Gio Urshela: The Twins' Derek Jeter? Maybe.

Unfortunately, I haven't really watch the Twins, I have to depend on Gameday & radio. So I can't really say that Urshela is great or he's average. They call 3B, "the hot  corner" for a reason. On the video the rocket that was just to the right of him where he had to try to back hand it, is very difficult. Many can't make that play, a few get lucky but very few can make that play regularly.

I'm not up on analytics but I imagine -17 OAA is not good.I can't trust this stat because this is the best & deepest defensive team we've had for a very long time. I agree with you that many make routine out look  spectacular while Buxton makes spectacular plays look routine. The only weak link we have is Arraez but he's at a position where range isn't that important.

If I can't trust this stat on a team basis, I can't trust it on an individual basis either.

You can't trust defensive metrics because they don't agree with your eye test - which you say is very limited because you haven't watched the Twins?  Seems more like you just want to hope the defense is better than metrics tell you it is.

This is a great article on how the eye test can be deceiving when it comes to defense in baseball.  I long said Jeter was not nearly as good on defense as people thought.  He would make these flashy plays and that looks great, but you do not think about the plays they do not make that are not errors.  I remember watching a highlight video of outfield plays and someone commented that Jim Edmounds, who made some great diving catches, really was not that good on defense because he was slow and had less range that is why he had to dive so much.  Now I have not looked up to see if that was accurate, but the point is, sometimes making a diving highlight play does not mean you are good on defense, because a good defender may have made that play look easy.

Buck is a great defender, not just because he can make some diving plays, but because his range is crazy, and he gets great jumps, so he gets to balls most will not even get to.  That is also why when I see errors for infielders in minor leagues, I always say, we do not know what kind of errors they are if you did not see them.  Joe Crede one year led league in errors at third, but was considered best defender by runs saved. 

This is because players with great range sometimes will get errors on throws when they try to make plays they can, but many others could not.  The play would be a hit plus an extra base.  A lessor defender would have not even been in place to make the throw.

Urshela makes the highlight plays, but I fully agree he has also not made many plays he could.  

What happens when Miranda is there?  Is it better, the same, or worse?  I see Lewis suggested and I want him to play again, but have no idea if he can do 3B.  After another long absence he will be back in St Paul for rehab at some point.  The Yankees wanted to tighten up the defense at SS and 3B and we provided them with the answers.  Now we have to examine our own options. 

, it’s worth wondering if third base isn’t a position where Royce Lewis could find some additional playing time when he returns from the injured list.

Interesting idea. Maybe so, but then what to do with Urshela? DH rotation?

This begs the longer view question of how FO wants to develop Lewis. I'd prefer they settle on his best projected position and let him play until he proves he can or cant. To me that is SS. Mid-season try-out at 3b just seems disruptive to the IF rotation and potentially counter-productive to his transition to MLB.

20/20 hindsight: This 3B issue conundrum goes back to the Escobar trade. 3.5 yrs on and the jury is out still on the trade, but Escobar is one of the most underrated players in mlb, Duran will need to have quite a career to balance out what the Twins lost since that trade.

1 hour ago, Doctor Gast said:

I'm not up on analytics but I imagine -17 OAA is not good.I can't trust this stat because this is the best & deepest defensive team we've had for a very long time. I agree with you that many make routine out look  spectacular while Buxton makes spectacular plays look routine. The only weak link we have is Arraez but he's at a position where range isn't that important.

If I can't trust this stat on a team basis, I can't trust it on an individual basis either.

The -17 OAA is for the infield only.  It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that Arraez at -7 (basically from his time at 3B) is the biggest negative contributor.   Then it's Urshela -5, and Sano, Miranda, and Correa at -2.  The Correa one seems most likely to be a small sample that will change.  As far as I can tell most every one else in the infield has been rated about average.

And actually, OAA probably shouldn't be used too heavily as a team stat like Petriello does because of the way that it does take into account player positioning.  I added up the DRS and OAA for the infield positions on Fangraphs at got -1 DRS and -16 OAA.  There is probably some noise in both stats that accounts for some of that big gap, but the other likely explanation is that the Twins infield as a whole has been a lot better than OAA says due to relatively better positioning than other teams.

On an individual basis, DRS has Urshela at 0 rather than -5 for OAA.  Again, the gap is probably not entirely positioning, but it's hard to argue that he's been a positive defensively.  It seems weird from the eye test but the article puts forth a pretty good case for why it's probably true, including a few examples where Urshela was not good using the eye test.

"Maybe Petriello looked at Urshela’s OAA profile before suggesting the issues, but it’s here that we see the numbers bear out belief. Urshela has generated -2 OAA when fielding a ball directly at him,"

This is where Simmons made the most errors last year, while making other impossible plays possible; maybe easy plays are too easy , therefore more likely to be errored on.

That was very interesting. Thanks Ted. I feel like Mark Twain when he wrote: "Figures often beguile me. There are lies, damned lies and statistics."  

4 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

What happens when Miranda is there?  Is it better, the same, or worse?  I see Lewis suggested and I want him to play again, but have no idea if he can do 3B.  After another long absence he will be back in St Paul for rehab at some point.  The Yankees wanted to tighten up the defense at SS and 3B and we provided them with the answers.  Now we have to examine our own options. 

I do not think the article is saying Urshela is our worst option, but it is pointing out that sometimes the eye plays tricks with big plays, when routine ones are not being made. Not saying Urshela is the worst option, but maybe not as good as old Dick likes to say. 

3 hours ago, Trov said:

I do not think the article is saying Urshela is our worst option, but it is pointing out that sometimes the eye plays tricks with big plays, when routine ones are not being made. Not saying Urshela is the worst option, but maybe not as good as old Dick likes to say. 

I did not mean to imply that he was the worst, but I still wonder how our replacements rank.

Defensive metrics are notoriously unreliable in small sample sizes; often needing multiple years of results to get a clear picture of how well a defender plays a position.

I pretty much consider RF/DRS to be garbage stats for infielders because they doesn't account for the shift. The result is the metrics artifcially increasing or decreasing a player's defensive contribution. Twins fans like DRS and RF because these stats inflate popular players who are poor defenders like Jorge Polanco.

UZR is a better, although still flawed, metric. It relies upon a scorer making a determination regarding whether or not a shift was on and only counts plays where the shift was not active. This means small sample sizes are actually even smaller. In my opinion, firmly relying upon UZR takes 2 full years of defensive play.

OAA is brand new to infielders as of 2021 and is a stathead's dream that records distances the fielder travels to get to balls, how fast the runner is advancing to whichever base and the distance the fielder has to throw, right down to where the fielder is positioned. I have a huge problem with how OAA adjusts for position though. i.e. Urshela would be treated as a shortstop (not a third baseman) if he was on a shift and playing where a shortstop would typically play. In my opinion, it's a major flaw in the metric when you're comparing players who play the same positions directly against one another. In other words, if the Twins heavily shifted to the first base side 100% of the time, Urshela's OAA would be judged against shortstops, not 3rd baseman. Unless I'm misunderstanding the metric (which is possible).

I, personally, like UZR/150 the most for infielders right now. It's not perfect, but with a few years of data to look back on, it seems like Urshela is probably an about average 3B.

14 hours ago, USAFChief said:

If Urshela is standing at SS 100% of the time, why WOULDN'T he be compared to shortstops?

OAA doesn't report Urshela as playing shortstop, even if they're comparing him against shortstops because he's lined up in an area a shortstop would normally play. If they're going to compare Urshela's play against shortstops, OAA should record Urshela's position as SS for the play. It doesn't.

Basically, OAA doesn't tell you anything of value about a heavily shifted 3rd baseman. Does it tell you how that shifted 3rd baseman performs against his peers in regard to defensive value? No. Isn't that how most people use defensive metrics?