Yesterday, I published the first half of my votes for this year’s Fielding Bible awards, which have now been released. This morning, I’m going to cover my ballots for the three outfield positions, pitchers, multi-positional defenders, and defensive player of the year. If you’re curious about the methodology I used, you can read all about it in yesterday’s article, but here’s a bite-sized refresher:
I used a weighted blend of DRS, FRV, DRP, and UZR (the four flagship public defensive metrics), with the weights based on how well each metric did at each position when it comes to reliability and consistency. I used different weightings based on recent effectiveness at a few position groupings: first base, non-first-base infield, catcher, and outfield. That gave me an initial rough order. From there, I used my own expertise, both in terms of deeper statistical dives on individual players and the copious amounts of baseball I watched this year, to assemble my final rankings. I deferred to advanced metrics when the gaps were huge – Patrick Bailey is the best defensive catcher by a mile, for example – but for close calls, I leaned heavily on my own judgment.
That’s the broad strokes of how I built a method for analysis, which is hopefully at least somewhat interesting. More interesting than that? The actual players who played the defense and got the awards. So let’s get right to my last six ballots. The award winners are noted with an asterisk after their name in the balloting section
Left Field
1. Colton Cowser
2. Riley Greene*
3. Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
4. Steven Kwan
5. Jackson Chourio
6. Alex Verdugo
7. Wyatt Langford
8. Ian Happ
9. Brandon Marsh
10. Taylor Ward
I thought that Cowser and Greene were the two easy choices for this award. They both played elite defense, with every metric above average and a few elite markers. (Greene was the best left fielder by DRS, Cowser by FRV.) They both exemplify what I’m looking for in a left fielder – namely, someone good enough that their team keeps playing them in center. In fact, if either were much better defensively, they might not qualify for this award; you have to play the plurality of your innings at a position to qualify, and they both played hundreds of innings in center.
Chourio and Kwan fit that mold too. In fact, the main holdout from the “These Guys Are Center Fielders Playing Left Because They Have Even Better Defensive Teammates” group is Gurriel, who has quietly gone from defensive liability to asset over the last two years. He surely benefits from playing in an outfield with two spectacular defenders most of the time, but he’s now actively adding to the equation instead of getting carried by them. One very impressive and measurable change: his outfield jump. From 2019 through 2022, he posted below-average jumps every year. In 2023, he was dead average. This year, he was 1.5 feet above average. That marginal improvement turns tough plays into easy ones and impossible balls into ones he can at least attempt to catch.
Finally, Ian Happ was tough for me to rank. His defensive metrics were all over the place, and I had him everywhere from third to ninth as I tried to work through my down-ballot votes. FRV does a particularly good job in the outfield and has consistently considered Happ’s defense middle of the road. DRS and DRP liked his work this year but have been up and down on him in the past. I decided that I should apply some regression toward the mean. I think he’s an excellent defender, and this is one of the rankings I’m least sure of, but there was a lot of confusion in the metrics here.
Center Field
1. Jacob Young
2. Brenton Doyle*
3. Pete Crow-Armstrong
4. Jake Meyers
5. Blake Perkins
6. Daulton Varsho
7. Julio Rodríguez
8. Jose Siri
9. Michael Siani
10. Jackson Merrill
Jacob Young is outrageous. For my money, he was the best outfielder in the game this year. Young’s routes aren’t always perfect, but he’s just so ridiculously fast out of the gate that it often doesn’t matter, and his quick decision making gives him more chances to make spectacular plays than anyone else. Some of that exuberance costs him – he led center fielders in errors this year – but most of those errors were on balls that no one else would’ve even touched. That’s what you get when you combine the best first step in baseball with one of the fastest runners. His arm is the only real negative, but it was a small one. If that improves, he might be a perennial contender for defensive awards.
Big shout out to Brenton Doyle, who would have been an easy choice for number one if not for Young. Doyle isn’t quite Young’s equal in terms of sheer range, but he still covers a ton of ground – and he has to in spacious Coors Field. He also has one of the best throwing arms in the sport, which feels almost unfair when stapled to a good defensive center fielder. He’s got a lot of Kevin Kiermaier to him, and I nearly voted for Kiermaier this year, even in a half-season, because he’s just that good. Doyle’s the next generation’s model, and Colorado is a great place to show off his skills.
The other interesting name on this list is Varsho. The other interesting name off this list is Jarren Duran. They’re both DRS darlings, and I’ll have more to say about them in the multi-positional defender category. Varsho was spectacular when he played center; he was about as good per inning as Young in my blended average. But he played only 672 innings there, which held him back for me. It’s hard to be the best center fielder if you aren’t playing it full time. Duran is a similar case, only he didn’t perform quite as well on a rate basis, and the systems weren’t quite as universally bullish. He’s obviously a great defender, I just don’t think he fits this category.
Right Field
1. Wilyer Abreu*
2. Sal Frelick
3. Mike Yastrzemski
4. Jo Adell
5. Max Kepler
6. Wenceel Pérez
7. Fernando Tatis Jr.
8. Lawrence Butler
9. Seiya Suzuki
10. Jesús Sánchez
No one other than Abreu and Frelick has any business winning this year’s right field award. They’re first and second in DRS, FRV, and DRP, and first and third in UZR. They pass the eye test. They didn’t put up embarrassingly low innings totals. I used innings as a tiebreaker and put Abreu first, but it was a toss-up.
A few other quick nods: Great work, Jo Adell, whom I was surprised to see as a solidly plus defender on three of the four systems I used. Yastrzemski fit a similar pattern. The only vote here I didn’t feel amazing about was Sánchez at 10th. My blended average metrics think he’s slightly below average, in fact. But there just weren’t many options, and one player I definitely would have voted for, Corbin Carroll, wasn’t eligible because he played 17 more innings in center than right. This was just a tough position, and I think the results will probably show that.
Pitcher
1. Shota Imanaga
2. Spencer Schwellenbach
3. Michael King
4. Paul Skenes
5. Tanner Bibee*
6. Seth Lugo
7. Chris Flexen
8. Aaron Civale
9. Michael Wacha
10. Charlie Morton
I’m happy to admit when I’m unsure, and this is one spot where I was very unsure. I don’t spend a lot of time rating pitcher defense, and most of the statistical models don’t either. DRS does, and Statcast rates pitchers on controlling the running game, so I used those as my guide, but I have a much lower level of confidence here than at the other positions. I put Imanaga first because of his impressive ability to limit steals. Only four were attempted against him all year, the best rate for anyone with a full starter’s workload. Half of those attempts were unsuccessful. That’s so much of pitcher fielding that I felt good penciling him in for the top spot.
The other interesting name here, for me at least, is King. DRS thinks he’s a good fielder, and Statcast thinks he’s pretty solid at preventing stolen bases. That’s a great combination, and I considered him for the top spot for a bit. In the end, a small-sample argument swayed me: He limited stolen base attempts, but runners went 5-for-6 against him. It’s tough to disentangle baserunning, and I give him plenty of credit; I just wasn’t comfortable putting him ahead of Imanaga (or Schwellenbach, for that matter) because of that rate of successful steals.
Multi-Position
1. Mauricio Dubón
2. Jarren Duran
3. Daulton Varsho*
4. Isiah Kiner-Falefa
5. Enrique Hernández
6. Mookie Betts
7. Richie Palacios
8. José Caballero
9. Kevin Newman
10. Tyrone Taylor
There’s a real philosophical question here. Is a multi-positional defender someone who plays everywhere you could want them, and does it well, a la Ben Zobrist? Is it enough to be an outfielder who covers either corner or center with equal aplomb? How about a shortstop/second base hybrid who moved positions partway through the year? You could convince me that any of these best fits the definition, but I had to decide what I thought was best to vote for these.
I considered three candidates seriously for the top spot: Dubón, Duran, and Varsho. Of the three, I think Varsho is the best defender. If he played a full season in center, he’d be right at the very top of the league in runs saved there. He was stuck in left for part of the season, what with Kiermaier being around, but ended the year as the Blue Jays’ everyday center fielder. That just doesn’t feel multi-position to me, you know? He’s a great outfielder who occasionally moved around when the team needed him to do so; but mostly, he was a left fielder for part of the year before sliding to center full time.
Dubón is kind of the opposite. I think he’s more good than great defensively at any one position, but just look at his game log. He played every position other than pitcher and catcher this year for at least five games. He looked solid at all of them, allowing for tiny sample sizes. He played infield and outfield in the same game 16 different times. He’s a jack of all trades, and having him around papered over some shaky defensive rotations in Houston. This, to me, is what a multi-positional defender truly is: Someone whom you can plug in anywhere on the field and be happy with the results.
I was comfortable placing Dubón first given that interpretation. That left me with Varsho in third and Duran in second. Sure, Duran is also an LF/CF split guy, but he moved around between the two during games more frequently, and he also repeatedly switched during the year depending on what Boston needed. Ceddanne Rafaela is a better center fielder, but he also played the infield sometimes, and sometimes the Red Sox would shuffle people around within a game, or pinch hit for Rafaela, and Duran would ably switch between the two. He’s displayed more intra-game versatility than Varsho, which is why I voted him second.
The rest of this list is me trying to make sense of that dichotomy between swiss army knife types and good outfielders who moved around. I’m not confident that I had the balance right in every spot. However, I am confident that Dubón best fits my understanding of this award, and that Duran and Varsho were so dang good that they also merited consideration despite not being what I picture when I hear “multi-position.”
Defensive Player of the Year
1. Patrick Bailey
2. Jacob Young
3. Matt Chapman
(Daulton Varsho won Defensive Player of the Year)
I didn’t set out to pick one catcher, one infielder, and one outfielder, but I did plan on voting for Bailey all along. He’s so much better than everyone else at the most important defensive position that it just felt obvious. It’s partially that he saved more runs than everyone else – but I’m not exactly sure that’s what Defensive Player of the Year means. I think that standing out from the crowd at your position matters a lot too.
I’m not sure Bailey will always be this far ahead of every other catcher defensively, but we’re at a weird point where there’s a low ebb in standout defensive catchers, probably because teams are emphasizing receiving and throwing far more than they did a decade ago. There’s a strong upward pull, because bad receivers are getting moved off the position now in a way they just didn’t before. But even against that higher median, Bailey stands out, just like he did in his rookie year last season. This is what it looks like when there’s one best defensive player in baseball, at least to me.
I put Young in second place because I felt that his marauding center field defense was one of the standout defensive performances I’ll remember from this season. I can’t tell you how many times I was watching a Nationals game and a low line drive turned into a catch that blew my mind. It doesn’t always work, but those lightning-fast reactions make for some spectacular plays. He’s no pure highlight machine, either; those flashes complement an overall solid game, and his error rate just isn’t that concerning to me when you consider the ground he covers.
Chapman could have been swapped for a few other players: perhaps Ezequiel Tovar, Andrés Giménez, or even Doyle – center field was really strong this year. But in the end, I let my gut do some of the work here. I watched all of these defenders a lot this season, and Chapman’s flair for the spectacular stood out to me relative to the rest of them. Everyone in this rarefied air has great range. Everyone makes the hard plays look easy and the easy ones look effortless. Chapman is on the hunt for extra outs, though. He goes after lead runners and turns unconventional double plays. His cannon arm lets him complete plays from locations that would be impossible for most third basemen. Defensive Player of the Year isn’t about vibes – but for my third place vote, I let vibes be the tiebreaker.
