Even before Chone Figgins took a shoulder-sized divot out of centerfield at Yankee Stadium following one of the best catches you'll ever see on Sunday afternoon, I had spent much of the previous week with one question on my mind. The good people at Rawlings pass out eighteen Gold Glove Awards each November, honoring the nine best fielders by position in each league, but what about utility men?
It certainly must be nice to have a player like Andruw Jones, a superlative fielder you can send out to centerfield every night without worry. Ditto for guys like Ichiro, Scott Rolen, Eric Chávez, and Pudge Rodríguez. But my guess is that managers covet quality utility men just as highly.
While most position players can hone their craft through hours of drills and repetition until their defensive techniques and responsibilities become second nature, the utility man brings two or three gloves to the park everyday, checks the lineup card upon arrival since he likely won't be in the same spot as the night before, and has but an hour to two to prepare for the demands and expectations of his position du jour.
In many ways, the utility man is the most valuable man in the clubhouse, the one-eyed jack around which the manager hopes to build a winning hand. He can be moved from one spot to another in order to give regular players a night off, and he facilitates late-game maneuvering by readily sliding from second base, say, to third without missing a beat.
There seems to one on every team. The St. Louis Cardinals have John Mabry, the Giants have Pedro Felíz, and the Cincinnati Reds have Ryan Freel, to name a few, but Figgins seems to stand head and shoulders above everyone. Looking for statistical confirmation of what my eye sees, I took a trip to ESPN.com and checked out their sortable fielding statistics.
I looked at two statistics: range factor and zone rating. Range factor charts the number of balls a player fields and quantifies it using the formula (Put-outs + Assists)/Innings. Zone rating measures the percentage of balls that a player gets too within a defined area -- basically, does he get to the balls he should get to? As a true utility man who splits his time between six positions, Figgins hasn't logged enough innings to show up amongst the leaders at any single position, so I compared him to other American League fielders and ranked him where he would be if he had. Take a look:
POS |
GS |
RF (Rank) |
ZR (Rank) |
|---|---|---|---|
2B |
33 |
4.91 (T5) |
.808 (9) |
3B |
23 |
2.52 (10) |
.804 (2) |
CF |
18 |
3.3 (1) |
.857 (9) |
LF |
11 |
2.18 (5) |
.897 (4) |
RF |
7 |
2.21 (4) |
.750 (NR) |
SS |
1 |
-- |
-- |
What does this tell us? A few interesting things. First, Figgins is a better third baseman than Alex Rodríguez and a better second baseman than four-time Gold Glove winner Bret Boone. In the outfield, he's a better in left than Garret Anderson and better in center then Steve Finley, the two teammates he replaces. And when he fills in for Vladimir Guerrero in right, his zone rating isn't as good, but his range factor is an improvement.
Certainly Mike Scioscia would never permanently replace any of his regulars with Figgins, but the beauty is that he doesn't have to. He can rearrange his cards differently every night, but Figgins will be a key to every hand he comes up with. And if it were up to me, he'd get a Gold Glove as his reward.
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