Last night I looked at the RZR33 rankings in the AL, and when I saw Brendan Harris' name at the top of the pile, I scratched my head. (And then I realized that I scratched my head, which was kind of weird.)
So I looked a little deeper. By RZR's count, there were 30 balls in Harris' zone33 and he has converted 27 of them into outs, for a .900 RZR.
Last year, Harris had an .826 RZR, which would have ranked near the bottom of the AL if he had qualified.
Now, before everyone cues up their "this is why defensive stats are worthless" rant, let's keep thinking.
If Harris converted 82.6% of 30 plays into outs, that would be 24.8 plays. He's done better than that--but by 2 or 3 plays. So he's only been better than average by maybe one play.
One of the things that makes defense hard to measure is that on any given day, a player might not get any of those tough-but-makeable plays that separate the great defenders from the weak defenders. A lot of their plays are really easy, or completely impossible. So this far into the season, we just can't use the numbers to say whether anyone has truly made an improvement on defense. Given a whole season, though, we can start to see patterns emerge from the cloud of variance.
When I look at Harris, I don't see an awful defender, but I don't see a good one, either. His arm is unimpressive, he looks pretty awkward trying to turn double plays, and I think he has average (at best) range. Admittedly, my bias is that his track record seems to indicate that he's a poor defender, and my bias is also that players don't generally make great strides forward on defense at the age of 27. It would be great if he manages to become an average defender at second base, but I'm still pessimistic about those chances.3
- RZR is defined here. 333
- Zone: The areas on a ballfield in which at least 50% of batted balls are handled for outs. Zones are standardized and defined separately for each position. 333
3
Certainly a case we'll need to continue watching as the season progresses. Cabrera made some good plays today for the Indians, that I couldn't really bet on Harris making. But Harris has been a bright spot offensively, which obviously where his value is.
Cabrera also failed to make a similar play that Harris failed to make in the earlier portion of the game.
For the most part, I have been impressed with Harris at 2B...more so than I had imagined...but as ubel point out, he does look awkward when turning the DP, and his throws seem to be a bit erratic when doing such a thing.
It's as if he can't make the turn unless he comes off the 2B bag going towards third...it's weird.
I really like the way he hits the ball. I think he may break out offensively this year. Sometimes you can just see when a swing is solid, and this is the case with Harris.
And I really like the way that he takes a ball. Harris is one of the few on the team that is drawing the walks, and I'm more impressed by his OBP than his (admittedly good) BA.
No one will ever confuse the guy with Frank White (oops, showing my age) or Roberto Alomar in the field, but to use the words of our esteemed MGR, it looks like he has a plan at the plate. When he hits the ball, that is.
I'm curious if this is a case of a player 'settling' into a regular possition- ie. Cuddy in RF- Harris played only 47 games at 2b in 07, he played 85 games in the PCL @ 2b in 2005 the most action at 2b in his career - just a thought
I'm guessing that 30 is waaay too small a sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions.
Some balls in a "zone" are hit right at a guy. Some are sharply hit, some are slow rollers, some are choppers, some are hit at the edge of a zone. It could well be that he's gotten a slightly disproportionately large share of "easy" balls in his zone so far.
There was a ball yesterday that he dove for and couldn't get that I thought he should of. But outside of that I think he plays a 'good enough' defense to start him most days.
But I've only seen a handful of game on TV so my perception may be way off