Comments on: Skip to the Schu

By: gnigx

gnigx — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:58:33 +0000

While his stats may lie to you, the experiment is actually going very well. He’s shown so much potential and it keeps getting better every day. Although he’s probably a below average defender at second, he makes all the routine plays and a lot of plays that shock you to see that he makes. All while doing this, he’s kept a .300 avg. Very very impressive. Such a great guy.

By: Lex Logan

Lex Logan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:49:01 +0000

So how does the experiment seem to be working?

By: chuckb

chuckb — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:28:07 +0000

I don’t agree that Kelly Johnson is a good comp. Sure, he was -8 last year, but he had played 1 year of 2B prior to that and had 221 minor league games of infield experience as well. He may be the closest comp but there’s little doubt that Kelly Johnson had vastly more infield experience than Skip will have had when he takes the field in a couple of weeks. If anything, we can use Johnson as a best case scenario for Skip and, truthfully, if he ends up around -8 defensively, Cards’ fans ought to be fairly content.

By: vivaelpujols

vivaelpujols — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:00:32 +0000

sorry -8 UZR/150s for Johnson.

By: vivaelpujols

vivaelpujols — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:58:10 +0000

I don’t think that Tony will let him play if his defense is truly dreadful. He has always valued good defense up the middle and he has always put together excellent defensive teams. If Schu is really that bad than he won’t be playing a lot of second.

A decent comparable to Skip is probably Kelly Johnson, who was an above average left fielder when he first came up. He played SS in the minors, but he wasn’t considered a very good defender. He played left field for his first year, then he moved to second and has been bad, but not quite Jeff Kent bad. His UZR/150s have been around 8. If Shcumaker is able to manage that, then he could potentially be a 2 WAR player if he outperforms his offensive projections a little bit and gets enough playing time.

Obviously it isn’t a great situation, but Schumaker likely won’t have a negative affect on the club, and his upside is decent.

By: vivaelpujols

vivaelpujols — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:50:29 +0000

He was a shortstop in the minors though.

By: chuckb

chuckb — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:06:15 +0000

I looked at this a couple of days ago, right before the Cards dumped Kennedy, and used Chone’s projections as my guide. The assumption with which I worked was that Schumaker, having not played the middle infield since 1999, would be about as bad as the worst defensive 2B last year — Jeff Kent. I, further, assumed that Kennedy wouldn’t be as good defensively as he was last year, but would rather be as good as he’s been throughout his career — a UZR/150 of 9.9 rather than 22.2. I used their UZR/150 and projected their wRAA to 600 PAs in order to be consistent w/ using UZR/150. I determined that Schumaker would have to play roughly league average defense in order to be as good as Kennedy.

The primary difference between your assumptions and mine seems to be that you assume that Skip will perform as well in ’09 offensively as he did in ’08 — a big step up from Chone’s projections (or maybe using Chone’s projections is a big step down from his performance last year). Perhaps the real question, therefore, is how well will Skip have to hit in order to compensate for what would, in all likelihood, be dreadful defense at the keystone in ’09.

By: mymrbig

mymrbig — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:46:08 +0000

My bad. I looked at this before and mistakenly thought he played SS through (or at least into) 2004/2005. I was wrong and you were right:-)

By: R.J. Anderson

R.J. Anderson — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:08:29 +0000

I (incorrectly) had him moving from the corner outfield to second.

By: philosofool

philosofool — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:07:44 +0000

Also probably a defensive upgrade–Rasmus is noted for playing good CF.