John Dewan
and company at Baseball Info Solutions announced their winners for the 2011 Fielding Bible awards.
And just like the Gold Gloves, the Twins were once again shut out. However some members of the
team actually received a scattering of votes including Denard Span, Ben Revere,
Joe Mauer, Drew Butera and Nick
Blackburn.
To me, the
most surprising to see was Span.
A year ago,
Span was completely left off of the list. At that time, I
was somewhat flabbergasted by the development. While Span did not look
entirely comfortable out in center field for the first time, he still managed
to put up respectable fielding numbers (including by Dewan’s own accounting
system, the Plus/Minus). Frankly, I felt as if he were a top ten defender
despite all of the miscues.
One of the
reasons Span had difficulties in the field in 2010 was his new environs. A Twins
insider told me during last offseason that Span struggled at Target Field as
the alleged wind current that helps push fly balls back onto the field in the right-center
gap also affected plenty of other fly balls on the field. This was difficult
for Span to adjust to. Without the home/road UZR split that was once available at
Fangraphs.com, there’s no way of seeing if that was indeed an influential
factor.
Limited to
585 innings in the field in 2011, Span looked much improved in his fielding. Based
on observation, he appeared more confident playing the in-between flies and
captained the outfield much better. The metrics also support this. According to
the revised zone rating, a number similar to fielding percentage which
calculates the number of plays a center fielder should make in a designated
zone, Span had his jump from .935 in ’10 to a MLB-best .969 in ’11. He committed
just one error this past season versus four in 2010. In the end, his flawed yet
often telling UZR/150 stat shot up from 4.5 last year to 17.6 this season.
There’s no
question he was a better defender yet it is interesting how he went from zero
consideration in 2010 – no votes at all among the 10-judge panel – to getting top
five nods, including a number three choice
from Bill James and one overall mark from the honorable Peter Gammons. To summarize,
the voters a year ago thought 22 other center fielders were more worthy of
Fielding Bible votes over him but this year he’s shot up to number one
in Gammons’ book.
While I don’t
begin to understand why exactly it is that Span went from an afterthought to a
frontrunner, I can speculate that the ones who did vote highly on Span likely
did so based on the aforementioned series of stats – the Revised Zone Rating
(RZR) and UZR/150. Fangraphs leaderboard has Denard Span leading all candidates
with a minimum of 500 innings in the RZR category and a somewhat distant third
in the UZR/150:
|
Center Fielders by UZR/150 (min 500 innings)
|
|||||
|
Name
|
Inn
|
RZR
|
OOZ
|
UZR
|
UZR/150
|
|
Carlos Gomez
|
569
|
0.918
|
61
|
12
|
27.5
|
|
Franklin Gutierrez
|
763
|
0.949
|
51
|
15.2
|
27.1
|
|
Denard Span
|
585.1
|
0.969
|
51
|
9
|
17.6
|
|
Andres Torres
|
776
|
0.95
|
62
|
8.7
|
17.3
|
|
Jacoby Ellsbury
|
1358.1
|
0.949
|
91
|
15.6
|
15.7
|
|
Ben Revere
|
776.1
|
0.948
|
81
|
8.5
|
15.1
|
|
Nyjer Morgan
|
724.2
|
0.935
|
73
|
7.1
|
13.4
|
(via Fangraphs.com)
Frankly, Span
looked good enough in 2010 to earn some top ten or top five votes. In limited
time in the field, he certainly displayed that type of play as well this year.
While the
outcome of his concussion is still a huge unknown – you can look no further
than teammate Justin Morneau to see how volatile it is – Span was able to come
back at the end of the season and log some playing time. That may be a positive
sign for 2012. If he is able to return to playing condition and perform this
well on the field in addition to providing pre-concussion offensive numbers
(.300/.367/.392 in 251 plate appearances), the Twins will have a very formidable
up-the-middle defender and top-of-the-lineup hitter
For more on
the Twins’ 2012 lineup and outlook, check out our TwinsCentric Offseason GMHandbook.
