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2009 Twins season in review - defense
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Note: This is the seventh installment in a ten-part series analyzing the 2009 Minnesota Twins season. For more information on the previous entries, please check the Minnesota Twins Examiner home page.
The hallmark of Minnesota Twins' teams this decade has been solid defense. The argument goes that the Twins do not have a club which is constructed to bash the ball, score a ton of runs, and hope for the best. The team typically focuses on pitching and defense as their secret to staying competitive. This philosophy trickles to the lowest levels of the minor leagues. Much attention is given to the Twins' defensive drills in spring training, including the infamous "Good Morning America" drill popularized by Tom Kelly and now carried on by Ron Gardenhire.
The 2009 season featured a Twins team which bashed 172 homers and saw four players (Cuddyer, Morneau, Mauer, Kubel) surpass the 25-homer threshold. However, the defense remained strong by traditional measures.
Minnesota's 76 errors tied with Toronto for the lowest total in the American League. Only the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates committed fewer errors in all of Major League Baseball. In a traditional analysis of baseball statistics, making the fewest amount of errors would be a good measure of a team's defensive capabilities. However, in today's age of more complex analysis and openly-available statistical measures, defensive analysis is much more closely scrutinized than in the past. Using these statistical analyses, the Twins' defense was far from spectacular.
One measure of defense which is "non-traditional" is Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), which is a way to measure how a player performed defensively based upon a composite of the player's arm, double play ability, range, and errors. The figure is expressed as the number of runs above (or below) league average.
UZR is not the only determinant of what makes a good defense, but it is one analytical tool to show how valuable a particular player is at catching the ball. The Twins have a reputation for being strong in the field, and the low errors total is a good example of this. However, a player can only make an error on a ball he can catch, and UZR attempts to show how effective a player is at actually getting to balls, making accurate throws, turning double plays, among other factors.
The Twins' UZR mark in 2009 was a negative 36.2. That's right: 36.2 runs BELOW average. The mark ranked ahead of only the Kansas City Royals in the American League, and only the New York Mets and Royals were below the Twins is all of Major League Baseball.
Using UZR as a guide, the Twins defnintely had some bright spots. Joe Crede was limited to only 84 games at third base this season, but he posted an excellent UZR mark of 11.8 above average. Carlos Gomez (+6.8 in CF) and Denard Span (+5.7 in LF) also posted solid UZR marks. Span's UZR mark in center field was -3.0, which was one argument for putting Gomez in center every day for and Span in left as part of the Twins' best defensive alignment. As if that argument needed any further proof, Delmon Young's UZR figure in left field this season was a horrendous -16.0, ahead of only Michael Cuddyer's -16.2 mark in right field. Despite the constant talk of the Twins' broadcasters about newcomer Orlando Cabrera's solid defense at shortstop, his UZR mark of -14.9 (-5.7 with the Twins) ranked ahead of only Kansas City's Yuniesky Betancourt among American League shortstops. In fact, Cabrera's UZR was 29 runs worse than the mark provided for the Chicago White Sox just one season ago.
As stated earlier, the low UZR figure does not suggest the Twins were weak defensively. Far from it. There are reasons for the low team UZR figure, most prominent was players being forced to perform in positions they were not best-suited. Nobody would argue that Gomez was not the team's best center fielder, but often times, Span was forced to perform the bulk of his time out there. Young belongs in a DH role, but what to do then with Jason Kubel, whose UZR mark also proves he is ill-suited for outfield play, but is a far superior run-producer than Young. Cabrera's low UZR mark suggests his range is slipping dramatically as he approaches 35 years of age.
The Twins played solid defense down the stretch, and that is one reason why they won the division. However, look at other factors, such as UZR, before agreeing with suggestions of team announcers that the Twins are among the league's best defensive teams.
** For more on UZR and other baseball analytical information, check out the excellent Fan Graphs site.
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