With the biggest news these days being spring-training invitations (welcome, Rich Hill!), let’s take advantage of the lull and look back at those athletic players who resisted natural forces to move rightward along the defensive spectrum, shall we? Here, for the fourth year, are our Defensive-Spectrum Beaters.

First, let’s make sure that what we have considered to be the defensive spectrum is still indeed the correct order. Here are the major-league splits by position over the last five years (2005-2009), using Gross Production Average (GPA):

So our current spectrum is:

1B – RF – LF – 3B – CF – 2B – SS – C

The notable difference from the conventional spectrum is that RF and LF are flipped (LF has generally been considered to the left of RF). Granted, this flip is arguable, given the slight difference in GPA (.269, .268) between the two positions the last five years. The difference between centerfield and second base appears to be closing, also, but their order is unchanged.

In that context, then, let’s see which players even qualified. As an arbitrary cutoff, we’ll include all players who played at least 500 innings in 2009 at a leftward position from a position that they played at least 500 innings in 2008:

If we dig a little deeper, we can trim that list of eight down to seven. Garrett Atkins, while he did hit the 500-inning minimum at first base in 2008, also played 500 innings at third that year, so we’ll disqualify him. Denard Span broke in playing some centerfield in 2008, but he logged only 116 2/3 innings, so he stays. So, too, Alexei Ramirez played only a handful of innings (53) in 2008 at shortstop, the position where he qualified in 2009. Ditto Asdrubal Cabrera (154 2/3 innings at shortstop in 2008). Franklin Gutierrez has played some centerfield each year since debuting in 2005 but only had 97 innings there with the Indians in 2008 (and, until 2009, had played a majority of his games in right). Kosuke Fukudome played some centerfield for the Cubs in 2008 and in Japan (where he also played 11 games at shortstop in his rookie year), but not enough to be disqualified. Teahen broke in as a third baseman, logging 1068 1/3 innings there in 2005, but played only 166 innings there in 2008 after KC moved him to the outfield to make way for Alex Gordon. And, as Cardinal fans know, the only time Skip Schumaker set foot near second base prior to 2009 was when he got an extra-base hit.

So of the seven remaining candidates, which ones actually held their own at the plate (one of the criteria for being a defensive-spectrum beater)? This year, we’re going to index the positions by their respective GPAs, in an attempt to normalize players’ offensive performances (e.g., a .260 GPA as a shortstop is much better than .260 as a first baseman). Here’s what each player did while playing the position for which he is being considered:

Now let’s apply the positional averages…

… to come up with what we’ll call a position-adjusted GPA (poGPA+):

With Ramirez just missing the cut, that leaves a bumper crop of six defensive-spectrum beaters for 2009! And, since everyone but Schumaker had previously played at least a few innings at the rightward position for which he was "nominated," one might say Schumaker was the one true defensive-spectrum beater in 2009. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, “Remember Howie Shanks!”

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 5:06 pm 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.