Can we rely on it to be this good for the rest of the season?
Going into the season, it was a widely accepted premise that the Cardinals’ season hinged on the development of Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman. How they fared would dictate how the team would fare. The team’s win projection was rather mediocre and the theory goes that those two had the best chance to increase the expected wins by virtue of having relatively unimpressive projections themselves and the upside to deliver a surprising season. If they didn’t, the team would probably be mediocre (or worse.)
But, neither of them have been good this year. Oliver Marmol and the Cardinals have already given up on Nolan Gorman. I don’t care what they say publicly, he’s a true bench player right now. Kind of a consequence of the winning run they’ve been on, but honestly, it was already kind of the case before that started. He got an okay run because Ivan Herrera was hurt and Alec Burleson was slumping, but he started the year as a bench player too. So much for 400-500 PAs for him. May you succeed with your next team, Nolan. Walker has been given a true fair shake, but he hasn’t been good either despite some promise in the last few games.
And yet the Cardinals stand at 27-23 with an expected win-loss total of 30-20. Forget the win-loss record for a second. They are playing like a playoff team. They may not continue doing so, but they undeniably have at this point in the season. And if you were told this before the season started, you’d probably assume it was because of Walker and/or Gorman breaking out. And yet they haven’t.
What broke out instead was the Cardinals defense. The Cardinals had, appropriately enough for a 83-79 win team, a completely mediocre defense last year. With positional adjustments factored in, they ranked 17th in the defensive component of fWAR. A lot of that was actually framing, because the Cardinals did rank higher than I thought in OAA. Their framing numbers ranked 20th, but their OAA was 8th in baseball. So if you’re wondering if this is sustainable, them being 8th last year is actually a very good sign.
But still how did they go from a team with a +15 OAA in a full season to a team with a +27 OAA and we’re not even into June yet. That is an absurd jump. The second best team has +18 and the 5th best team has +7. The 5th best team in baseball by OAA is closer to the 22nd best team in baseball than they are to the Cardinals. (And it’s worth pointing out there are three teams tied for 22nd best.) That is insane. They are a great defensive team, but I’m going to say that is probably not sustainable.
With this post I hope to answer three different questions. What changed? Can we trust those changes? And because of how ridiculous the numbers are, where can be expect drop-offs?
What changed?
We aren’t going to really get into the catching situation, because we’re focusing on OAA, but their catching defense has been better. Despite his reputation in the minors, Pedro Pages didn’t rate that well last year. This year is more indicative of what we’ve heard about him, even though he still hasn’t been elite. He has been a little bit above average defensively according to Fangraphs, and according to Baseball Reference, he has been 1 run above average by stolen bases, catcher ERA, and strike zone runs saved, which has led to +2 DRS. Last year, he was considered a negative defender.
He’s been the catcher most of the time this year. Yohel Pozo is not a great framer, but hasn’t hurt defensively too bad. Most of the change has been Ivan Herrera not really playing much catcher and Willson Contreras’s below average defense not playing an inning. I like Pozo’s story, but just to be clear I don’t think it’s likely at all he’s a good defensive catcher, so I think when the time comes, you’re probably not going to lose much of anything when Herrera catches more games. Pozo came into this season with 36 days of MLB service time as a 28-year-old not because his offense wasn’t up to par, so that leads me to believe his defense probably isn’t good. And he has in fact had below average defensive numbers thus far.
Moving to the rest of the position players, there are really three distinct changes. The kind of changes that can explain how the Cardinals defense can suddenly explode. There are other differences and we’ll get into that for a later question, but I don’t necessarily know if you can actually trust those differences. No, these three changes seem fairly reliable.
Jordan Walker has improved immensely on defense/Alec Burleson not playing OF
Ignore yesterday’s mishap. Just because he’s improved doesn’t mean he’s not going to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. There are two reasons to trust this change. For one thing, it’s nothing crazy. I’m not asking you to believe Jordan Walker has turned into a +10 fielder. I’m only asking you to believe he’s a slightly above average defensive RFer. That seems plausible and passes the eye test. He’s been +1 OAA this year, admittedly yesterday may push him back down to average. If you didn’t see it, yes the play was such that it’s a safe assumption it will take away an out above average.
Secondly, his age and the tools he has. He is top 100 in sprint speed among all players and he is a tall man. He also has a strong arm. Ultimately, instincts proved to be more important than those things in his first two seasons, but he always had the traits to become a solid defensive RFer. And he’s turning 23 in a couple days. It was absurd to think he was a finished defensive product at the age of 22 when he had just learned the position fairly recently. It didn’t grab the same attention, but he also made huge strides from his rookie year to his sophomore year. A lot of that was simply that he stopped playing LF admittedly, where he was otherworldly bad.
Alec Burleson not playing OF has helped too. He doesn’t necessarily look as bad as Jordan Walker did, but there’s an argument to be made he was always a worse defender than Jordan Walker. He’s “if Gary Sheffield simply played DH, he might be a Hall of Famer” bad in the outfield.
Willson Contreras is a defensive upgrade over Paul Goldschmidt
Dirty little secret: this wasn’t as hard to beat as you’d think. Goldy in his prime was an excellent fielder, but in his last three seasons combined, he was -2 OAA. Essentially average. Which isn’t really a knock on Goldy, but Contreras absolutely has more range than Goldy did. I personally don’t think it’s even a debate, though some may disagree.
And the benefits of being a catcher converting to 1B is that he can scoop with the best of them. All I heard about when Goldy was leaving, at least from people I talk baseball with in real life, was that we were going to miss Goldy’s scoops. Goldy could catch anything Masyn Winn or Nolan Arenado threw at him. Maybe. Contreras can do that too.
Another dirty little secret: converting to 1B isn’t actually that hard. I played 1B growing up. It’s not a difficult position to play. As funny as that Moneyball quote is, I kind of hate it. Because it’s just not true. Especially, which was also true in that scene, for a catcher. So many catchers convert to 1B and are good at it. Contreras was not the least bit worried at Winter Warmup about the move to 1B and he hadn’t really done any drills yet at 1B. He was right not to worry. He’s already +3 in 327 innings.
3. Masyn Winn
Masyn Winn was a slightly above average defensive shortstop last year, but if you remember correctly, he was not great in the 1st half. He rated below average for the first couple months. The 2nd half of the year, his defense allowed him to be +3 over the course of the season. As he became more comfortable in the majors, his defense improved.
So it probably seems like he’s made more progress year-to-year than he actually has. He might have a little better performance over his 2nd half defense last year, but we kind of saw close to this version of Winn in the latter part of the year. I don’t know if can sustain the pace of a +6 OAA over the whole year – he’s probably going to commit an error this season – but he’s the defender we thought we were getting.
Can we trust those changes?
I’ve been beating the drum that we shouldn’t take Pages’ defensive numbers at face value all offseason, so yes Pages being a slightly above average defensive catcher can be trusted. He caught 14 runners all of last season. He’s already at 8. Teams don’t run on him much anymore. 75 runners attempted to steal last year, and at his current pace, with the same amount of innings caught as last year, it will end up at just 49 runners.
I think Walker’s end of season defense will end at around where he currently is, like maybe a +3 over 900 or so innings. I’m not removing from the future expectation there. I do think in both Contreras and Winn’s case, some regression should be expected. Their numbers are just so good that assuming anyone is that good without the resume to back it up would be foolhardy. Winn is on pace for +20 OAA over a full season and Contreras +10 OAA. That’s quite optimistic. Possible, but there’s just too few fielders to pull those numbers to assume it will continue. (+10 at 1B is like +25 at other positions if you’re not familiar)
Drop-offs
I’ve mentioned two already, only because there aren’t that many true talent +10 first basemen (if any?) or +20 OAA shortstops (if any?). They can still be very good defensively and it still be regression. I also don’t think Brendan Donovan is this good defensively either. He’s been +3 in 273 innings, which is a double digit OAA pace. Again, you can think he’s good defensively without thinking he’s THIS good defensively. Because we’re talking best in the league territory.
I think Nolan Arenado (+5) and Victor Scott (also +5) are within the realm of not assuming regression, but I can imagine somebody arguing otherwise. Arenado because he hasn’t been this good defensively the last couple years, but I’m also on record saying I don’t think 3B defense really ages the way other positions seem to. All the all-time great third basemen were great into their mid-30s. And Arenado’s numbers are very believable by his career standards. Scott because you usually don’t assume someone is +15 or so defender, but it seems backed up by the ole eye test.
And that’s about it. Nobody else is really crazy. Lars Nootbaar hasn’t even posted positive numbers. So there’s some positive regression potential there. If an injury puts him back in the majors, there’s also some potential with Michael Siani. With as little as he’s played, he’s responsible for +2 of the +27.
Conclusion
The Cardinals defense probably isn’t this good. It’s very good, but not this good. Too many players have numbers that will probably get a little worse and not enough players in the opposite direction. But all I’m saying is that they aren’t going to be a +87 OAA team (their current pace). Just three teams total since 2021 have reached that number. (The Cardinals had a +86 OAA in 2021 actually)
So elite defense and probably the best in baseball though I’m not sure I can say THIS good. (It certainly won’t be this good if Burleson starts playing more in the OF). I think I can live with that.