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Luis Arraez was a human adrenaline shot for the 2019 Minnesota Twins, providing 2.1 fWAR in 92 games. That value was driven nearly entirely from his .334/.399/.439 slash line, which amounted to a 125 wRC+ and comparisons to Tony Gwynn. Arraez is clearly mature beyond his years with his ability to handle the bat, but his defense is among the team's worst. Earlier versions of this Defense Evaluation series summarized the two position players that had the least defensive value in 2019 - Eddie Rosario in the outfield, and Jorge Polanco as an infielder. Luis Arraez was both in 2020, logging 130 innings in LF, and 555 innings across three infield positions (2B, SS, and 3B). Arraez has to be evaluated differently than Rosario and Polanco, as his versatility created four smaller sample sizes. Even with that caveat, there are still troubling signs to be taken from his 2019 defensive performance that could lead to greater negative impact with his new role as the 2020 starting second baseman. Luis Arraez in 390 innings at 2B (-4.8 Def, -8 DRS, -22.6 UZR/150, -6 OAA) I'll begin with evaluating Arraez's primary position of second base. FanGraphs is no fan of Arraez at this position, with a brutal -8 DRS and -22.6 UZR/150. Among all second basemen that had at least 350 innings, Arraez had the second worst UZR/150, trailing only Isan Diaz of Miami. His DRS was tied for the third-lowest, along with Dee Gordon and Rougned Odor. One deeper component of his defensive rating was his -3.1 RngR (range runs), where he also ranked for third lowest among second basemen with at least 350 innings played. Statcast is in line with FanGraph's assessment of Arraez at second base. In the new infield outs above average (OAA) metric that debuted last week, Arraez was tied for the 7th lowest OAA among infielders with -6 in limited innings. Other second basemen with -6 OAA were Jason Kipnis and old friend Brian Dozier. As I pointed out in the Jorge Polanco evaluation, the most concerning part about the new Statcast data is how the Twins infield is playing to each other's weaknesses rather than strengths. FanGraphs and Statcast both point out that Arraez has an issue with range at second base, and the chart below shows where Arraez struggles the most. Nearly all of the negative outs above average Arraez collected in 2019 were to his left, in the direction of Jorge Polanco and his -16 OAA. Polanco also has a negative -3 OAA mark when he fields a ball towards Arraez. According to my Minnesota Math (first and last Blyleven reference, I promise), adding two negatives creates a larger negative. Balls heading up the middle may spell disaster for the 2020 Twins infield. Statcast does deem Arraez do be above average when fielding balls behind him, and I can recall a few times last season when he scampered on pop-ups in shallow center field that impressed me. However, it's still a very negative light to have -6 OAA in 390 innings played. His weakness of range coincides with Polanco's lateral inabilities, making the up-the-middle infield defense a huge question mark for next season. Luis Arraez across other positions - 161 innings in LF (-0.5 Def, 0 DRS, 3.6 UZR/150, -3 OAA) - 130 innings at 3B (0.8 Def, 1 DRS, 7.8 UZR/150, -1 OAA) - 35 innings at SS (-0.3 Def, -1 DRS, -30.8 UZR/150, 0 0AA) I'll summarize brief findings about the other positions Arraez appeared at last season, as there isn't a large amount of innings to declare most things definitive. Arraez was forced into left field when Rosario spent some time on the IL, and learned on the fly. There were definitely some moments when he looked look a guy that was faking it until he was making it. FanGraphs wasn't extremely critical of Arraez the outfielder, as he had a positive UZR/150 in left field. Statcast rated him -3 OAA as a left fielder, with -2 OAA coming on balls hit back, which lines up with some plays I can recall Arraez retreating towards the wall. I'm fairly confident that if he played more innings in left field, more metrics would reflect Arraez as a below average outfielder. Arraez as a shortstop should be merely glossed over. He had a whopping 35 innings that resulted in a very poor UZR even with the small sample size. If there are concerns about Arraez as a second baseman, it doesn't make a large amount of sense to make him a fit at shortstop, beyond a potential injury replacement. Third base is probably the most intriguing position for Arraez. He doesn't have the strongest arm in the world, but FanGraphs rated his 130 innings as slightly positive with a cumulative 0.8 Defense Runs Above Average (Def), and a 7.8 UZR/150. Statcast had Arraez at -1 OAA at third, but that was significantly better than his OAA in left field and second base. So where should Arraez play? Going forward, Arraez will provide plenty of future value with his ability to make contact and get on base. His versatility came into play when injuries struck the 2019 team, but it isn't safe to bank on Arraez as a plus defender at any position he plays. It's always a benefit to have options, even if he isn't gold glove caliber anywhere across the diamond. Unfortunately, it appears the Twins are reducing his versatility in 2020 by placing him as the full time second baseman. Arraez will be at the position where he had the worst grading from both FanGraphs and Statcast, and where his ability to range toward Polanco is greatly limited. However, with less than one year of experience under his belt, it makes sense to try Arraez out at the position he played throughout the minor leagues. The benefits of keeping Arraez at second base are increased stability for the player, and the chance that he still improves at his young age. Looking at the roster, there are larger holes to plug than second base. However, in my post about Polanco, I proposed an infield game of musical chairs based on reducing the negative impact of Polanco's -16 OAA performance at shortstop. 3B - mix of Gonzalez/Arraez (with the other taking a place in multi-positional musical chairs) SS - new defensively skilled acquisition to be named later 2B - Polanco 1B - Sano I'll continue to plug this alignment if the Twins fail to sign Josh Donaldson. From the perspective of Arraez, this infield positioning would bring two benefits. Having shared duty with Gonzalez at third base would maintain his valuable versatility, while ensuring the bulk of his innings appear at the position where he was arguably graded most favorably. Arraez is still young and still has to gain a large amount of innings at various positions before we can be 100% confident about his future defensive ability. It's highly unlikely that Arraez isn't starting at second base on opening day. His bat will provide enough value at the keystone position, but the Twins shouldn't rule out the prospect of keeping Arraez as a versatile multi-positional everyday player.

With all of the questions the Minnesota Twins have had surrounding most of their team over the past few years, one area of the team that has been steady has been the outfield. Sure, Byron Buxton has had his fair share of issues with the bat and staying healthy, but there has never been a question about him being the Twins center fielder, when healthy, thanks to his seemingly superhuman abilities to chase down flyballs. Additionally, the play of both Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler in the corners has given the Twins great stability. One of the hallmarks of this trio has been the great defense that they play collectively. However, while Buxton and Kepler have been able to maintain their high levels of defensive play, Eddie Rosario has taken a big step backward this year.I will start this article by saying, I am only referencing fielding metrics generated by Statcast that are available on Baseball Savant. While many of the defensive metrics on sites like Fangraphs and Baseball Reference could be helpful, they are, at least for outfielders, outdated, and nowhere near as accurate for measuring an outfielder’s ability to track down flyballs as Statcast is. The reason for this is that Statcast actually tracks player and ball movements to quantify the time and distance that an outfielder has to track down a flyball, and calculates catch expectancy from that. Other metrics, like UZR and DRS, rely on the eye test from humans, which is a much less precise process. If you would like to read more about how the Statcast fielding metrics are calculated, you can do so here. That being said, let’s start diving into the numbers. We will start by looking at Eddie Rosario’s expected catch percentage vs. his actual catch percentage. So far this year Rosario has an expected catch percentage of 86 percent. That is to say, an average outfielder would catch 86 percent of the fly balls hit to Eddie Rosario this year. However, Rosario’s actual catch percentage stands at just 81 percent, giving Rosario a catch percent added of -5 percent. While this might not sound like a lot, it actually is. Among the 97 outfielders who have fielded at least 50 fly balls this year, only four outfielders have an expected catch percent added worse than Rosario's. This is a severe drop off from the +2 percent, -1 percent and -1 percent, that Rosario averaged in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively. Using these metrics, we can calculate Eddie Rosario’s outs above average. How this metric works is, if you have a fly ball hit to you that has a 75 percent catch probability, and you catch it, you get credit for 0.25 outs above average on that opportunity. However, if you fail to catch it, you get credit for -0.75 outs above average on that opportunity. In 2019, Rosario’s outs above average currently stands at -9 outs, which is on pace for 13.5 outs below average. For comparison, Byron Buxton currently has an outs above average of 12, which means Rosario has negated 75 percent of the value Buxton brings in the field defensively with his play in the field. So, what has caused Eddie Rosario to experience such a drastic drop off, from roughly league average outfielder, to one of the worst defensive outfielders in baseball? For that, we will need to dive even deeper. We will start by looking at Rosario’s sprint speed, which is another metric tracked by Statcast. This year, Rosario’s average sprint speed is 27.2 feet per second, which is roughly league average. However, from 2016 through 2018, Rosario averaged 28.0 feet per second. Again, for comparison, Byron Buxton’s sprint speed this year is 30.3 feet per second, so a 0.8 feet per second drop is a significant decline. However, there is more to being a good outfielder than just being able to run fast, though that does help a lot. Getting a good jump on the ball, getting up to speed quickly, and taking a good route to the ball are all important factors in being good at tracking down fly balls. Luckily, thanks to the player movement tracking technology, via Statcast, we can measure each of those factors, using some newly introduced metrics referred to as Reaction, Burst, and Route. We will start by looking at reaction, which measure the amount of ground an outfielder covers in the first 1.5 seconds after the pitch is thrown. From 2016 through 2018, Eddie Rosario measured in at 0.3 feet above the MLB average in reaction. However, in 2019 Rosario is at -0.8 feet below average in that initial reaction stage. The next metric we will look at is burst. Burst measures the feet that an outfielder covers from the 1.6 second mark, to the 3 second mark of the play. In other words, how fast the outfielder is accelerating. Again, looking back from 2016 through 2018, Rosario averaged 0.0 feet above average in burst, or exactly league average. That number has fallen all the way down to 1.2 feet below average in 2019. The final metric that we will look at is route, which measures the outfielder’s route efficiency, and how many extra feet they are needing to run by taking a poor route. From 2016 through 2018, Rosario gained 0.2 feet, per opportunity, on the average MLB outfielder due to taking good routes. In 2019, Rosario is gaining 0.3 feet per route above the average MLB outfielder. It is apparent that Rosario has taken a considerable step backward in not just sprint speed, but in his all-around athletic skills as well. So, the question is, how much has this hurt Rosario? The table below breaks down how many feet Rosario is losing, on a per fly ball basis, from where he was in the three previous seasons. Download attachment: Eddie Rosario Fielding Metrics.PNG The first thing to note from this table is the Feet Gained for the Feet Per Second category is multiplied by two, and there is a reason for this. For starters, the average fly ball is in the air for just shy of five seconds (4.97 seconds, to be exact), hence, the feet per second drop off is amplified the longer the ball is in the air. However, feet per second is measured while a player is at max speed, not while he is accelerating. Since it typically takes about three seconds between the release of the pitch, and the moment the fielder reaches max speed, the feet per second is not factored in until after that point. Therefore, the average fly ball hang time of five seconds, minus the three seconds it takes to reach max speed, gives us an average of two seconds at max speed per fly ball. After taking that into consideration, we can calculate the rest of the factors, and see that Eddie Rosario’s ability to track down a fly ball has gone down by an average of four feet per fly ball. While on most fly balls, four feet won’t make much of a difference, over the course of a season, the number of fly balls where the extra four feet would make the difference starts to add up. Knowing this, the Twins need to ask themselves, is this something they can work with Eddie Rosario on? Has he simply lost a step athletically that he might not recover, or is Rosario simply having an off season in the field? Whatever the answer is, it is important for the Twins to work with Rosario, so they can either help him improve, or start to factor in this decline for their future evaluations of Rosario as an all-around player. Click here to view the article

With all the technological advancements made in baseball, its easy to get lost in the mess. There's new stats that make zero sense to some people, but the issue is just understanding what they tell us. Batting average and ERA are easy to grasp. What percentage of this batter's at-bats have resulted in hits? How many earned-runs does this pitcher give up on average in 9 innings? These are how we read stats, because they answer our questions. So what question does launch angle and exit velocity answer? "It just shows how hard a player hits the ball.", is an answer that makes me cringe because its so far from the truth. Yes, it is used to see who's hitting the ball the hardest, but that's not a question we need answered. The question shouldn't be "how hard can he hit it?", rather we should be asking "how well does he hit it?" and "how often does he hit it well?". What makes for a well hit ball? The magic numbers lie between 10 to 30 degrees. Batted balls that are hit at these angles off the bat have the greatest chance to fall for a hit (or better yet home runs). Why does this matter? Because if a player is able to hit a ball consistently this way, he will have more hits (higher batting average for those who will never be convinced that Statcast is a good thing). Even if a guy can't hit the ball 100+ mph, he can have success with a good launch angle. There is an opposite end of the Statcast love-hate spectrum. Those that gush over exit velocity and nothing else. This group of people are just as bad, if not worse, than Statcast haters. This is the over excitable group that is driving the non-believers away. Don't get me wrong, I love it when guys hit 110+ mph moonshots. But if a guy hits a ball 100 mph and grounds out to third, its just a ground out. Launch angle should be the most important thing we look at when it comes to analyzing hitters. Is it okay for players to have low launch angles? Absolutely! Dee Gordon is wasting his time if he's trying to lift the ball over the fence because he's built and has the ability to slap the ball up the middle and leg out singles. For players like Mookie Betts or Chris Taylor, launch angle is extremely important because they lack size and and blazing speed. Betts (5'9" 180lbs) and Taylor (6'1" 190lbs) look the exact opposite of power hitters, but they are still able to hit 20+ homers a year. Chris Taylor is a perfect example of a player that revived his career by improving his average launch angle. Below are his average launch angle, average exit velocity, % of batted balls hit between 15 and 30 degrees, along with his corresponding stats. 2015 and 2016 Avg. Launch Angle............................11.0 deg. Avg. Exit Velocity...............................86.6 mph Stats: .187/.236/.277 2017 and 2018 Launch Angle....................................12.0 deg. Exit Velocity.......................................87.1 mph Stats: .281/.344/.488 It took just a 1 degree increase in average launch angle and 0.5 mph increase in average exit velocity to go from a -1.0 WAR player to a 4.9 WAR player. Chris Taylor is not the only example either. Here is another example, this time looking at Anthony Rendon. This was a player who was already a solid hitter who was able to progresses even more. 2015 and 2016 Avg. Launch Angle............................14.5 deg. Avg. Exit Velocity...............................90.5 mph Stats: .268/.346/.419 WAR: 4.4 2017 and 2018 Launch Angle....................................18.2 deg. Exit Velocity.......................................89.6 mph Stats: .300/.399/.521 WAR: 6.0 Rendon's improvements also show us that a slight decrease in average exit velocity does not cause is drop in offensive production. Rendon also increased his average launch angle by 3.7 degrees and had a huge jump in offensive value, making him one of the most underrated third basemen in the MLB. In closing, if I was not able to change anyone's mind about the use of Statcast data, I hope I was able to prove that this information has a place in the game. Radar guns were once seen as overrated too when collecting data on pitchers.