The days of the big steroid sluggers are over; pitching and fielding are the new skills that will bring baseball players success. Over the last few months, these are the ideas championed by the national media. Teams such as the Boston Red Sox and the Seattle Mariners have received huge amounts of both publicity and praise for placing more emphasis on these finesse skills as they built their teams for this season.
Both teams have also affirmed their commitment to using sabermetrics to judge players, rather than merely using traditional scouting; this new focus has been met with similar commendations. However, the results of the young season have not borne out the success that many promised would follow implementing these new methods.
Currently, the Red Sox have proved to be just plain bad on defense. Many of their new defenders, such as shortstop Marco Scutaro, actually have posted awful defensive statistics. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) is the metric that the team has been promoting as a way to accurately measure a player?s defensive prowess, and yet, players such as Scutaro have posted negative UZRs so far. This indicates that they?re actually a liability on defense. Perhaps if the team had relied on the opinion of scouts, who have long said that Scutaro is a very mediocre defender who was aided by the skill of his former teammates, the Red Sox may not have agreed to pay him $12.5 million over the next two years.
The fact remains that, while statistics can be an extremely useful part of predicting a player?s future performance, they can only ever provide a small part of their evaluation. This is especially borne out with Boston?s third baseman Adrian Beltre.Beltre was signed mostly for his defense, yet has committed seven errors this season, most in the league at his position. While the statistics may have been positive, it?s impossible to truly to predict how a player will respond to a move to a new city such as Boston, where media pressure can be overwhelming, after mostly operating in obscurity.
Additionally, the team has overlooked the fact that their catcher, Victor Martinez, has only thrown out seven out of 40 potential base stealers, good for worst in the entire league. He only starts because of his hitting, directly contradicting their claims that they wouldn?t devalue defense in favor of offense.
Aside from the poor individual performances, the team has struggled as a whole as well. The team currently sits at 18-17, with Tampa Bay, New York and even Toronto ahead of them in the division.
The real problem is that too many teams have become too dependent on only one approach; some refuse to accept the new statistical revolution. Clearly, the best approach is cautiously embrace statistics, but still use traditional scouting. The season is still young, and many things will change in many ways, but perhaps it?s too soon to declare the sabermetricians perfect quite yet.