How Byron Buxton’s Glove Went from Good to Great
I was invited to appear on Ben Lindbergh and Michael Baumann’s podcast over at The Ringer this week. Among those topics discussed was the challenge of scouting in today’s game (a topic which Jeff Sullivan has recently explored) and the difficulty with macro-level planning in the midst of a record home-run surge (about which I wrote earlier this week).
The game is being played at the extremes, featuring more home runs than ever and more strikeouts than ever. When players are changing skill sets and approaches so quickly, how must evaluators evolve? While speed and strength will never go out of style, what skills should gain and lose value in the eyes of evaluators? Michael noted that perhaps it’s adaptability that should take on greater weight in evaluation. In an era where it’s more difficult to predict what’s next, anticipating how the game (or the ball) will change might be a player’s best tool.
Along those lines, it might behoove evaluators to place more weight on players who are curious. In an age with endless data from Statcast and other sources, asking the right questions can help an athlete better understand and improve his own performance. That’s trickier to evaluate, of course: it requires getting to know the individual and/or performing other types of due diligence. But those traits can make an impact.
Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy are among the players who’ve used new data, in part, to inform changes they’ve made to their swings and approaches. That curiosity (and lots of work), in part, elevated those players to stardom. And while the benefits of data have mostly been tied to the offensive portion of the game, we now have some evidence of Statcast helping an individual defender.
Byron Buxton has always been an elite athlete.
He once threw a football 82 yards. He would probably be in the NFL or NBA if he weren’t playing baseball. He’s the fastest player in the majors, according to the Sprint Speed leaderboard. Buxton (30.2 feet/second) and Billy Hamilton (30.1 feet/second) are the only two major leaguers exceeding 30 feet per second at top speed.
Buxton has always been an elite athlete, but he’s wasn’t always an elite defender.
He is this year.
He entered the season with 7 career Defensive Runs Saved across 1,100.2 innings in center field. He leads center fielders with 26 DRS this year — and trails only Mookie Betts (31) and Andrelton Simmons (29) overall — in 1,075 innings in center his season.
His UZR/150 number this season (13.9) is better than double that of last year’s mark (6.4). He leads in a new Statcast tool Outs Above Average with 24 entering play Thursday, after ranking 14th (10 OAA) last season.
He’s always been capable of making highlight plays and still very much is:
He’s always made the highlight plays, but now he’s simply getting to more batted balls: he’s recorded 112 out-of-zone plays this year after entering the season with 90 in just about the same amount of innings.
As Buxton told Jared Diamond of The Wall Street Journal, he’s getting to more balls, in part, because of player-tracking data. After last season, along with help from the Twins’ staff, Buxton examined his defensive measurements. The result? A sense that his first-step quickness, a Statcast metric that isn’t publicly available, could be better.
Reported Diamond:
So over the offseason, he spent a couple weeks at his old high school in Baxley, Ga., focusing intensely on trying to improve an area that not long ago couldn’t have been quantified.
“I picked up on the numbers and I was like, ‘Well, I can be better than this, I can do this better,’” Buxton said. “So I started picking out the small things that I felt like I could get a little better at.”
Sprint speed only tells us top speed. An outfielder’s range also includes first-step quickness, the accuracy of that first step, and overall route efficiency. Everyone knows Buxton is fast. The eye test tells us that. Statcast confirms that our eyes are not betraying us. But by focusing on his first step, both the quickness and direction of it, Buxton has essentially used Statcast to improve what we have collectively often referred to as “instinct.” While some of that instinct is innate, perhaps some of it is also learned and can be improved through practice. Buxton’s remarkable defensive campaign of 2017 seems to be loud proof of that.
While players are suspicious of some elements of the big-data age, player-tracking data can help improve performance; it can help the player if he’s curious and adaptable and open-minded. They are perhaps characteristics upon which evaluators must now place a greater emphasis. If the game’s best athlete can benefit from the data, everyone can benefit from the data.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Really interesting article. What exactly does first-step quickness measure? And how does someone work on improving it?
And is that the same Jared Diamond that wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel?
So many questions, I apologize.
Not the same Jared Diamond but what a book! … First-step quickness measures, as I understand it, time from when ball contacts bat to defender’s first movement from starting position. But direction is also important as an errant first step is harmful not helpful, of course
Thanks for the explanation. I was curious whether direction and quickness of the first step are measured separately, but would then be coupled together for evaluation of efficiency or effectiveness or something to that effect.
I’d imagine that the effectiveness of a first step would have a lot to do with identifying pitch location and the timing of the swing, which seems pretty hard to practice. I wonder if there is some other part of getting a jump on the ball that I’m missing.
You are absolutely right. Many of the great defenders are actually able to sense the direction of the ball off the bat and move even before contact. Identifying pitch location and timing is that special instinct that can never be taught. Brooks Robinson seemed to have it. He would be moving a little in either direction as the just as the hitter began to swing. It was called quickness but it was even more than that. I recall a game in Salem in 2012 in which I saw Jackie Bradley move a full step and then proceed to make an amazing circus catch. I really don’t have much use for defensive metrics and I agree with the Red Sox radio voice for the past 35 years Joe Castiglione. He has seen thousands of games and said recently that JBJ is as good a CF as he has ever seen, and I am old enough to have watched Willie.
Reading the ball as it comes off the bat. The most important skill for an outfielder. Some outfielders can be above average with average foot speed because they read the ball off the bat so well.
Shannon Stewart was one of the fastest players in MLB but a poor outfielder because he couldn’t read the ball off the bat and had to use his speed to cover that as best he could.
I agree with that, and it’s somewhat what I was getting at with regards to pitch location and timing of the swing. Although I admit I don’t really know at which point in time the process actually begins, never having played outfield in baseball (and if I had, my skill level was low enough that my experience would provide no insight).
But I have a hard time imagining how this skill could be practiced much, so I am wondering if there’s some other factor that goes into first-step quickness that I’m unaware of.
The giant real-world problem with this measurement is that elite defenders are often times moving as the ball is hit. They get the slowest part of the route started before the ball is hit and I don’t see how you can measure that. If you are sitting there flat-footed you actually accelerate more, which is just dead-wrong. That is literally what separates elite range from not and a computer is going to have a really hard time with that.
Google it. I am sure you will find people lining up to sell you special shoes and exercise routines. Much like everything else, you are born with it or not for the most part. You certainly can work on it, but you aren’t going to go make yourself into something you are not.