Creeping towards the “Mendoza line” and a .600 OPS. Great defense?
Has anyone explored the difference between the general positive reactions to Rafaela's defense in comparison to his relatively poor ratings on defensive stats? Fangraphs has him at -1.4 defensive WAR in 180.67 innings. By UZR/150 he's the 20th best CF and 39th best SS in baseball with a minimum of 50 innings. Only Elly De La Cruz and Mookie Betts have been worse at shortstop this year. By statcast OAA he's at 0 on the year for CF and -2 for SS. Overall his fielding run value on statcast is 19th percentile. BR likes him better, at .4 defensive WAR.
UZR just hates his work at shortstop this year. His UZR/150 at SS of -41.8 is more than twice as bad as any Red Sox shortstop last season (where Rafaela was also the worst with a -20 UZR/150, second worst being Kike at -10 and third worst (not counting Dalbec's 8 inning sample) being Reyes at -.7. Last year people
hated Kike at SS, and yet by UZR/150 Rafaela has been 4 times worse than Kike was last year. The UZR/Fangraphs numbers also don't include today's game (and additional error) yet.
He has 6 of the team's 30 errors.
I don't really know much about defensive stats, but I know that they require a pretty big sample to be predictive, so I'm certainly not suggesting that these numbers are indicative of what Rafaela's actual abilities are. I know he has a sterling defensive reputation. But shouldn't they at least reflect what has happened so far this season?
I'm really curious as to what the disconnect is. The media and fans here gush about his defense, yet the numbers say that he hasn't just been bad, but
really bad, particularly at shortstop. Are we just writing off the errors as jitters? Is it that he's made big plays at key moments, but that his miscues have not led to much damage (similar to a WPA vs WAR contrast, where a player with an overall bad statline can still "win" games for the team by coming up big in the clutch).
I'd love to see a nuanced take that bridges the gap between the commentary around Ceddanne's defense and what the numbers say that doesn't just wave off defensive metrics as voodoo.