The Nationals’ Flawed Middle Infield
I’m off to the Arizona Fall League and Ron Shandler’s First Pitch this weekend, so my posting schedule will be erratic. The good news is that I’ll have plenty of fodder for those posts when I do get around to writing them.
Back to the matter at hand. We’ve been talking about the middle infield recently, doing keeper rankings for second base and shortstop in the past two weeks. A fitting segue might be to a pair of middle infielders on one team, especially since their flaws are as apparent as their upside.
Ian Desmond saved a lot of Yunel Escobar owners this year, and since he was so cheap (practically undrafted going in), let’s not speak too harshly about him. On the other hand, the flaws are obvious, even within his .269/.308/.392 batting line. We know he doesn’t walk (5% career), so he’s a poor option in OBP leagues. Given his strikeouts (20.8% in 2010) and lack of power (.124 ISO last year), it’s unlikely that he’ll put up great batting averages or power a team to victory, either. To top it off, UZR (and subjective reports) have not enjoyed his defensive effort (-8.1 UZR/150 career). So what is there to like about him?
Well, for one, he’s a live, every-day body at a tough position. 22 shortstops qualified for the batting title, and their average batting line was .266/.322/.391 – Desmond’s line is even close to average, making him relevant in all leagues. Also, though his 2010 power was below-average, his career ISO (.145) is almost exactly average for all major leaguers. His career minor league ISO might be familiar (.129), but he also slugged better as he advanced. Lastly, his line drive percentage (15.8%) was so low that it only has one place to go. There’s no definite answer here, but it certainly looks like there’s power projection left in Desmond’s profile. Paired with his decent speed (5.5 speed score, 17/22 SBs), he can be a workhorse shortstop in most leagues. The flaws will probably keep him from being elite, though.
Across the middle infield from him is newcomer Danny Espinosa. Unfortunately, we only have 112 ML plate appearances to use in our analysis, and not many of his stats will have met Pizza Cutter’s reliability benchmarks in that few at-bats.
We can, however, learn something about Espinosa from his walk, strikeout, groundball and HR/FB rates, which all stabilize under 100 PAs. From his walk and strikeout rates (8% and 29.1% respectively), we can tell that Espinosa is a little bit different style of hitter than Desmond. The walks are about average, so perhaps the .365 OBP from the minor leagues will carry over. But that strikeout rate – arg. It’s a problem, and he exhibited the same problem in the minor leagues (25.7%). Even once the BABIP (.239) regresses next year, Espinosa will be a batting average risk.
Espinosa famously began his career with three home runs in his first five games and six in his first month, but how much power will he show over a full season? He hit a good amount of groundballs (45.8%), but his one-to-one groundball-to-flyball ratio is not going to keep him from showing power (Adrian Gonzalez and Ryan Zimmerman showed the same ratio this year). His minor league ISO (.185) seems to suggest that he can exhibit at least average power, if not the .233 ISO he put up in his debut.
Though he didn’t steal a base in his debut, Espinosa averaged about 24 stolen bases per full season in the minor leagues and has good wheels. Add in his average power and batting average risk, and you have another flawed Nationals’ middle infielder that can help late in 2011 mixed-league drafts. Espinosa had the more stable progression through the minor leagues, showed more power and on-base abiiity, but plays the easier position to fill. In OBP leagues, at least, he’s the obvious play between the two.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Espinosa has a much, much better glove as a SS and the Nationals insistence on playing Desmond there *feels* like a case of keeping Ian happy and hoping that the bat offsets the poor defense. Nats fans can only hope that in Spring Training they’ll have an open competition at both spots and make Desmond earn his job for 2011.
Completely agreed.
Plus as a Dynasty League owner of Espinosa he loses almost all value to me if he plays 2B so maybe I’m a bit biased…
Perhaps I am misunderstanding Pizza Cutter’s article, but doesn’t he say that the reliability figures referenced in this article with regard to Espinosa are group-level data? He specifically gives reliability figures for individual players, which are much higher. Applying group-level data to an individual would be a fallacy of the wrong level.
You are correct. I looked at the wrong place, and actually thought they were a little low. Here are the numbers I was accustomed to seeing, on the individual level, which suggest that he was still close on K%, but that GB/FB and BB% were much shorter of the benchmarks. Still, I feel comfortable saying that K% will be a bit of an issue for him.
50 PA – swing percentage
100 PA – contact rate, response bias (both just missed at 50… the real number is probably around 70)
150 PA – K rate, line drive rate, pitches/PA
200 PA – BB rate, grounder rate, GB/FB ratio
250 PA – flyball rate
300 PA – HR rate, HR/FB
If you look closely at Desmond’s defense, you’ll see that it’s not at all as bad as it appears.
Yes, his UZR was -8.8 for the season, but this was due in large part to his league worst ErrR (-10.5, 34 total errors). Adam Dunn’s glove didn’t do him any favors, so if Dunn isn’t at 1B next year, you can expect his UZR jump several points just because of that. Secondly, Desmond seems to have adjusted somewhat defensively as the season went on, witnessed by his 20 errors in the first half of the season and 14 in the 2nd half.
I’d expect next season, with almost 200 major league games under his belt, you’ll see Desmond’s error total will be closer to 20, which would cause his UZR to climb to somewhere around -3.
That’s pretty much my own assessment of his defense. The range “appears” fine and the arm is adequate although neither tool is better than average. Most of his problems seemed to be a failure to field it cleanly. As such, I disagree with Sue and hope that the Nats will give him at least one more season to improve before considering a flip flop with Espinosa. I think the stability increases his chances of settling in. The Nats already have their eye firmly locked on 2012 as “Year 1” so 2011 is just another year to build.
Of course, my own scouting report is gleaned from maybe 10 games so it’s hardly reliable. Moving to the DC metro area seriously reduced my consumption of Nationals games since my laptop is my television and MLB.TV has its asinine rules.
Will, you’re wrong.
Even if Desmond had zero throwing errors this year, he’d still be 3rd in the MLB in errors. He was that bad.
Just another person looking to blame Dunn for something that isn’t his fault.
I beg to differ. I don’t think I’m “wrong”. I said, “I’d expect next season, with almost 200 major league games under his belt, you’ll see Desmond’s error total will be closer to 20”
I don’t know if you watched many Nationals games, but I can think of several instances where Dunn botched the play with bad positioning or glove work, but the error went to Desmond.
If you factor Dunn’s bad glovework, and Desmond’s adaptation to the league, witnessed by his drop in errors over the second half of the season, I think you’ll see a substantial drop in errors, which will see his UZR rise quite bit. I never said he’d be a plus defender, only that his defense isn’t quite -9 bad.
I’m not sure why you’re so defensive of Dunn, yet so critical of Desmond. They’re pretty much identical defensively. They had decent range, but committed far too many errors, which caused their total UZR to drop quite a bit. Dunn had the second most errors among 1B this year. Maybe that’s not Dunn’s fault either?
Sadly, I watched nearly all of the Nationals games this year. I had to suffer through Bob, Ray and Rob for far too long, but that’s beside the point.
My point is, you blamed Dunn for most of Desmond’s fielding problems. Even if there was a perfect 1B in 2010, Desmond would still have had quite a few throwing errors as a couple came when he was throwing to second, and a few throws to first were so far off target no one in baseball could have caught them.
Earlier this year, I went back and counted, and Dunn was reasonably responsible for about five or six of Desmond’s throwing errors which is less than half of his throwing errors total, and less than 1/5 of his errors total.
Can Desmond improve? Absolutely… but I think a switch of Espinosa/Desmond would do the Nats and each other a favor. Throws from 2B are much easier to make, thus Desmond would cut down on the errors, and, Espinosa has shown more range/batting profile of a SS than Desmond ever has.
All three are flawed players… so why not make the best of the situation you can, and flip-flop Desmond and Espinosa.
And, oh yeah, re-sign Dunn!
Lintyfresh I disagree. You forget the psychological effects of having a bad defensive first basemen. If your a middle infielder and you think your first basemen has a dreadful glove that will alter how you catch and throw. You will tend to try harder to make perfect throws and you will never really relax when you know the ball has to go to first. That alone will lead to more errors than you would have made if you believed in your first baseman and relaxed. Plus, most would not be throwing errors but rather plays resulting from you calculating how to adjust for the first basemen before actually catching the ball. IE dropped balls, failing to get it out of your glove, misplays caused by trying to get different positioning so you can make a certain throw that would be easier to catch, etc.
For an example of my point look at Beliiards 2009 defensive numbers over at fanbgraphs. His UZR went up dramatically after he went from Washington to LA. WHY? he was the same guy equally as healthy. He just had Loney rather than Dunn at first.
NatsFan – Dunn was a full-time first baseman for about a month when Belliard was traded in 2009 (8/31/09). Most of his bad UZR with the Nats in ’09 was piled up throwing to Nick.
Also, if the psychological effect of throwing to Dunn was tough on the infielders, you’d expect it to show in the stats of Zimmerman, Gonzalez, Guzman, and Kennedy. Looking at this site’s stats, I don’t see much of a change in Zimmerman and Guzman, and I see improvement in Kennedy and Gonzalez.
I think you may be overstating the psychological effect of throwing to Dunn. Some have even said that, relative to the shorter and not very mobile guys (Dmitri, Ronnie B, Nick J) who played first in 2007 – early ’09, the taller target seemed to be easier to throw to for Zimmerman. Less of a chance of air mailing it. It is offset by Dunn’s difficulties stretching and scooping, and should a Pena come on board, it’ll help Desmond for sure, but I don’t think you can say much of his throwing problem was the Dunn effect. As you (or others) point out, Desmond became less error pronet later in 2010, and that can’t be attributed to a change in first basemen.
Rizzo’s from the old school and trusts his eyes and his scouts a bit more than numbers, and they apparently think that Espinosa’s infield actions aren’t good enough to last at short. Sorry I can’t provide linkage.
To hear the Nats tell it, they think Desmond’s range is well above average. Having watched most of their games, I thought he got to his left very well, and Zimmerman’s range is so good that it presumably cuts into Desmond’s chances to that side (or at least alters the way they play defense, w/ Desmond focusing more on his left than his right). Obviously, the stats don’t agree with this yet, but he hasn’t had a long career of stats to look at yet.
Totally disagree on the tepid offensive projections. Espinosa is one of the first players drafted in 2008 to play in MLB. His bat was not expected to be this good, and he has made some adjustments with more to come. I think he’s going to provide plus power and speed over there, but his avg. is probably never going to be good.
Desmond was super raw coming out of high school, and the light went on two years ago. Athletes who are that raw don’t make it to MLB at a high rate, and they almost always get moved off SS. This context is important in my opinion. The errors will decline, the range should increase as he continues to adjust to the league, the walk rate will increase (as it did in the high minors), and there is more power, maybe a lot more.
I’m not discounting the stats, but there is all kinds of video on these guys over at MLB.com. If you checked it out and saw some of the shots Desmond hit this year as a rookie who struggled very badly at times, I think it could help the analysis a bit.