The Orioles beat the Reds yesterday 7-5. The game was a bit of a nail biter as Oriole pitching kept allowing the Reds get back in. In addition there was about a one or two inning stretch where home plate umpire Al Porter seemed to be incredibly confused by his strike zone. Regardless, the three home runs the Orioles hit proved to be too much for the Reds. It also hurt the Reds that they left 14 men on base in comparison to the Orioles leaving seven. Those differences are going to hurt you.
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Mark Reynolds made two more throwing errors yesterday as well as making a few good plays. This made me want to know just how bad historically has his defense been amongst third basemen? The most recent update for baseball reference is that he is sitting at -10 runs. This places him in a tie with the 103rd worst defense. Two Orioles also share that feat: 1989 Craig Worthington and 1983 Leo Hernandez. The last I calculated, Reynolds is on pace to be -21 runs above average for his fielding. That would tie him for ninth worst ever with 1990 Jim Presley.
Here are the bottom ten:
1. Ryan Braun 2007 -35
2. Gary Sheffield 1993 -32
3. Ty Wigginton 2003 -28
4. Joe Torre 1971 -25
5. Mark Teahan 2005 -24
6. Edwin Encarnacion 2007 -22
--. Fernando Tatis 1999
--. Greg Norton 1999
9. Jim Preseley 1990 -21
10. Dave Hollins 1998 -19
It certainly is a good thing Mark Reynolds mashes. A good number of poor defenders are often "rested" at DH, shifted to first, or sometimes hidden in Left Field. However, Vladimir Guerrero, Derrek Lee, and Luke Scott are preventing him to move to those locations. It surely will be interesting to see how far he climbs up this list.
3 comments:
Signing Guerrero has limited the options with Reynolds. It is good to have a rest from the field every once in a while but the DH spot is filled to overflowing. He's never been a great defensive third baseman (14th best last year according to the Bill James Handbook) and third base is most error-frequent position. As long as he's hitting, I guess we have to take the rest...
Is this year really the norm for Reynolds defensively? I haven't checked the runs against stats but his fielding percentage over the past two years was around .950 compared to .900 this year. I'd expect his defense to improve over the second half if anything.
This would be a career year in a bad way for him. It could be flukey or it could be real. He is about at the age where things can go wrong quickly, but, yes, he could regress in a positive way.
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