photo: Kolten Wong, Giancarlo Stanton (Steve Mitchell/USA TODAY Sports)
SABR’s defensive metrics for the first half, with the final results accounting for 25 percent of the Gold Glove Award scoring, indicate some expected highs and surprising lows for the 2018 St. Louis Cardinals in the field.
Our eyes tell us that the 2018 St. Louis Cardinals have not fully addressed their defensive woes from recent seasons – and the metrics back that up. Yet, one fielder who is highly thought of for his play – even when his bat is slumping – is Kolten Wong.
On Monday, the 27-year old was announced as the National League’s top defender during the first half of the 2018 season – not only at second base, but across all positions. This is according to the SABR Defensive Index, or SDI.
In its sixth year, the consolidated metrics-based view of player performance in the field again will account for 25 percent of the annual Gold Glove Award scoring, with further updates coming during the second half and at season’s end.
No measure is the be-all, end all, which is why actual voting by managers and coaches still make up the lion’s share of the Gold Glove scoring, 75 percent. But the SDI has a solid foundation, based on not one, but a group of defensive metrics. Though some discount any single-season’s worth of fielding results, those behind the SDI originally created and refined many of the measurements and devised the Index as a blended measure of multiple stats. (SDI background can be viewed here.)
With that background in mind, let’s look at how several St. Louis Cardinals fared at their respective positions in the first half release of the SDI for the 2018 season.
The NL leaders by position are listed to the left and the Cardinals’ scores to the right. Click on the link just above to crawl through the individual player detail, if you would like. The “Trend” field indicates whether the Cardinal player’s first half 2018 SDI is higher or lower compared to his full-season 2017 mark.
| NL 1H 2018 | Top SDI | SDI | Cardinals 1H 2018 | SDI | Rank | Trend from 2017 |
| Pitcher | Clayton Richard | 4.6 | Carlos Martinez | 1.1 | 13th of 53 | up (-2.6) |
| Miles Mikolas | -0.2 | 38th of 53 | ||||
| Michael Wacha | -0.3 | 40th of 53 | down (0.2) | |||
| Luke Weaver | -1.0 | 49th of 53 | ||||
| Catcher | Buster Posey | 4.9 | Yadier Molina | -1.2 | 11th of 16 | down (7.1) |
| First base | Brandon Belt | 6.6 | Jose Martinez | -6.3 | 15th of 15 | |
| Second base | Kolten Wong | 10.7 | Kolten Wong | 10.7 | 1st of 17 | up (-0.9) |
| Third base | Nolan Arenado | 5.2 | Matt Carpenter | 4.2 | 3rd of 17 | up (0.3 1B) |
| Jedd Gyorko | 2.8 | 6th of 17 | down (8.9) | |||
| Shortstop | Orlando Arcia | 6.2 | Paul DeJong | 1.6 | 9th of 15 | down (1.7) |
| Left field | Adam Duvall | 8.1 | Marcell Ozuna | 0.2 | 9th of 15 | down (6.5 MIA) |
| Center field | Lorenzo Cain | 7.6 | Tommy Pham | -4.2 | 15th of 17 | down (4.2 LF) |
| Right field | Nick Markakis | 4.9 | Harrison Bader | 2.8 | 4th of 16 | |
| Dexter Fowler | -2.5 | 12th of 18 | up (-7.8 CF) |
Many of the Cardinals rankings are positive, but certainly not all.
Even as a part-timer, Harrison Bader is among the top tier of NL right fielders, coming in just ahead of Jason Heyward. Both Cardinals third-basemen, Matt Carpenter and Jedd Gyorko, rank among the top six at the hot corner. In fact, Carpenter is scored as the second-best defender on the team in the first half, after Wong and 23rd among all NL players at all positions. Paul DeJong remains in the middle of the NL shortstop pack.
The negative side has an extreme split, between surprises and validations of daily game observations.
Jose Martinez is considered the National League’s poorest defender at first and Dexter Fowler’s right field defense has a negative score, as one might surmise. On the other hand, Tommy Pham’s play in center is among the very worst and eight-time Gold Glove catcher Yadier Molina is an also-ran at his position (with a negative SDI for the first time).
The eye test might quibble with Marcell Ozuna’s (barely) positive SDI, which still puts him in the bottom half of NL left fielders. All told, the starting outfield of Ozuna (0.2), Pham (-4.2) and Fowler (-2.5) is as disappointing defensively as it has been at the plate.
It is hard to say much about the pitchers, with Carlos Martinez in the top quarter but Miles Mikolas, Michael Wacha and Luke Weaver among the bottom tier.
From a numeric perspective, half of the 14 Cardinals players listed compiled a negative SDI in the first half, though three of the seven trailing behind are pitchers. Still, four of the eight starting position players carrying a negative score tempers the enthusiasm over Wong’s strong showing.
In the year-to-year comparison, six of the 10 Cardinals who had scores in 2017 came in with a lower SDI in the first half of 2018. But one of the four who “improved”, Fowler, really just has less of a negative score this year in his move from center to right.
In my view, Pham, Molina and Ozuna’s first-half drops are the most concerning, as two of the three are key up-the-middle defenders. The move of Pham to center was expected to bear fruit defensively, but that is not yet the case, as the plus left fielder in 2017 has a minus score in center in 2018 to date.
The third of the three, a reigning Gold Glove Award winner in Ozuna, was expected to be a standout defender in left. Instead, he has a mysterious shoulder ailment that has clearly affected his throwing – and even his breaks at times look slower than I would have expected given his pedigree.
It will be interesting to watch how these scores change during the second half, with updates typically in mid-August and again in mid-September. Final SDIs are not published until after the Gold Glove Award winners are disclosed.
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Brian Walton can be reached via email at brian@thecardinalnation.com. Follow Brian on Twitter.
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