The Houston Astros signed Jed Lowrie to a three-year pact last week and I promptly wrote about how the playoff-aspiring Chicago White Sox missed out on him to fill a hole for them at second base. To sum the piece up, based on current projections the White Sox are not as good as people think and their weakness at second is a contributing factor; therefore, it would have behooved Chicago to sign Lowrie, one of the safest and only bets to produce at an above-average level on the free agent market, to strengthen that weakness. He has been a pretty good player over the past three seasons despite the drop in performance he suffered last season; a season in which he was a 1.8 fWAR player.
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Most of Lowrie’s value is derived from the fact he is a better-than-league-average hitter who plays an extremely weak offensive position known as shortstop. Even if he were not to play short, his offense production would be valuable as he has posted the fifth-best wRC+ spanning over the past three seasons among qualified shortstops, sporting an exceptional 108 wRC+ in that time frame.
(* In case one was wondering, a 100 wRC+ is regarded as an average mark. The stat wRC+ is simply park and league adjusted wOBA. If one is interested in reading more about these stats you can by clicking individually on each of the following statistics: wRC+ and wOBA.)
At this point one thing should be abundantly clear: Jed Lowrie is a quality offensive commodity relative to the rest of the league and an even better offensive commodity relative to fellow shortstops. What has yet to be established, however, is how good (or not) of a shortstop is Jed Lowrie from a defensive perspective.
Well, the 30-year-old is not a very good defensive shortstop when it comes to the advanced metrics. Last season he amassed a -10 DRS (defensive runs saved) which was the fifth-worst between the 22 shortstops of whom accrued ample innings to qualify in 2014. But in terms of UZR (ultimate zone rating) he was regarded a bit better seeing as how his 0.6 UZR last year ranked square in the middle of the pack, placing eleventh of twenty-two. These stats, though, are not by any means the end all be all.
I mean, why would they be? They, from my understanding, are compiled carefully by people who compare the likelihood — using fancy mathematical formulas — that a perfectly average fielder at each given position would make a respective play. The problem with this is humans make errors, but more importantly I do not believe the data allows these people to see where exactly the fielder starts, making it impossible for them to truly gauge the defensive value of a player. It is thus imperative for one to look at these advanced defensive metrics with a grain of salt; however, if both UZR and DRS are saying similar things about a player then it is likely that what they are saying is true. This was not the case for Lowire last year.
In 2013, on the other hand, UZR and DRS both concurred that the switch-hitter was one of the worst fielding shortstops baseball had to offer. His -18 DRS that year was the worst in the league between qualifiers and his -6.8 UZR was the third-worst. Now, defensive stats, just like offensive ones, can fluctuate from year to year, so what most likely occurred was Lowrie was a slightly better defender in ’14 than ’13. That is irrefutably a positive, but the fact that he has been really bad in terms of DRS in both of the last two years and really bad in UZR in ’13 and mediocre in ’14 suggests that maybe playing one of the hardest positions in baseball going forward is not necessarily wise.
Rising Apple
Bringing us back to the Astros and their plans for Lowrie, by all indications he will be their starting shortstop in 2015. If Houston really had no other place to play the former first round pick other than short, then it is reasonable to play him there considering the offensive value he would yield. The thing is they do have another place to play him because third base is looking for improvement. For Pete’s sake Matt Dominguez, who is currently expected to man the hot corner in 2015, tied with Domonic Brown for the distinguished honor of compiling the worst fWAR in Major League Baseball last year! Then again, as bad as Dominguez was in 2014 it is improbable he is that bad again.
In fact, Steamer forecasts him to be a modest 0.9 fWAR player next season; still not good but it is a substantial improvement from last season’s mark. It is not as if Dominguez could be moved to short and Lowrie to third. Technically speaking, that statement is false, yet the chances that it actually happens are laughable. But what if I told you that there is a way feasible and overall more productive way to get Lowrie off of third? I do not know how you are going to react to that previous sentence; nevertheless, there is a fairly easy way to do so.
For this plan to execute properly, it would require Marwin Gonzalez, who currently is projected per Roster Resources to be a bench piece, to start at short. Gonzalez did this for 576 2/3 innings last year and accrued a 4 DRS while doing so. He also collected a 108 wRC+ in 310 plate appearances last year. With that combination of above-average defense and offense, he was worth a 0.8 fWAR in ’14 in limited playing time. Going forward, though, he is not projected to hit for that kind of offense due to the fact his 108 wRC+ was predominately BABIP (batting average on balls in play) charged — the 25-year-old’s .330 BABIP last year was far from his career .286 BABIP and consequently regression to the mean is probable.
Even with Gonzalez’s expected offensive decline in the future, he is still anticipated to be better than Dominguez next year. Here are Steamer/600’s projections for the two in 2015.
- Gonzalez: 1.0 fWAR
- Dominguez: 0.9 fWAR
Lowrie is better suited as a third basemen, but regardless the Astros may be better off with Gonzalez in their lineup on a regular basis opposed to Dominguez. So, really, I do not see why Houston does not do this. It makes more sense than just for the sole purpose of getting Lowrie off of shortstop. As a result, I decided to ask Houston Chronicle’s Evan Drellich via Twitter if Houston was considering moving him to third. Here is what he had to say.
@PatGreen1998 He's shortstop.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) December 17, 2014
Yeah, not exactly the answer I was looking for.