Why Jung-Ho Kang Doesn’t Need to be a Brilliant Fielder

It’s very rare for a Major League club to sign a presumed every-day starter to a contract that will total either 4 years/$17M (a sum that includes a 2019 buy-out plus posting fee) or 5 years/$21.5M (a sum that includes a 2019 team option plus posting fee). But, seeing as Jung-Ho Kang is the first position player to ever enter the MLB directly from Korea’s professional league, this is a rare case in which the most refined of projections are still guesses. Unknowns presently rule the day.

At Just a Bit Outside, during the brief period between when Pittsburgh had acquired negotiation rights but had not yet agreed with Kang himself, Rob Neyer had a bunch of questions about Kang’s fit within the Pirates’ line-up. Before the Pirates had acquired negotiation rights, Jeff also had a grip of questions about Kang’s abilities both offensively and defensively. Jeff wrote the following about Kang’s glovework:

At six feet, he’s not oversized, although he’s a little thicker so some people don’t think Kang looks the part. It’s readily obvious he’s not Andrelton Simmons. It sounds like there are enough concerns that Kang probably isn’t an above-average defender, as his range is unremarkable and he sometimes fights the baseball with his glove, but an average shortstop would be a useful shortstop, and it at least seems like Kang deserves an extended opportunity before getting moved to third base or right field. There are fewer questions about his ability in those spots.

While I haven’t the foggiest what Kang’s big-in-Korea bat will look like in the NL Central. And, actually, Jeff’s concerns about Kang’s defense could all come to pass. But I’d like to propose that, at least when it comes to fielding, Kang and the Pirates are a wonderful fit for one another, defensively speaking.

I say this because Neal Huntington and his analytics team have been pulling off a wonderful trick for the last three years: in each season, the Pirates have put together an above-average defensive BABIP despite having a roster full of mostly-below-average defensive players. It’s looked like this:

	BABIP	League Average	League Rank	UZR	League Average	League Rank
2012	.286	.293	10	0.4	1.2	16
2013	.285	.294	5	4.4	0.6	15
2014	.290	.295	11	-40.3	2.8	27

Pittsburgh’s 2014 numbers were pretty dramatic: one of the very worst defenses in the league, and yet they still backed up their pitching staff with a better-than-average rate on balls in play.

The Pirates set up their defenders to succeed by shifting them often. Using statistics from The Bill James Handbook 2015, the Pirates ranked third in the National League in total shifts in 2013, which they followed up by going way ahead of the pack in 2014*:

2013 Team	2013 Total Defensive Shifts	2014 Team	2014 Total Defensive Shifts
Brewers	544	Pirates	659
Cubs	508	Brewers	576
Pirates	500	Cardinals	367
Reds	298	Giants	361

*It’s useful to separate the two leagues when considering shifting strategies, due to the presence of the designated hitter. DH’s tend to be an extreme power hitters that even very conservative teams will shift against, inflating the total number of AL shifts dramatically. The Pirates’ NL-leading number of 2014 shifts would only have been 6th-most in the AL.

It’s one thing to move your guys around on the field, but of course it would be even better if opponents were hitting balls — that is, ground balls — into the shifts as often as possible. This is where I really dig what Huntington & Co. have been up to. The Pirates have assembled the most ground-ball-dominant pitching staff in the game:

	GB%	League Average	League Rank
2012	46.6	45.1	6
2013	52.5	44.5	1
2014	50.5	44.8	1

(And, of course, if you were to remove the Pirates’ rates from the league averages, those league averages would be even lower.)

The Pirates have set themselves up for another ground-ball-heavy staff in 2015, mostly by keeping around the same dudes they had in 2014. (Although: your guess is as good as mine as to why they traded for Antonio Bastardo, he of the career 28.2 GB%.) Edinson Volquez (50.4% in 2014) was lost to Kansas City in free agency, but the Pirates replaced him with old pal A.J. Burnett, who was at an astonishing 56.9% and 56.5% during his first stint with the Pirates, from 2012-13. Francisco Liriano (50.5 GB% in 2013; 54.4% in 2014) was brought back on a three-year deal. Jared Hughes (64.6%), Mark Melancon (57.4%), Charlie Morton (55.7%), Jeff Locke (50.5%), Vance Worley (49.4%), and Gerrit Cole (49.2%) all return.

All of these ground balls getting hit into shifts is effectively breaking the Pirates’ relationship with FIP and ERA. Let’s look at all of their player seasons from 2013 and 2014 among Pirates pitchers who (a) pitched over 50 innings, and (b) finished with a GB% over 50 (ordered by GB%):

Player	Player Season	IP	GB%	ERA	FIP
Jared Hughes	2014	64.1	64.6	1.96	3.99
Charlie Morton	2013	116	62.9	3.26	3.60
Mark Melancon	2013	71	60.3	1.39	1.64
Bryan Morris	2013	65	57.5	3.46	4.89
Mark Melancon	2014	71	57.4	1.90	2.09
A.J. Burnett	2013	191	56.5	3.30	2.80
Charlie Morton	2014	157.1	55.7	3.72	3.72
Jeanmar Gomez	2013	80.2	55.4	3.35	3.85
Francisco Liriano	2014	162.1	54.4	3.38	3.59
Jeff Locke	2013	166.1	53.2	3.52	4.03
Justin Wilson	2013	73.2	53	2.08	3.41
Vin Mazzaro	2013	73.2	52.2	2.81	3.31
Justin Wilson	2014	60	51.3	4.20	3.62
Francisco Liriano	2013	161	50.5	3.02	2.92
Jeff Locke	2014	131.1	50.5	3.91	4.37
Edinson Volquez	2014	192.2	50.4	3.04	4.15

Among these player seasons, the average FIP is 3.49, and the average ERA is 3.01. Relievers and starters, veterans and young guns, the shift helped out all Pirates pitchers who were able to induce enough ground balls.

This is in line with the Pirates out-performing their FIP in both 2013 (3.27 ERA v. 3.42 FIP) and even more so in 2014, as they increased their use of the shift (3.49 ERA v. 3.80 FIP). The Houston Astros led the MLB in total shifts last season with 1,341, more than double the Pirates’ total. But because the Astros were simply above-average in GB% (their 46.4% was seventh-best in MLB), they could not out-perform their FIP: 4.14 ERA v. 3.93 FIP.

The Pirates are not doing this with Andrelton Simmons out there. Looking at the infields they’ve used to get to this place, there aren’t a lot of impressive individual defensive talents. Clint Barmes and Josh Harrison have really set the standard here. So Jung-Ho Kang doesn’t need to be Simmons. If next season goes anything like the last two, the Pirates will induce heaps of outs as a team, instead of relying on fantastic individual performances.

And, in the meantime, there’s the possibility that Kang could have one of the league’s most powerful shortstops’ bats in the game, providing slugging at a spot in the lineup that other teams have basically conceded for defensive purposes. It certainly seems like a valid experiment to try conducting.