The Cardinals’ Defense Could Be Historic
So, the Cardinals have Nolan Arenado now. Weeks later, I’m still dumbfounded — I’m sure everyone is — by the Rockies’ decision to part with their franchise icon for a Derek Jeter gift basket of prospects. But rather than make sense of their incompetence, let’s look at this from the Cardinals’ side. How do they benefit?
They’ll add a couple of much-needed wins, for sure. FanGraphs pegs the Brewers with a .494 win percentage in 2021, while the Cardinals aren’t far behind with a .488 win percentage. With a difference that insignificant, the division is certainly up for grabs. Arenado, who’ll likely contribute around 4 WAR even outside of Coors, gives the Cardinals a minor, but crucial edge.
There’s a more interesting way to answer that question, though. Picture Arenado. Then add in DeJong, Edman, Bader… notice a common theme? Yep, the 2021 Cardinals are going to be a defensive powerhouse. It’s not surprising for a team to have either a strong infield or a strong outfield, but having both is rare. The Cardinals were already an example of both, so does the addition of Arenado elevate them to a special, historic status?
To start, I compiled each Cardinals’s projected DRAA (Defensive Runs Above Average), per ZiPS on FanGraphs. For simplicity’s sake, I only included the starters for each position. It’s great that I’m writing this a few weeks removed from news of the Arenado trade, since between then and now Kolten Wong signed with the Brewers and Dexter Fowler was shipped to the Angels, giving us a better idea of who the Cardinals will pencil in on Opening Day. And Yadier Molina, who was destined to re-sign ever since his free agency began, agreed to a 1 year, $9 million deal. Anyhow, here are the numbers:
Goldschmidt and O’Neill are projected to be slight defensive liabilities, but they’re explainable. Considering how aggressive FanGraphs’ positional adjustments are — they subtract 12.5 runs from first basemen, whereas Baseball-Reference only subtracts 10 — Goldschmidt’s contributions are on the higher side. Remove the adjustment, and he would have a positive DRAA across 142 games. It seems like ZiPS still has faith in the 3-time Gold Glove winner.
As for O’Neill, there are two likely factors. One is an insufficient sample size, as the 171 games he’s played don’t constitute enough time for defensive metrics like UZR to become stable. Another is that O’Neill was never much of a glove-first prospect. He’s renowned for his raw power, and there’s little reason to expect that his defense will improve over the course of one offseason.
Everyone else’s projections makes sense. The only other question mark remaining is Dylan Carlson, whose 35 games last year represent his entire Major League career, but because he’ll take on primarily RF with an above-average glove as evaluated by prospectors, I buy into what ZiPS presents.
In total, from Arenado to O’Neill, that’s 42.7 DRAA. It seems admirable, but in 2019, the Athletics mustered a league-leading 42.9 DRAA. The year before that, the Angels triumphed with 50.2. When the Royals (almost) ruled the world in 2014, they ended the year with a whopping 65.5 DRAA.
The point is that relative to previous league-leading defensive teams, the 2021 Cardinals don’t seem like they’re destined for history. What’s so different about them?
Of the 8 starters listed, 5 of them are projected to have a DRAA above 9. If that tidbit doesn’t excite you, what if I told you that it’d be a first since UZR data became available in 2002? Serious! Often, a teams’ defensive totals are driven by two or three stars — the A’s in 2019, for example, benefited mostly from the acrobatics of Matt Chapman and Marcus Semien. Here’s how the 2021 Cardinals might stand out, in graph form:
The 2011 Diamondbacks, who have the highest team DRAA total in history (110.4), aren’t even shown because they rostered just two players with DRAA over 9: Miguel Montero and Chris Young. Granted, Montero and Young put up 34.0 and 18.2 DRAA respectively, and the remaining team was solid defense-wise, but it goes to show how rare it is for a team to have more than a couple of elite fielders. The convergence of Arenado, DeJong, Molina, Edman, and Bader in and of itself is historic.
Still, it’s true that numbers-wise, the 2021 Cardinals won’t reach unprecedented heights. But we should remind ourselves that most all-time defensive teams were lighting in bottles, the result of individuals outperforming their projections. After their 65.5 DRAA 2014 season, the Royals finished the following 2015 season with 42.8 DRAA despite retaining most of its key contributors. What ZiPS displays on FanGraphs is the realism of 2015, not the potential ceiling of 2014. The projected total of Cardinals starters, therefore, is optimistic by its standards.
More specifically, ZiPS displays the average, or the 50th percentile outcome. That made me wonder: What would happen if everyone achieved his 60th percentile instead? I downloaded the defensive numbers of the 109 fielders who qualified in 2019 and found out that the standard deviation of their DRAA was 8.8. Using it, I estimated (roughly) the 60th percentile for each Cardinals player:
Of course, the probability of everyone hitting their 60th percentile is low, low, low — what’s more likely is a 40th percentile for Molina, 70th for Bader, 55th for DeJong and so on, a combination of under- and over-performances that, in the end, reflect expectations.
With a bit of luck, however (or should I say devil magic?), it’s very possible that the Cardinals amass the highest DRAA total since the special 2014 Royals. Plus, I wonder if the synergy between Arenado, DeJong, Edman, and Goldschmidt would boost their defensive output. A weak grounder trying to sneak past that impenetrable infield? No chance. ZiPS only accounts for individual performance, so who knows, we might even be underestimating them.
In a barren, mediocre NL Central, at least the Cardinals will showcase snippets of fascinating baseball. Their defense was already elite, but the addition of Nolan Arenado gives them a chance to become historic. No team in the era of modern sabermetrics has ever produced 5 players with more than 9 DRAA. No team since 2014 has surpassed the 60 DRAA benchmark. While the offense remains a problem, the Cardinals’ defense establishes a floor ensuring the team doesn’t flop, as well as the chance for genuine greatness. This will be a fun squad to watch.
All data courtesy of FanGraphs.
