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February 20, 2004

The A-Rod/Jeter Defense Dilemma

Shortstops' Moves to Third Base

by James Click

Alex Rodriguez's trade to the Yankees has elicited plenty of spirited debate on several related topics, notably what to do with Derek Jeter and his matador defense at short. Reader Mark Shirk had this to say:

With an nearly imminent A-Rod to the Yankees trade, I got to thinking about how a move to 3B would affect the value of Derek Jeter. I figured out, using Clay Davenport's equations, that a move to 3B would mean that Jeter's RARP would drop about 4 runs over the course of a full season or roughly 154 games. However since Jeter is such a bad defensive player (-22.5 FRAA per 154 games from 2001-2003) the move might actually benefit him.

Is it unreasonable to think that Jeter would be 15 runs below average as a 3B? I don't think it is even out of the realm of potability for him to be only 10 runs below average. All told that is an 8-run gain in value for Jeter, a pretty significant sum. Am I wrong in thinking this?

Thanks for the note, Mark. Before delving into the question at hand, it’s worth noting, as BP’s Mark Armour pointed out, the sudden and surprising reversal of the opinion of Jeter’s defensive abilities. Jeter has quickly gone from a heralded and graceful fielder to the obvious stepchild next to Rodriguez, the same player who was chided for tripping over his own feet his first day as a Ranger. There seems little public opposition to the conclusion that it is Jeter that should move to the hot corner.

The basis for these conclusions are largely based on empirical evidence, backed lightly with what few defensive statistics are available. With the shortcomings inherent to current defensive statistics and our own visual impressions of players in the field, there is folly to be found by basing any decisions about the optimal defensive alignment of the Yankee infield on this data. Instead, by combining Clay Davenport’s defensive statistics and some similar situations in the past, a better idea of what awaits the Bronx Basemen can be gathered.

Back to the question at hand, looking for examples in the past couple decades, there are a few examples of players who moved from the role of everyday shortstop to everyday third baseman. Restricting the search to all seasons 1980-2003 and only considering players who logged at least 500 innings in the field, there are 14 players who played every day at short one season and every day at third the next. However, only five continued to play everyday third the next season. The list, followed by the years of the switch:

Vance Law, 1982-83
Travis Fryman, 1992-93
Cal Ripken Jr., 1996-97
John Valentin, 1996-97
Tony Batista, 1999-2000

The rest of the list--the guys who only played one season at third--does have some qualifying examples, including a young Gary Sheffield, but for the most part, they are players who switched between the positions routinely. Howard Johnson and Jose Hernandez are two of the better-known examples.