This offseason's Mound Visits ended up being very defense driven. My first installment took a look at the worst ball and strike calls against the Pirates in 2019. I addressed the effects of pitch framing and catcher defense more directly when it became clear the Pirates were going to go with Jacob Stallings and another defensive catcher as their backstops. Shortly after Starling Marte was traded, there was an accompanying piece on if Bryan Reynolds could transition from left field to center. And finally, Baseball Savant released Outs Above Average (OAA) for infielders this winter, giving us not only a new tool to evaluate infield defense, but a new best tool.
When given this new wealth of information on infield defense, I immediately wrote about Colin Moran. Naturally. But in that article, I wrote I wanted to pen a separate piece for Adam Frazier and Kevin Newman, because they were also compelling cases worthy of an article, albeit in different ways.
According to Baseball Savant and Statcast, Frazier was one of the best defensive second basemen in baseball last year. Newman was one of the worst defensive shortstops, but with a tweak and some help from Frazier, I believe Newman could do much better in 2020 and help give the Pirates a solid defense up the middle.
Frazier had 11 OAA in 2019, the most among second basemen. Interestingly enough, according to Baseball Savant's data, Frazier did not improve that much in 2019. Instead, he really improved in 2018, when he started to get consistent playing time at second. In 2018, Frazier had an estimated success rate of fielding 90 percent of the plays within his range while at second, going based on the hit probability of those balls in play. He was successful 93 percent of the time, meaning he did marginally better. In 2019, he again had an estimated success rate of 90 percent and an actual success rate of 94 percent. He improved a little, but mostly he just got enough reps to prove he was worthy of being in the gold glove discussion.
Meanwhile, Newman had -8 OAA as a shortstop last year, the seventh-worst out of the 139 infielders with enough attempts to qualify. All told, he and Frazier combined to be an above-average middle infield defensively, +3 OAA, but in a very Jekyl- and-Hyde way.
The general consensus around Newman is he profiles better as a second baseman. In the event that Frazier is hurt or traded at some point, he likely will shift to second and Cole Tucker will take over shortstop. For now though, Newman is sticking at short, but like Moran, there may be a way to improve his defense by tweaking his positioning.
Let's take a look at Newman's OAA based on the batted ball's direction:
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