2010 in Review: Shortstop

Well, let’s see how he responds. By all accounts, he had a poor year defensively and offensively , and interrupted by injury. Hopefully not all of our players have their career year at 23.

Seems to me like we all thought that because he was a good defensive 2b and he came up at SS that he must be even better there.

Yeah, that hasn’t happened.

Was this part of a plan to get offensive production from the right end of the defensive spectrum? Jhonny was a perfect example of such thinking: tolerable (and reliable) defensively, but an offensive force. You sacrifice defense (especially at the right end) but you gain offense from typically offense-challenged positions. A gloveman at catcher or shortstop would seem to run contrary to the thinking of Shapiro.

Yeah, even though he played shortstop through the minors, he looked a lot more comfortable at second.

UZR is one of the better ones, but how can you rely on it when it consistently has head-scratching inconsistencies? How can you quote UZR as a meaningful index for player X and then parenthetically note that, "bizarrely, UZR had the famously slow of foot player Y as having much better range", when you know for a fact that it isn’t true?

That’s why I mentioned the inconsistency. I don’t think UZR is infallible, heck I mention that just about every time I use it in a post. It’s the best free “objective” defensive measure out there, and I’ll say whether or not my subjective eye test agrees with it or not.

UZR had Peralta as a below-average fielder from 2004-2008. Only in 2009 did the rating go positive, and that might have been because of a small amount of playing time at the position. Conversely, I though Cabrera’s range was pretty good in 2009, and pretty bad this year. I don’t think the injury had much to do with his range, it was more conditioning than anything. I think he still has the ability to play the position.

How do you “know” it isn’t true?

If a guy looked great to you at the plate but had a 670 OPS, would you say that OPS was a bad stat?

If UZR “consistently has head-scratching inconsistencies,” it may be in part because defensive performance (or play outcomes which are not entirely indicative of raw performance) is itself very unstable, and perhaps UZR merely reflects that fact.

So the metrics are right when they agree with you? I’m not sure that is what we are going for. There are problems with how we quantify defense, but I don’t think the goal of quantifiable defensive metrics is to get them to agree with what we already think.

Ummm…no

Here is Jay’s summary of the scouting report on Cabrera at the time we acquired him (my emphasis added):

Signed out of Venezuela in 2002, Cabrera is considered a defensive wizard, and Baseball America named him the Mariners’ sixth-best prospect to start the season. He’s spent 2.5 seasons in the minors at shortstop and one at second base, dazzling scouts at both positions and always at or near the top in fielding percentage. The rushed development and position flips have been the result of a crowded picture in Seattle’s middle infield; Cabrera has been progressing through the minors alongside fellow shortstop prospect Adam Jones, just four months older, and the Mariners signed Cuban defector Yuniesky Betancourt as a major-league shortstop in the offseason.

At age 17, Cabrera was an All-Star shortstop in the Venezuelan Summer League, and he made another All-Star team in the low-A Northwest League despite being the league’s youngest starter at 18. While Cabrera’s recent numbers suggest a weak bat, on any given day, only a handful of 20-year-olds are playing above Single-A, anywhere in the country. This season, Cabrera has been striking out once every four at bats, but at lower (more age-typical) levels, his peripherals were solid. Notably, he has maintained a .10 walk rate since the start of 2005, even as he was promoted four levels in one year. Cabrera becomes the youngest player on the Buffalo roster by more than two years, and one of only three Bisons under 25.

The Indians have been painfully bereft of solid middle-infield prospects since Jhonny Peralta and Brandon Phillips ascended to the majors. Acquiring Cabrera addresses this problem but also seems rather pointedly aimed at the Indians’ infield defense issues. That said, it seems unlikely the Indians would deem Cabrera a solid contender for a starting job in 2007; he seems unfinished. That said, the Indians face several middle infield problems for 2007 — including Ron Belliard’s likely departure and Peralta’s newfound defensive yips — and Cabrera might reasonably solve any number of them.

Go back and look up scouting reports of Cabrera in the minors and you’ll see the above summary is correct.