In the last post, we looked at the Orioles infield defense in terms of John Dewan's Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). In this post, we'll examine their outfield defense. The idea spurned from comments made by Dan Duquette on Clubhouse Confidential. The projected outfield for the O's this year is Nolan Reimold, Adam Jones, and Nick Markakis.
We'll start with Reimold. Though this will be his 4th season in the major leagues, due to injuries and management decisions he has only received a little more than a season's worth of innings in the outfield. Starting with 2009, his DRS by season are -3, 1 and 2. UZR disagrees with his defense in 2009, giving Reimold a -7.9 UZR and a -13.9 UZR/150. 2010 and 2011 are fairly similar under both systems. I'm not sure how to determine which system was better in 2009, so we'll just say that he didn't have a great year in the field in 2009 but he's been about average in 2010 and 2011. There's nothing wrong with having average defense in left field as it's considered more of an offensive position. Though the Brett Gardner's of the world would maybe like to change that perception.
Adam Jones is the most controversial player on the team in terms of measuring defense. None of the systems seem to agree on the quality of Jones' defense. The gold glove recipient in 2009, he has been all over the place in the defensive metrics. The best way to look at it may be in a simple graph detailing his defense since he became the O's starter in 2008.
| DRS | UZR | |
| 2008 | 11 | 5.8 |
| 2009 | 5 | -7.6 |
| 2010 | 1 | -4.3 |
| 2011 | -9 | -8.7 |
The only time that there is any agreement on his defense is from last year when both systems agreed that he was really terrible. DRS says Jones was a great defender in 2008 and progressively got worse each season. 2011 was the only year that DRS says he was a below average defender. On the other hand, UZR thinks Jones was a poor defender going back to his gold glove year of 2009. My opinion from having watched him over the years is that while he has really good range in going after balls because he's a good athlete, he doesn't take the best routes to balls or get the best jumps. Both of these things would hurt him in the metrics since they both measure the number of balls he does or doesn't get to.
In right field, the hope is that Nick Markakis will be ready for opening day after his offseason abdominal surgery. Assuming that he's ready or that he's ready shortly thereafter, let's see how he's done on defense. Nick put up a +20 in 2008, but then put up lesser marks of -4, -2 and -4 the last 3 years. +20 is incredible; he should have won the gold glove in 2008, not in 2011. Maybe it was a makeup call. Nick seems to have turned into a slightly below average fielder. Already 28 years old, we probaby don't have a lot of improvement to look forward to.
This was a fun look at the DRS statistics of the projected starting Orioles defense this year. It seems that some of the O's are overrated on defense such as Jones and Markakis. But maybe Wieters is even better than we thought and Reynolds may not be as terrible as everyone thinks. I'd be interested in looking at how Duquette uses DRS to acquire or get rid of players. That's a little hard to look at considering the Orioles didn't pick up any hitters of note in the offseason. We'll save that one for sometime down the road.
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