MLB: The most valuable center fielders of 2019
By Bill Felber
A ranking of the 10 center fielders who generated the most value in the 2019 MLB season. Factors are equally balanced between offense and defense.
In MLB, we’re pretty much obsessed with the concept of value. We apply a plethora of often exotic statistical approaches to measure it: batting average, slugging, home runs, WAR, OPS+, Defensive Runs Saved, Weighted Runs Created…the list goes on.
The one factor we generally overlook in all these assessments is the most meaningfully value-oriented of all of them: salary. What, precisely, was the player paid – relative to all other players tasked with doing what he was doing – and how much of that pay did he “earn?”
The rating system that follows corrects that oversight. Based on 2019 performance, it measures which players were the most “valuable” as judged by their on-field production relative to their salary. And let it be noted here that we are limiting our focus to on-field value only. Some players, megastars, are paid based largely on factors unrelated to on-field performance, their drawing power at the gate, their celebrity, their endorsement/promotional potential being among them. Those factors, while acknowledged as real, are not part of this discussion.
Since different positions require different skills, the standard for determining production will vary depending on position…although for position players there will always be an offensive component.
Today we’re looking at Mike Trout’s position, center field. Perhaps more than any other position, center fielders require a montage of both offensive and defensive skills. Synopsizing the offensive requirements in a single synoptic number, WAR, enables us to limit the formula to four elements while giving proper weight to both the offensive and defensive aspects.
The offensive and defensive demands of the position exist largely in balance. That being so, 50 percent of the formula is attributable to WAR. Since center field makes significant demands on both range and fielding reliability, the remaining 50 percent is allocated thusly: 25 percent to range per 9 innings, 15 percent to fielding percentage, and a final 10 percent to innings played.
Like left field and catcher, center field is a position where teams have come to disdain relying on just one regular. Whether for purposes of platooning or other reasons, 38 players whose primary position was center field qualified for consideration for this ranking by virtue of having played more innings, and at least 400, in center than at any other position.
Here are the positional averages for the qualifiers: Salary: $4.598 million; WAR: 1.729; fielding percentage: .984; range: 2.396; innings: 899.13