I don’t know where that came from” came from.
Maybe Statcast says something different? Let me just check the mlb.com statcast leaderboard for more information…
I think he means that he doesn’t know where his previous statement came from. That’s where it came from, from realizing he is a good LF so he shouldn’t be hating on his LF. So in that case, I don’t know where “I don’t know where ‘I don’t know where that came from’ came from” came from.
There’s a lot of issues with both measuring baseball’s defensive stats and valuing them. A lot of words have been written on these problems by fangraphs, HBT, BP, Shoenfeild at ESPN, etc. Yet we mock players who question defensive data.
In this case, he’s using shifts to say why Victor Martinez had a career year. Well, I took a look, and I’m assuming Hunter means 2014, when he hit 335. Maybe his idea is possible, but I’d say the fact he hit a career high 32 HR was a bigger reason for his success than any shifting. Really doesn’t matter where you place the fielders if he’s hitting the ball over the fence.
Sure, measuring a players defensive ability and associating a value to it is usually a hot topic for debate.
However, there is really no argument as to whether or not it is useful to look at data to see where a guy tends to hit the ball, and then trying to position your defense that way to get an out. There are 30 MLB teams, and each on of these teams shifted at some point in the 2015 season.
I would also add that there is no problem in measuring spray charts. Spray charts can be measured very specifically and have been able to be measured well for a long time. So assigning value to defenders is a lot harder than figuring out where players tend to hit the ball and positioning accordingly.
What fangraphs knows about baseball, Torii Hunter could fit into his eyes with little to no discomfort.