Why are certain baseball positions tied to plate performance?

The Game Room
1

I heard this today from a sports talk radio host that to his credit used to play college ball:

“First and third basemen need to be power hitters.
Same with left field.”

I’ve also heard less at the plate can be tolerated for shortstops, catchers and obviously pitchers because they have such specialized defensive positions. I get that.

Second basemen? 3 hole hitter is OK seems to the scoop. Huh?

I’m not sure what I have heard about Center and Right fielders, but the impression I get is these better not be 8 or 9 hole hitters.

What’s the deal? If your are a great third baseman which btw requires a lot of defensive skill why does it matter if you don’t slug balls into the 700 level? I kinda get the left fielder argument since that is one level over a designated hitter. Is the speaker implying a first baseman requires minimum defensive skill so he better be good at the plate?

With the exception of pitcher, catcher and shortstop a lot of this sounds like old school poppycock; to me it seems the ability to hit a 95 mph fastball over second base or into the stands is a much more harder skill to learn and hone than learning how to play second base.

If I’m wrong teach me: how are field positions tied to hitting???
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2

While playing third base requires a lot of skill to field a ball well and make the following throw, there just isn’t a ton of balls hit towards third base. On top of that, there’s not a significant number of plays per game where the third baseman is defending the bag - double plays almost always go through second, and third plays are rare enough that it’s pointless to plan around them. A third baseman needs decent fielding and a shoulder-mounted cannon - those qualities are in good supply at the professional level. You simply don’t get past high school ball without those qualities. To be worth a roster spot in the big leagues, you need to bring something else to the table - batting prowess. First base has the same issues, with the additional requirement of “catch the rockets launched at your face from other infielders”.

3

Well, it’s not precisely true that a third baseman must be a slugger; no one had a problem with Wade Boggs at third baseman and he wasn’t a slugger. Of course, he won five or six batting titles, so that helps.

They’re not, exactly.

Obviously all teams would PREFER to have elite hitters at every position. If your shortstop is Alex Rodriguez or your catcher is Joe Mauer that is a wonderful thing. However, that’s a rare gift.

What it comes down to is not that a team wants to trade off defense for offense, but that they often have no choice. There simply are not as many MLB-quality shortstops around as there are MLB-quality left fielders, because it’s just a way harder and way more important position to play (and also, of course, because lefthanded players can’t play shortstop.)

A Major League Team has in its employ over a hundred professional baseball players and can acquire any number of players pretty easily and cheaply. It is just really, really unlikely that a team will ever find itself in a position where it cannot find a player who can hit and play left field or first base passably well. There’s always a left fielder you can get if your current one can’t hit. On the other hand, the number of players who can play MLB quality shortstop is comparatively very limited, and there is an excellent chance you will be left with no good shortstops who can also hit well.

In addition to deficiencies of skill, different positions vary in importance. Third base is an interesting example in that third base is a VERY hard position to play; ir requires an excellent arm and a fast reaction time and is brutally unforgiving; that’s why third baseman have lower fielding percentages than any other position. The reason third basemen are not considered as defensively valuable as shortstops is simply that they are not asked to make as many plays. A typical third baseman will handle 350-400 chances in a full season; only a handful of third basemen have made more than 400 assists in a season. A shortstop can get 700 chances or more in a season, and 400 assists would be a terrible year. If you had two guys who could play both SS and 3B, you’d want the better fielder at SS just because there are more plays to make there.

First base is the opposite extreme; first baseman make more plays than anyone, save the catcher, but they’re almost all just catching throws. First basemen rarely need to make throws at all and don’t cover as much ground as other infielders. (Steve Garvey could barely throw at all, and he was a pretty good first baseman.) Of course not any schmoe can play first base at the MLB level, but, realistically, the difference between a poor MLB first baseman, like Cecil Fielder, and someone who’s clearly really good at it, like Todd Helton, isn’t all that much. A bad first baseman (again, by MLB standards) is irritating but you can live with it if the guy mashes. A bad shortstop will just kill you; if your shortstop sucks with the glove but can hit, it is virtually certain that you are in a position to move him to a less demanding defensive position and find a shortstop whose glove doesn’t cost you two runs a week.

It is of course quite possible a truly elite defensive player at a middle-importance defensive position like right field or third base could be very useful to you even with a mediocre bat; Charlie Hayes, Glenn Wilson, Scott Brosius and others were all players of limited bat reliability but really outstanding glove men at those positions. It’s unusual, though.

4

Or Mike Schmidt too.

5

Well, originally, the idea was that your defense up the middle would consist of speed players. That would be your shortstop, your second baseman, and your center fielder. Faster used to mean smaller and not as strong. Your corner positions; first, third, left and right field would consist of slower players who were generally bigger and stronger. Of course, any knowledgeable baseball fan can list a plethora of exceptions to this “rule”.

6

I’d dispute the comment of catchers. Yes, they are often slow, but they are usually the smartest players on the field. They have to call the pitches and often reposition the other fielders. But if they can’t hit the ball, they aren’t worth more than a second baseman.

7

I don’t think I would put an eight time home run champion and a guy who was pretty clearly the greatest player in baseball in his peak in the same category as Charlie Hayes and Scott Brosius. :slight_smile: Schmidt was good at hitting AND fielding, and was a sufficiently skilled player that if the Phillies had another third baseman, they could have played Schmidt at shortstop and he’d have been good enough at it.

8

I think this is basically correct as an old school way of thinking about a baseball roster. If you have 2 kinds of guys, speed guys and power guys, what positions would those guys play? Speed guys up the middle and power guys in the corners. It’s that simple.

If you’re not a speed guy or a power guy, I guess you better be a damn good glove man or a damn good hitter, like the aforementioned Wade Boggs. One wonders how far a guy like Wade Boggs or Tony Gwynn would make it these days where more MLB players have speed AND power.

9

The name that comes to my mind as you describe that is Brooks Robinson: though he wasn’t a particular liability at bat (.267 career average, two .300 seasons, six 20+ HR seasons), his stardom was primarily a function of being one of the eminent fielders of his generation.

When I think about the players who were active when I first started following baseball in the mid-late 1970s, shortstop, in particular, was a position where there were well-regarded players who really didn’t hit well. Mark Belanger was a career .228 hitter, but won eight Gold Gloves, and was the Orioles’ starting shortstop for a decade. When Ozzie Smith came up, he was known for his incredible fielding, but wasn’t a particularly good hitter (though his hitting improved considerably after he was traded to the Cardinals). I’m not sure that a “great glove, weak hitter” player, even at shortstop, would have the same value today as it had back then.

10

Probably not as much, no, because baseball players are better now and there is generally more expectation of them being good all around players. Overall, the fielding is better, too.

The 1970s were a historically bad time for shortstops, for some reason.

11

My take, certain positions require defensive specialization so being okay is acceptable at the plate as long as they shine on defense.

These positions are:

Pitcher
Catcher
Short Stop
Second base.

By contrast, the below positions are easy to play and don’t really require much glove work, or foot speed.

Right Field
1st base

12

But your right fielder had better have an accurate cannon for an arm, because if he has to throw back to the infield to make a play, he’s got the longest throw to make because he’s likely trying to make a play at 3rd base or home.

I’ve always thought it was interesting that, playing ball in school (high school and lower, in gym class, not the varsity team), the weakest player seemed to always get dumped into right field. That made sense, with most people being right-handed and most likely to pull the ball to left, the schmoe in RF wasn’t going to see a lot of action. Then I started following MLB, and LEFT field seems to be the dumping ground for the weakest players, with the major requirement for that position is that the player have some speed. Granted, my view is slanted by being a Mariners fan. My first years following the team had the steady presence of Griffey in CF and Buhner in RF, but a constant revolving door of questionable left fielders (Griffey actually listed this amongst his complaints in the run-up to his trade to the Reds). After Griffey’s departure, he was replaced by a series of very good players, and of course Buhner was replaced by Ichiro. But LF field continued to feature no standout players.

13

Yes, but…A right fielder only makes a few long throws a game at most, and the difference between a good arm and and a great arm might be an extra out (and a saved run) every ten games or so. Whereas a hitter who can rack up 50 HR’s in a season has a lot more impact than one who hits 15, which is why you have mediocre outfielders who are great hitters, but not the other way around.

14

ISTM that your second point calls your first into question. Because if as you say teams routinely put the better fielder at SS vs 3B, then it would follow from that alone that the higher fielding percentages would be at SS, even if both were of equal difficulty.

I suppose the only way to test that would be to measure the fielding percentages for people who have played both positions (e.g. A-Rod) and see how they compare by position for the same players. Are there numbers on this?

The impact of a good throwing arm is very hard to measure, because it manifests itself in players not taking the extra base that they would have taken against a weaker arm.

In the case of a right fielder, the purpose of a strong arm is runners on first stopping at second on outfield singles instead of trying for third.

15

Interesting point. I wonder if the SABRmetrics folks have looked at this…

16

It does not follow, no. One can look at the examples of any number of players who have played a substantial number of games at both positions; they ALWAYS have lower fielding percentages at third. A-rod was one of them, yeah; 12 point difference.

Interestingly, the career leader for fielding percentage among third basemen (500 games minimum) is Placido Polanco’s .983. NO ONE is close to him; the next best is ten points lower (Mike Lowell.) There is a bigger gap between Polanco and Mike Lowell than between Mike Lowell and the guy in 35th place. I dunno what Placido was doing right.

Even the great fielding third basemen of all time had fielding percentages that would be distinctly mediocre for a shortstop. No one will ever suggest Brooks Robinson was anything other than a brilliant fielder, but his .971 percentage is quite ordinary, at best, for a shortstop.

Different positions have different fielding percentages; it’s the physics of the sport. The third baseman has less time to recover from a mistake than the second baseman or shortstop, and their fielding percentages are not boosted by as many easy putouts as other positions. They are the precise opposite of first basemen, who make many, many easy putouts, but are not asked to throw the ball very often.

This is a common claim but in the case of the best arms it doesn’t appear to be true. Players like Roberto Clemente or Jesse Barfield racked up high assist totals even after everyone knew the danger. Maybe today they’re getting smarter, but Roberto Clemente got 18 guys in 1967, at which point he’d been doing it for a dozen years so they really should have known better.

Historically, runners have been weirdly unfazed by the throwing arm of the person they’re up against. I really don’t understand why anyone tried to steal off Ivan Rodriguez. It simply made no sense to try. And yet every year many did, and threw outs away for no good reason at all.

17

Of course it follows. It seems fairly obvious that if you put your better fielders at SS, then that alone would account for a difference in fielding percentage between the positions, even if they were of equal difficulty. The only question is whether that accounts for the entire difference or if it’s just one factor. That’s why I suggested comparing people who played both positions.

You’re saying that the same players always have a lower fielding percentage at 3B, and if so then you’ve supported your point. Weird thing is that in your initial response, before you edited, you posted examples for 3 players, and the difference was not in the same direction for all 3. (Also, A-Rod had a 16 pt difference, versus your current statement that it’s 12.) I wonder if you can clear that up.

Similar to the comment above, you seem again reluctant to accept and/or acknowledge that 2 factors can both be in play at the same time. It’s possible that an outfielder with a strong arm can put up a high number of assists and also hold runners more often. As you suggest it would be weird if runners (& 3B coaches) were completely oblivious to the strength of the arm they were up against, and there’s no reason to accept this claim of weird behavior absent actual evidence.

18

Sorry, I typed the numbers in inconsistent orders. My fault.

It’s possible, but the fact remains that fielding percentages at short will always be higher. The positional difference is the one definite thing. Many very sure handed men have played third base.

An examination of other positions clearly demonstrates that position affects fielding percentage. Frank Thomas was an atrocious fielder, but had a much higher fielding percentage than Brooks Robinson (or any shortstop or third baseman ever); that’s simply because he was a first baseman. Juan Samuel, a terrible second baseman, also had a higher PCT than Brooksie. Second base is easier.

But how is that hard to measure? Your claim was that it’s hard to measure. It’s quite easily measured. Assists and runner advancement rates are known things, and are factored into fielding analytics.

19

Um, yeah. No question. Number 16 on the all time home run hitters list, and he only played for 17 seasons, including the short 1981 season. 10 NL Gold Gloves at 3rd base too. And his great fielding performance came with no cartilage in his knees. He was easily the best combination of fielder and slugger in his time, which explains why he was the only player elected to the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility in 1995.

20

One of my fun facts about Schmidt and his rival, George Brett, is this: Brett, obviously, was known for his batting averages and contact hitting. He once hit .390, won three batting titles (in three different decades!) and struck out less than he walked, ending his career with a .305 average. Schmidt, of course, was not reknowned as a contact hitter; he struck out a lot, only hit .300 once, and was a career .267 hitter.

But Mike Schmidt has a higher on base percentage than George Brett.

Schmidt and Brett were easily the best third basemen of their time, and an interesting case in how one’s context defines statistics. Schmidt hit 548 homers; how many would he have hit if he’d started his career in 1991 instead of 1971? He might be the all time home run champ, In one sequence of years he hit 38, 38 and 36 homers and those numbers led the major leagues every year. When he hit 48 in 1980, he led the league by a margin of 13, which is a remarkable figure. His eight home runs titles are the most ever by a played not named “Babe Ruth.” In the homer happy days of the last 1990s up to today, I really don’t think he would have topped out there. He would likely have had multiple 50-homer seasons. In context, Schmidt’s 548 homers are a LOT more impressive than Sammy Sosa’s 609 or Jim Thome’s 612, and I think you can strongly argue at least as remarkable as A-Rod’s 696.