Jack Wilson, Personal Shortstop
May 10, 2012 at 1:56 pm by Ben Duronio under Defense
Fredi Gonzalez gets a lot of grief for many decisions he makes. Some are rightful criticisms and some are wrongful, but there are certain decisions he makes that are worthy of praise that often go relatively unnoticed. While he is not the most consistent with it, he does tend to set his lineup to avoid consecutive hitters of the same handedness, which is an extremely vital step in lineup creation. He also has seemingly made Jack Wilson the personal shortstop for Tim Hudson, which is a very wise decision. In each of the past two games, Wilson has started at shortstop when Hudson has pitched. While this is not definitely a trend that will continue, it does look to be something that the Braves and Gonzalez are testing.
Since 1999, Hudson’s rookie season, only five pitchers have recorded ground balls at a higher rate than Hudson. Everyone here knows he is a ground ball pitcher, and it is extremely helpful to the success of those pitchers that the infield defense behind them is quality. With the current assortment of defenders the Braves possess, there is really no way to ensure this for Hudson’s starts. There is, however, a way to at least improve it.
Tyler Pastornicky has not been a plus defender, you could even call him below to potentially even well below average in his first month plus of major league play. His skills at shortstop are limited in comparison to a majority of his peers, and at the infield’s most important position, this can prove costly for a pitcher like Hudson.
While Jack Wilson is nowhere near the quality of defender he once was, he is still an improvement over Pastornicky. The Braves lose offense in replacing Wilson with Pastornicky on these days, but the Braves have really had no issue scoring runs to this point in the season. Pastornicky has been helpful offensively, though he has struggled over the past few games, but the improvement that Wilson has defensively over Pastornicky is essential for games in which Hudson is pitching.
Hudson had a marvelous start yesterday and the only run he allowed, coincidentally, was on a single just out of the reach of Wilson. Confirmation bias should not get in the way of rational thinking, and starting Wilson at shortstop behind Hudson, if this is a season long concept, is a forward thinking way to improve run prevention by management.
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What would you think is the best decision Gonzalez has made as manager of the Braves? Worst decision?
Worst: Deciding he wants to go to the ballpark every day instead of staying home and eating Ballpark hotdogs. Mmmm…delicious
Best: Getting thrown out of games so that he doesn’t screw us late in the game. With that said though, someone (after Fredi was tossed) was following the “Frediot” bullpen chart – and we still got Durbin’d.
Worst is anytime he says the name Durbin and doesn’t immediately follow it with the words ‘cut him’
I guess I’m OK with this decision, but can we at least bat Wilson 9th? I’ll bet anyone a “Hi-Chew” Hudson finishes with a higher slash line than Wilson.
Do you guys think that the shortstops who are currently better that Wilson defensively (like say Brendan Ryan) would have gotten to that ball and even turned it into an out? It looked to me like that ball was hit fairly hard, but one that Wilson probably would have gloved in his younger days.
Andrelton Simmons would have eaten that ball up and thrown it at 95 into the webbing of Freddie’s glove.
So minor thing but I read this like 5 times.
“Since 1999, Hudson’s rookie season, only five batters have recorded ground balls at a higher rate than Hudson.”
Shouldn’t batters be pitchers?
Aside from that. I think this makes sense. Isn’t Rossy Hudson primary catcher too? At least thats the way it seemed last year.
Yep thanks. I don’t think Ross is his personal catcher. It was like that temporarily last year, but for the most part it will be McCann unless pitcher matchups on a day followed by night game situation make sense.
It seems like Hudson tends to end up pitching a lot of day games which would be normal off days for McCann so Ross does end up catching Hudson a lot.
Agreed, Huddy just usually falls on McCanns days off. I’ve never any mention of a Perez/Maddox situation with Ross and Huddy. Any idk why people give Freddie so much sh.it for putting RP in not named Medlen, or O’ventral. We’re in first place with a team that has a TON of young players starting. Freeman, Pastornickey, Heyward, Delgado, Venters and Kimbral have only had one full season each. and i know i’ve left some out. Point being get off Freddie’s testicles.
Ben – I’m not sure I agree with you. I know we have a case of SSS-itis with the Rev, but he can’t be that poor defensively, can he? Im just not sure I want to draw a *full* conclusion based on him playing in 27 games. Dont forget that he gets “defensively replaced” by Wilson in some of those games.
Maybe i’ve got a little FW in me and don’t want to admit that the Rev can’t play defense? I dunno. Back to *not* working for me….
Remember that if there are 30 starting shortstops, then 15 are above average and 15 are below average. Rev most certainly belongs in the bottom 15, unless you can name 15 startings guys that he is better than. He’s not a terrible defender, but when compared to his peers, he just doesn’t stack up.
Ya got me there….
Not exactly. There are 15 above median and 15 below median. If there were one superlative shortstop skewing the stats upward, you might see more than half the shortstops in the league playing below average. But your basic point stands.
I’d like to see Pastor traded and Simmons brought up soon. Then Wilson could be used as a late-inning defensive sub for Uggla or 3B.
Pastor is not bad enough defensively to get rid of and take the huge offensive hit we would suffer going to Simmons.
Huge? The difference in offense is mitigated by volume in the 8 hole. And as the old cliche goes, Simmons would save more runs with his glove than Rev would create with his bat.
Yes but this could potentially set Simmons back offensively to a point he might not recover from. He is definitely the future but he needs more minor league seasoning.
Simmons would get killed at the plate at the ML level. How many big hits has Pastornicky already gotten for the Braves? A lot. Pastornicky’s defense is not that bad! I don’t believe there is that big of a difference between the combination of Pastornicky’s defense/bat and Simmons’ defense/bat. Not nearly enough to justify rushing Simmons to the big leagues and giving up on Pastornicky at this point.
Simmons is not a worse hitter than Pastor, he is only a year behind in experience. Led Carolina league in hitting last year and is hitting .325 in the same league the Pastor was playing in one year ago.
Agreed. I would rather have elite defense with horrible offense at SS than have below average defense and average at best, to below average offense at SS.
Alex Gonzalez is your man, then.
why not trade rev, JJ, and one of very talented young pitching prospects for an elite SS. like a Tulo, Castro, E. Andrews(andrus? can’t remember), or any young SS with a glove and a decent bat. We really need a true number two hitter in the lineup. Prado should be in the 7 hole. Castro, tulo, and e.a. provide that gap style of hitter thats great for the two spot.
I think your post is a little on the dream land side. There is a reason elite Shortstops don’t get traded. It’s because they’re elite and they don’t grow on trees.
We traded Andrus to Texas. We should have seen that one coming.
Oh and thanks CAC crew for finally getting your act back together and posting some insightful articles, not just game recaps and links to the AJC.
Finals time man, and some person issues among the writers. We’re back in full swing, thankfully. Thanks for sticking through it!
haha…don’t be such an ass!
Obviously still in SSS territory, but Pastornicky has definitely been underwhelming defensively, although I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by his bat. Still, though, an elite defensive shortstop is extremely valuable. I look forward to the day that Andrelton Simmons is patrolling that spot.
Simmons still needs time to develop in the minors, he has very little experience and before this year did not play above A-ball, his time will come in the near future and his bat will be more developed by then and he will have more confidence. I agree having Wilson as Hudson’s SS is a good idea, his bat is worse than Pastor’s but Huddy needs the extra defensive support because of all the ground balls. Impressed with Fredi on this decision
According to Fangraphs, Pastornicky is -10 in DRS, -6.0 in UZR, has a -1.5 value for Batting, and has a -0.3 WAR. He would have the 15th-lowest WAR in the majors if he qualified.
SSS and all notwithstanding, I think Simmons would provide more value based on his defense alone. If his defense is as good as advertised, Simmons would provide positive value in at least 1 category whereas Pastornicky isn’t providing any positive value except for a 0.2 in Baserunning.
Brian McCann was 21 and had only 48 games (193 PA) of experience in AA when he was called up in 2005. His slash line was .265/.359/.476/.834 at that time; he finished 2005 with .278/.345/.400/.745. Mac finished the minors with nearly 1200 PA in ~300 games (minus any rehab stints).
According to The Baseball Cube, Simmons has played in 219 games in the minors with 919 PA. He’s 22 and has 26 games (118 PA) of experience in AA right now. His slash line is .330/.398/.425/.823. None of this means Simmons will come up and produce as well as Mac did. It’s just to illustrate that guys can make that jump and do well. And Simmons provides excellent defense, something Mac didn’t. Mac had an experience edge on Simmons as far as PA and games go, but a lot of it came in rookie/A ball.
Let’s also compare Pastornicky’s minor-league numbers to Simmons’. From rookie ball to AA, Rev never posted an OPS above .759; his best “season” was his 27-game stint in AAA last year. That 27-game stint produced his highest BA, OBP, and OPS than at any other level and was only .002 off from his highest SLG. His overall minor-league slash line was .278/.345/.374/.719.
Simmons is a few months older and 1 level behind Rev so you expect better numbers. But Simmons’ A+ season was equal or better than any season Rev has ever had and Simmons’ current season of 26 games is equal to Rev’s stint in Gwinnett, which as previously pointed out exceeded his typical numbers. And Simmons has the added bonus of strong defense.
Very few of us have seen enough of either SS to accurately judge which is better for the starting gig. But if Simmons can hold his own at all in the majors, I’d take him over Rev.
A lot of guys with great plate vision, ie a McCann, don’t hit as well in the minors. The pitchers generally throw less strikes so they’re are left chasing sometimes to put a ball in play.
and i don’t have the stats in front of me but since rev started off with a .143 batting avg he’s hit over .300 since so he’s not doing to bad afer a bad start. D could definitely improve though. I’d put him around 25th in the league for D for a SS. 2nd on his team.
didn’t know you guys were in college…
Not all of us are. In fact, I graduate on Saturday, so I guess I won’t have that stereotype much longer.
What about the idea then of taking this a little farther and having Prado move in to 3rd on those days and have our platoon out in LF? This would give Chipper a built in day off every 5 days as well. However, this whole thing stinks of one of the things Bobby used to do which to me seemed like he was having a ‘team day off.’
Backup catcher, platoons, and a top starter who is then expected to go out and throw a shutout.
Nice write up though guys.
Congrats Kevin I’ll be walking on Saturday too
Congrats to the guys finishing up college/grad schoo/what-have-you. Real world isn’t nearly as fun as school, but at least you’re not (as) poor.