Rutschman vs Witt

[RZNJ]

9 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

It will be interesting to follow Witt's defensive development. I'm actually curious to know if toolsy prospects have come up and had really bad defensive numbers across the spectrum then suddenly got better with experience. If statcast is suggesting his lateral movement may not be good now, I'm skeptical that a 6-1, 200 pound 22-year old is going to get quicker. 

He'll be an interesting use case to use when our prospects come up and we get statcast data on them.

I would bet that Witt has put on some weight and some muscle in the last two years.  Some guys go from wiry to solid and lose that quickness.  His SB numbers are good though.  I remember seeing him in the minors.  He didn’t look strong but he was.  He looks like he filled out some.

[Frobby]

28 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Counter-counter point: there's a lot more down than up in a player's defensive career.  Everyone is unique, but I'd say 80-90% of players are better defenders at 22 than 28 and almost everyone is better at 28 than 35.

I bet if we had Statcast tracking for everything from Little League through the Majors we'd see that defense peaks at 20 or 22.

I guess I see defense as a combination of the athletic ability to get to balls and make throws, and the experience to know how to make or anticipate certain plays and avoid certain kinds of mistakes.  The former undoubtedly peaks at a young age; the latter develops over time.  I don’t think either part of that develops over time the same way for every player.  

I feel like I see a lot of shortstops who do a lot of stupid things when they first come up — making throws they shouldn’t attempt, throwing too quickly when it’s not necessary, getting ahead of themselves when starting a DP (like Henderson did while playing 2B on Monday), etc.  For many players, that settles down after a year or two.  
 

[Aristotelian]

I think 22 is probably not a bad baseline, but there is a ton of variation. Some guys are able to produce at a high level into their late 20's. 20 would surprise me, that would imply most guys are better defensively in the minors and are already in decline when they hit the majors. 

What little I've seen of Witt, he struck me as looking a little big for SS. Bregman comes to mind. Small sample but Fangraphs seems to dislike his range the most. 

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

I would bet that Witt has put on some weight and some muscle in the last two years.  Some guys go from wiry to solid and lose that quickness.  His SB numbers are good though.  I remember seeing him in the minors.  He didn’t look strong but he was.  He looks like he filled out some.

He’s tied for the major league lead in sprint speed, so I doubt quickness is an issue.  

[eddie83]

43 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think everyone expected Witt's defense to be better than we have seen this season.

Sure but Drungo is saying his range in the minors wasn’t great. Now we saw Jeter be great without range but still. 
 

Obviously a plus bat at SS is huge. I also wonder about his positioning. 

[Tony-OH]

One thing to note with Witt is that most of his negative OAA comes from playing 3B and 2B vs SS where he's just -1 OAA. He's actually been worth 2 OAA playing straight up but has been worth a little less when being asked to shade towards 3B or the 2B bag. With such a strong arm, it's strange that his worse area is in the 3B/SS hole.

I went to the filmroom and pulled up 9 of his errors at SS (one is him reaching on an error by a SS, sorry). It appears to me that his hands aren't that good. He makes a lot of unforced errors on pretty routine plays. Now it hard to use filmroom to find balls that got by him for singles while in the field which could help with range, but from error perspective, which does affect OAA, his hands has been his main culprit. The question is do hands improve with experience? 

https://www.mlb.com/video/00u7jzgkdtP9kH55c356/reels/bobby-witt-ss-errors

 

[RZNJ]

22 minutes ago, Frobby said:

He’s tied for the major league lead in sprint speed, so I doubt quickness is an issue.  

Sprint speed underway is different than first step quickness or lateral movements but maybe he has both.

 

[Tony-OH]

11 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Sprint speed underway is different than first step quickness or lateral movements but maybe he has both.

 

For a very short time, statcast was putting those defensive numbers for infielders on their site but took them down. I'm assuming they were not accurate. it would be nice though if they re-added them while also adding in peak throwing speeds for outfielders and infielders. The Ranges screwed us all by hiring Baseball Savant creator Daren Willman away from MLB.

Statcast has shown no growth since his departure.

[Riggodrill44]

32 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

Sure but Drungo is saying his range in the minors wasn’t great. Now we saw Jeter be great without range but still. 
 

Obviously a plus bat at SS is huge. I also wonder about his positioning. 

Jeter was never a good defender. He made some spectacular plays that the media played up.

Yankees would have been better if AROD played short.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Riggodrill44

[deward]

19 minutes ago, Riggodrill44 said:

Jeter was never a good defender. He made some spectacular plays that the media played up.

Yankees would have been better if AROD played short.

Yep, Jeter was wildly overrated on defense

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I guess I see defense as a combination of the athletic ability to get to balls and make throws, and the experience to know how to make or anticipate certain plays and avoid certain kinds of mistakes.  The former undoubtedly peaks at a young age; the latter develops over time.  I don’t think either part of that develops over time the same way for every player.  

I feel like I see a lot of shortstops who do a lot of stupid things when they first come up — making throws they shouldn’t attempt, throwing too quickly when it’s not necessary, getting ahead of themselves when starting a DP (like Henderson did while playing 2B on Monday), etc.  For many players, that settles down after a year or two.  
 

That's all probably true.  But I think that range is the most important thing, and it's mostly reaction time, quickness, and sprint speed. That might peak at 16 or 18.  I'm pretty sure my boys, 14 and 15, are as fast and are way quicker than I was at any point in my 20s.  And I wasn't slow.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

He’s tied for the major league lead in sprint speed, so I doubt quickness is an issue.  

But what's his acceleration?  A big truck with a 700 hp engine might be about as fast as a Porsche, but it ain't getting there as quickly.

Actually the data is there on Statcast.  He's 117th in 20 foot sprint speed, 45th in 40 foot, 48th in 60 foot, and 6th in 90 foot.  That tells me he doesn't accelerate particularly fast, but has a high top end.

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

But what's his acceleration?  A big truck with a 700 hp engine might be about as fast as a Porsche, but it ain't getting there as quickly.

Actually the data is there on Statcast.  He's 117th in 20 foot sprint speed, 45th in 40 foot, 48th in 60 foot, and 6th in 90 foot.  That tells me he doesn't accelerate particularly fast, but has a high top end.

Or, it tells you he’s a right handed batter. He may be 117th overall at 20 feet, but among RHB, he’s 21st.  Still not elite, but 93rd percentile among RHB.

[eddie83]

4 hours ago, Riggodrill44 said:

Jeter was never a good defender. He made some spectacular plays that the media played up.

Yankees would have been better if AROD played short.

I was saying he was great as an overall player. I should have been more clear I wasn’t referring to his glove 

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, deward said:

Yep, Jeter was wildly overrated on defense

He was a surprisingly good shortstop for a left fielder.