One of the most interesting and trustworthy tenets of the Bill James Primer is that rightward shifts along the defensive spectrum almost never work. That is, once a player has reached the major leagues, he is almost never able to learn a more difficult position than the one he started out playing. Here’s the spectrum that James postulated:

Easiest < 1B-LF-RF-3B-CF-2B-SS-C > Hardest

In recent years, some observers have tweaked the original spectrum by looking at actual productivity between positions. Dayn Perry came up with this (we omitted the DH):

Easiest < 1B-LF-RF-CF-3B-SS-2B-C > Hardest

Either way, the relatively few players who pull off the rightward shift deserve some credit: While rightward shifts along the spectrum almost never work, occasionally they do work. Today we honor those rare players who beat the odds, swimming upstream against the current of sabermetric research to succeed at a rightward shift.

First, our qualifications:

1. The player moved from the primary position he played in 2005 (that is, the position where he played the most adjusted games, min. 60 adjusted games) to a primary position in 2006 at a rightward position (min. 60 adjusted games) on the defensive spectrum.
2. The player had an equal or better Rate2* in his rightward position. Some may quibble, but we like Rate2 because it adjusts for league difficulty and normalizes stats over time, plus it’s freely available through BPro.

Announcing the 2006 Defensive-Spectrum Beaters:

This year, we had seven spectrum-beaters, all but one in the National League. With the exception of the 23-year-old Miguel Cabrera, all of the players were on the older side, with two players turning the trick at the ripe old age of 38. Three players — Cameron, Feliz and Cabrera — shifted more than one place to the right. Not that Cabrera was a Gold Glover at third — remember, this isn’t about fielding excellence, only relative improvement from one year to the next.

Craig Counsell
Without former teammates Royce Clayton and Alex Cintron on the Diamondbacks in 2006, Counsell was forced to fill in at short, a position he played regularly only season in his career and only a third of an inning at in 2005. He played admirably, posting a 118 Rate2.

Miguel Cabrera
No one is going to confuse Cabrera with Brooks Robinson at third. Then again, he might’ve been confused with Manny Ramirez in left field, which is probably why he was a spectrum-beater in 2006.

Mike Cameron
Cameron may require an asterisk, since he’s primarily been a centerfielder his entire career, subordinating himself to right field only in 2005 when the Mets acquired the Gold Gloved Carlos Beltran for centerfield. He was back at his normal position in 2006 and showed why he deserves to start there — he won a Gold Glove himself.

Moises Alou
Speaking of the Mets, their newest outfielder, Alou, has toggled between left and right field most of his career. He’ll return to LF in 2007, though it appears he’s slightly better in right.

Pedro Feliz
He’s played a chunk of games at third each year he’s been in the majors but only made it his primary position in 2006 after playing a slight majority of his time in LF in 2005. He’s also chipped in at shortstop, which may explain the skill that allowed him to handle the hot corner so adroitly last year.

Randy Winn
Winn, the third of the Giant spectrum-beaters, found San Francisco’s right field to his liking after posting an above-average Rate2 of 107 in Seattle in 2005. He hadn’t played right field regularly since 2001, though he’s played significant time in centerfield, which may actually be his best position.

Reggie Sanders
If the Cardinals had known that Sanders could play as well defensively in right as Juan Encarnacion, they might have kept the former and not signed the latter to patrol the right-field corner of their new ballpark in 2006. Then again, with Sanders’s 2.3 WARP3, maybe not.

*Rate2 is a way to look at the fielder’s rate of production, equal to 100 plus the number of runs above or below average this fielder is per 100 games. A player with a rate of 110 is 10 runs above average per 100 games, a player with an 87 is 13 runs below average per 100 games, etc. Rate2 incorporates adjustments for league difficulty and normalizes defensive statistics over time.

This entry was posted by Pip on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 1:19 am and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.