Sunday Thoughts: Pirates defensive track record, Naylor vs Horwitz, Guardians making moves
Carlos Santana signing with the Cleveland Guardians got me thinking about team defense, especially for the Pirates.
Since 2020, Santana has been one of the better defensive first basemen in all of baseball. When it comes to Outs Above Average (OAA)on Baseball Savant, only Christian Walker was better than Santana.
They have quite the lead as well, as Walker nearly doubles up Santana (42 to 22), and the latter has more than twice the OAA than Freddie Freeman (22 to 11), who is third among all qualified first basemen.
Of all first basemen who have played for the Pirates and have at least 25 attempts at the position, only three have a positive OAA.
Connor Joe
Carlos Santana
Jared Triolo
Another two broke even, and the rest (eight) are in the negative.
That interested me in how the Pirates stacked up since Ben Cherington took over as the General Manager.
-2 INF OAA, 16th overall
-41 OF OAA, 26th overall
-43 total OAA, 21st overall
That’s considering no one has a better OAA than Ke’Bryan Hayes at +58 since 2020. Of the 22 fielders with at least 200 attempts for the Pirates, who are also not Hayes, only eight finished with a positive OAA.
It reminds me of an old manager I had while I worked at Sprint, he always said, “You can have a dirty store and good sales, or a clean store and now sales,”
“You can’t have a dirty store but no sales.”
If you are playing good defense, you could probably get away with hitting not quite being there. Or if you are hitting the ball well and scoring a bunch of runs, you could get away with poor defense.
Bad defense and no offense don’t mix.
Josh Naylor has a better track record than Spencer Horwitz, but I’m still okay with the package that the Pirates gave up to get the latter instead of trading for the former.
Adding someone who hit 30 home runs and drove in over 100 runs would have been a significant addition to this lineup, but Horwitz wasn’t that far off when you try to look at them on equal grounding.
In about 250 fewer plate appearances, Horwitz finished with a better OPS and wRC+ and nearly had the same fWAR (2.3 to 1.9). If bWAR is more your speed, it was closer (1.5 to 1.2).
Sure, a player who is 27 years old, hasn’t played over 100 games in a single major league season and has some platoon concerns is a risk.
But he showed he can still carry some value, and you get him for far longer than you would Naylor.
Leaning on years of control may seem like a cheap cop-out, but there is a reason that it is so highly coveted throughout baseball.
There’s value in that.
So, for 2025, Naylor is likely your best and safest bet, but some teams don’t get to think like that without any care for the beyond.
Also, man, I love what the Guardians are doing right now. Sure, it sucks to see teams make money (savings) based decisions when teams like the Dodgers and Mets have signed players for over $700 million but talk about making the best of it all.
Cleveland salary-dumped Andres Gimenez and turned it into Luis Ortiz and two pitching prospects. With how they are with pitchers, I think that’s a trade that will look (at least on paper) like they stole the Pirates’ lunch money (if Horwitz hits, I don’t think the Pirates will care).
They also traded a first baseman for another pitcher and a Competitive Balance Round A pick. In fact, they will have back-to-back picks in that round.
Coincidence that Carlos Santana signed for the same amount Naylor was projected to get in salary arbitration?
So, you are investing what you were likely going to have to anyway, got to add assets into the organization, and still have a future plan in place (Kyle Manzardo).
It just seems like they have entirely bought into their plan and are executing it flawlessly.
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There’s a formula for small market teams to compete. It’s called Pitching.
I think I would be ok with BC dumpster diving for a veteran OF on a 1-year bounce back deal, if he chooses to invest in a bad ass bullpen guy.
Then just hope Pirates can win a bunch of 3-2 games this year.
I can appreciate the strategery, but if Cleveland hadn’t completely failed to get anything out of McKensie, Allen, and Carrasco then wouldn’t be in a position of exchanging offense in order to rebuild their rotation. Best of luck doing better with Ortiz, I guess.
Pertinent to our Buccos, their staff last year was carried by Emanuel Clase and a bunch of dudes you’ve never heard of in the pen.
The Pirates will add more wins this way than any nine figure free agent bat would get them.