Despite Major League Baseball's best efforts in recent years, offense remains hard to come by, and MLB.com's Mike Petriello explored a reason that rule changes may never be able to touch.
In an article published Wednesday morning, Petriello posited that outfield defense is better than ever, so much so that it's eating up any potential offensive benefits from limiting shifting in the infield.
Part of it's because the National League adopted the designated hitter, so the Kyle Schwarbers and Marcell Ozunae of the world are no longer forced to wear a glove. But even when isolating the effects of a pretty significant factor, outfielders across the league are getting younger and faster, and getting to more fly balls before they reach the turf.
We don’t have Statcast prior to 2015, but we do have human-entered batted-ball types going back to 2002. Looking at BABIP non-grounders isn’t perfect – we’ve now included some number of line drives to infielders, surely – but it’s what we’ve got, and the story is no different. There have been 133 months since 2002 through the end of July.
Guess which season has the four lowest BABIP months? (It's the most recent four.)
What's more remarkable is that this trend is taking place without any help from the White Sox, who have the worst outfield defense according to Outs Above Average (-19), and the second-worst per Defensive Runs Saved (-16).
In either case, the White Sox's defense in right field is just butchering the score:
| Metric | LF | CF | RF |
|---|---|---|---|
| OAA | -8 | 0 | -10 |
| DRS | -4 | 5 | -17 |
The White Sox have only deployed one right fielder who rates as a plus defensively by both systems, and he's the guy who proved his merit three times over in an otherwise typical 2024 loss to the Yankees Wednesday night.
Despite limited playing time, Dominic Fletcher stands at 3 OAA and 4 DRS after the impressive display in right. He completed an incredible effort with a sliding catch along the side wall to end Gleyber Torres' at-bat in the fourth, stole extra bases away from Alex Verdugo in the seventh, and then made a leaping catch at the wall to end the eighth:
Because he's playing for a team on track to be the worst in modern MLB history, there was a catch to his catches, as the second one resulted in a two-base game-tying sacrifice fly because he tripped over Luis Robert Jr. sliding underneath him.
Regardless, it was a welcome display for a guy who hadn't been able to show much of anything this year, first due to sophomore struggles, and then due to a shoulder injury suffered on a home-run robbery in Milwaukee. Fletcher is hitting .218/.282/.267, although he's at least trending in the right direction with a decent 10 games since returning from Charlotte in late July. He's 9-for-27 with a double and a walk during this stretch, and he's hit safely in his last three games.
When the White Sox acquired Fletcher from Arizona for Christian Mena late last winter, the idea was that he could be an OBP-oriented threat against right-handed pitching, a plus defender in a corner and a glove-first backup for Robert in center. That vision is finally showing some signs of life, and getting it out of the incubator is one of the most productive things the White Sox can do over the last six weeks of the season.
As James wrote in Wednesday's pregame notes, Grady Sizemore sounds committed to the project:
"I love Dom's game. I think he's a good all-around player but especially the defense. I think he gives us a big lift out there, whether it's in center or right. With him and Luis together, with Benny, I think that's a solid outfield. So I hope we can get him going. He's swung the bat really well the last couple of days and I just want to keep feeding him."
Fletcher is indeed playing more, starting three of five games since Sizemore took over. Just as importantly, Gavin Sheets has not played any outfield since the White Sox fired Pedro Grifol.
Grifol wasn't the only one to see some sort of payoff in routinely running Sheets out of position. This is the fourth consecutive season Sheets has played a perverse amount of outfield; a vestige of Rick Hahn's strategy of sacrificing defense for offense, then not really getting that much offense. That said, Grifol did not have to lean into it as much as he did. Remember this gem from May?
Grifol on Dominic Fletcher, who hasn't had AB since return. "Gavin is hitting third, Pham is hitting first and Beni is a consistent pillar in our lineup. He’ll come in for defense and do some stuff. He has to wait for an opportunity and take advantage of it.'
— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) May 20, 2024
Sheets is finally hitting a little -- 13-for-24 with a homer and five doubles over his six-game hitting streak, and the last five of those games have come at first base or DH. It could be coincidence, but Sheets was happy to sing Fletcher's praises after the game, perhaps because Fletcher is the key to Sheets only having to focus on the things he actually stands a chance of doing.
"It was incredible. A lot of fun to watch him out there," Sheets said. "I see it every day in BP as well. He can really go get it. Seeing all three of those plays he made was a lot of fun. Really incredible to watch him go out there and the energy he plays with. Awesome plays."
Indeed, and those plays proved a point made by MLBAM Senior Data Architect Tom Tango on Twitter in support of Petriello's position ...
2/2 So, that's 0.2 outs / game, which is close to 0.15 runs / game
— Tangotiger 🍁 (@tangotiger) August 14, 2024
In addition, you are going to get worse batters. That is ALSO going to reduce runs by at least 0.1 runs per game, if not more
So, you can get a drop of 0.25 runs / game league-wide simply with roster composition
... because the White Sox just grabbed at least two extra outs with Fletcher out there instead of Sheets. Perhaps Sheets makes the last catch against the wall by playing deeper and being a foot taller. He doesn't make the other ones because he runs like a Matryoshka doll containing Fletcher.
It remains to be seen whether Fletcher was worth pinning any kind of hopes on. He has some characteristics of a different kind of player that's gotten the White Sox in trouble: the guy with a 2 WAR ceiling whose limitations prevent him from amassing the playing time to get there. In this case, he's best in a corner, but he has two homers in 213 career plate appearances and needs to be platooned.
At the moment, however, Fletcher is playing for a team whose offensive ineptitude keeps requiring new ways to describe it. They're scoring 3.14 runs per game, which is 0.57 runs fewer than the 29th-place Miami Marlins. The same-sized gap at the top of the leaderboard is the difference between first place and 12th. If they're going to be that unproductive at the plate, starting Fletcher just about every day in right field from now until the end of the season allows them to pretend they're doing it on purpose. If Fletcher somehow realizes his offensive potential, so much the better.
