The Red Sox have a very good defense
First the numbers. Fangraphs UZR has the Red Sox as the best defensive team in the AL with 38 runs saved above average, ahead of the Angels and Rays who are tied at +25. B-Ref’s TZ places the Sox in a dead heat for second with the Angels and Rays (all at about 28 runs saved above average), trailing the league leading Indians by about ten runs. The Red Sox have the 4th best Defensive Efficiency rating in the league, a .715 mark that places them in the middle of a crowd with the Indians, Mariners, Angels, and Rangers. The Rays lead the league at .730. I would bet that if you applied a park effect to those DefEff numbers, the Red Sox would be established solidly in second place.
The strength of the defense this year has been its stars – Ellsbury, Pedroia, and Gonzalez foremost – but also that it has no true weak points. Josh Reddick is a gold glove waiting to happen, Carl Crawford even in a down year is better than average, Youkilis, Scutaro and Lowrie have held their own, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s actually been surprisingly good. One thing I’ve noticed since he returned from the DL is that Crawford appears to be covering more ground in left than he did this spring. An outfield of Crawford-Ellsbury-Reddick is probably the best in all of baseball, defensively, especially if Crawford is getting his legs back and learning his field.
If part of what we call good pitching is actually good defense, then in the case of the 2011 Red Sox we might say that most of what we call passably mediocre pitching is actually good defense. One important reason why the Red Sox have been able to get by while spinning through their 7th to 17th depth starters is that these guys have been backed up by an excellent posse of fielders.
This also, I think, speaks to the respective MVP candidacies of Ellsbury, Pedroia, and Gonzalez. Those guys haven’t merely been the core of the best offense in the game, but they’ve also been partly responsible for carrying a pitching staff that has needed all the help it can get.
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1. Dave Cyprian Posted: August 09, 2011 at 07:22 PM (#3896406)What am I missing, or was this stat as full of #### as it seemed to me?
Reddick's been a pleasure to watch, too. His UZR/150 is crazy right now, but he looks pretty good out there, and aside from the occasional lapse in judgment or overthrown cutoff man which I'll chalk up to being young, he's been a plus fielder. Youkilis and Scutaro are really the only below average fielders on the team, and neither of them are terrible. Makes you wonder how they'd be doing with a healthy Buchholz and a non-awful Lackey.
As someone else said, Crawford continues to act like the walls are electrified.
I'm out of my depth trying to parse how good or bad it is.
He's looked a lot better as a hitter, too. I wonder how much of all this was just re-developing self-confidence as a major leaguer. Nice move getting him for three minor leaguers and cash, when the best of those three minor leaguers is a 20-year old A-ball pitcher who might eventually make it to the majors.
The current "Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency" stats at BPro adjust the Red Sox well above average raw DefEff to a below average park-adjusted DefEff. Based on Click's article, the cause of this must be that they have an very different park factor for Fenway now, one which considers Fenway an easy park in which to prevent hits on balls in play. Whatever that park factor is, it doesn't mesh well with the actually observed splits in BABIP for games in and outside of Fenway.
Ellsbury is a different defensive player this year. He is getting a MUCH better read on the ball off the bat. Dale's right, there haven't been a lot of spectacular catches but I think some of that is a function of Crawford alongside him and some of it is a function of him being in better position to get to the ball without any histrionics by virtue of better jumps.
In re Crawford's D: He hasn't looked good, it's just that he's an elite defender not looking good, making him merely above average so far this year, rather than one of the best in the league. At least, that's how it squares to me.
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