Best Indians Defense Since…

About a year and a half ago, back in August of 2014, I wrote this (Worst Defense Since…) about the state of the Indians defense at the time. In the time since, the Indians front office has stated that fixing the defense was a primary goal and massive strides were made with the advancement of Francisco Lindor and Giovanny Urshela. Moving Lonnie Chisenhall to right solved two problems as did trading Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher. With the off-season additions of Mike Napoli, Rajai Davis and Collin Cowgill, things look they could be even better in 2016 and have turned around so much, that instead of looking at one of the worst defenses in recent history, we could be looking at the best ever.

Part of the problem looking back last time was that defense as a whole has improved at an extreme rate over the years, from an MLB average fielding percentage of .944 in 1901 (record low of .831 in 1874) to .984 in 2016. Since I didn’t include the visual last time, here’s the graph with the Major League average in blue and the Indians in red for comparison.

You can see the Indians have followed the Major League trend fairly closely although with more variance, which should be expected. While errors and fielding percent shouldn’t be the full determinate of how great a defense is, they are the first part. Completing a play is the most important part of the defensive game of baseball. Before considering range, arm strength and speed, simply making the plays that the official scorer thinks a player should is incredibly important. It is so important that I’m willing to say simply by being a modern defense, the 2016 will already be better than pretty much any team prior to 1990. Fields are in better condition, athletes train better, the lighting for night games is better and players make less errors. For the sake of this exercise, we’ll only compare the modern teams.

This also helps since we have more advanced defensive stats from 2002 onward. Of course, life isn’t that simple. There’s quite a big blip on the graph above in the late 1990’s and for those who don’t have a ruler handy, that would be the year 2000 with a .988 fielding percent and after only having a fielding percent above .982 in three years previously in franchise history (1947-1949), the Indians maintained one in 1995, then each year from 1997 through 2001. It is no surprise that teams with Kenny Lofton and Omar Vizquel were great defensively and they can’t be ignored in evaluating the current squad.

In the previous edition, I declared that the 2014 Indians were probably the Indians worst defensive team since at least 1994 with it being hard to judge before then. It is funny that their collective .981 fielding percent would have been a top five mark in team history prior to 1995, but that is besides the point since we are comparing against the era. In the more modern era, the best squads appear to be the teams from 2015, 2008, 2005, 2003, 2000, 1999, 1998 and 1997 in reverse chronological order. If you want two more for an even 10, look at 1992 and 1990 or include 1948 and 1949 for posterity’s sake. This isn’t about a top ten list that couldn’t possibly be made fairly, but seeing where the 2016 defense will fit compared to others in modern history.

Since I can’t resist a set of ten anymore than you can, I’ve included 1990 and 1948 in the chart above to round things out. Total Zone rating is an interesting stat here (as yet to be calculated for 2015) because it rates that 2000 season extremely poorly. TZ is based on play-by-play data and not actually where the ball was hit (like UZR), but it is still a more accurate look at runs saved defensively than any other early defensive metric. It would appear then, that the 2000 defense was flashy and efficient, but didn’t have much range.

This shouldn’t be a huge surprise necessarily, particularly considering the corner infielders. Travis Fryman won a gold glove despite being near the end of his career and having a extremely subpar range factor of 2.3 compared to both the league average of 2.7 and some of the Indians better third basemen over the years like Graig Nettles (3.4 career RF/G with Cleveland) and Buddy Bell (3.3). At first, Jim Thome was always a solid receiver and he finished with a respectable .992 fielding percent, but no one would ever confuse him with Sean Casey defensively.

For those years we have data, TZ, FLD% and UZR seem to agree that 2005 was actually the team’s best year defensively with arguments to made for 1948, 1959 and 1906 which also fared very well considering Total Zone. Since we haven’t seen the 2016 team anyway, the safest bet seems to be to look at the 2005 team and see what they will have to do to best that version.

For one, the 2005 team is completely unappreciated today, largely because they missed the play-offs and would have a deep run two years later. That team won 13 more games than the previous year (93) and allowed 215 less runs. Yes, this team featured the best bullpen since before Jose Mesa went crazy and a rotation featuring Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia and ERA champion Kevin Millwood, but there is good reason to believe the defense was deserving of the team record 70 runs saved above average.

Incredibly, players at all eight positions qualified for fielding percent at the end of the year. This may not seem a big deal, but knowing who your best players are and having them out there every day is a really big deal in creating the ultimate defense. Since then, the most players the Indians have had qualify at a position was six in 2007 and 2014 and both years featured at least four players who were worse than league average. Of the eight in 2005, only Ben Broussard at first and Aaron Boone at third were more than a run below league average.

On the other side, center fielder Coco Crisp played left field allowing him to tally up a ridiculous 19.1 UZR and the reason he was there, Grady Sizemore, added 7.5 in center. Depending on the metric, Jhonny Peralta was either league average or slightly below and Casey Blake in right field was either league average or slightly above. Ronnie Belliard played deep, but was always dependable and had to be considered better than league average by any metric.

That team did it with incredible outfield defense and steady infield defense while the 2016 Indians will look to flip things around. Again, there is the third baseman turned right fielder with an incredible arm, but now, instead of Sizemore and Crisp in the outfield, there is Francisco Lindor and Giovanny Urshela. This will be the first full season of each, but extending their numbers from last season for a full year, Lindor would have been worth a 18.9 UZR and Urshela 8.0. For the sake of unrealistic comparisons, we’ll look at how they match with the elder squad if the top defenders were to play the majority of the season.

Before you look too closely into that, the number listed by Chisenhall is insane and not anywhere near sustainable, but the rest are not that crazy. Beyond him, Brantley is considered the worst defender and he played injured all of last year and still was better than league average. Even so, the outfield should only be made better with Davis in left and Cowgill or Abraham Almonte in center for the first month of the season.

The numbers above are not projections, but the results from 2015, yet they should be completely obtainable. Gomes and Brantley should be completely healthy while Urshela and Lindor have their first year of MLB experience behind them. Only Davis and Napoli are over 30 and they will likely both be part timers with Carlos Santana (5.3 UZR/150 in 2015) and Cowgill (38.5 UZR/150 in the OF in 2015) replacing them. While the lineup may seem weak offensively, that might not matter at all if they can surpass that 2005 and keep opponents below 3.5 runs per game for the first time since 1972. If the Indians stick to their guns and don’t try anything crazy like placing Santana in left field, that could happen and this could be the best defense in Indians history. It’s certainly something that we’ll be keeping an eye on all year.