In the Statcast and Sabermetrics era, there are a variety of ways to measure a Major League Baseball player’s quality as a defender. What used to be a combination of simply error counts and eye test is now something that can be evaluated by many different metrics, as the advent of greater data points and the more mathematically-driven viewing eye combine to make capturing defensive impact the holy grail of baseball’s analytics movement.
No matter the metric used, though, the conclusions often seem to be the same. Taylor Walls, Tampa Bay Rays shortstop, is more than likely baseball’s best defensive player.
Since supposed franchise player Wander Franco was unceremoniously dumped – and having previously traded Willy Adames in anticipation of Franco seizing the reins – there has been plenty of playing time available at the shortstop position with the Rays over the last three years. Walls has therefore been near-enough an everyday player. And although he has struggled at the plate in his major league career, struggling to get above the Mendoza Line, the Rays maintain that Walls’s defensive efficacy offsets his offensive shortcomings and makes him an above-average player.
The numbers agree with them.
Ranked First In Multiple Measurements
One commonly-used contemporary metric is Defensive Wins Above Replacement, which measures a player’s defensive contributions to their team, expressed as the number of wins above what a replacement-level player would contribute defensively. Different sites have slightly differing methodologies for calculating DWAR, yet both ESPN.com and Baseball Reference agree that Walls is ranked #1 overall in the league with 1.6 wins above replacement. Only Boston Red Sox utility man Ceddanne Rafaela (1.4) comes close.
Fielding Bible’s Defensive Runs Saved metric again places the Rays shortstop at the top. An estimate of how many runs a fielder has saved above the expected performance of a player at their position, Walls again is top of the shop with 13. Rafaela ranks third with 10, while Atlanta Braves first baseman Matt Olson is the only other player in double figures, with 12. And at Fangraphs, Plus-Minus Runs Saved Above Average tells the same story, with Walls ahead of Olson and Chicago Cubs infielder Nico Hoerner.
Different metrics can use different data points to arrive at different conclusions, and all defensive analysis relies upon at least a small element of subjectivity. But notwithstanding all of that, Walls, clearly, is one of the best defensive players in the majors, if not the best.
Walls’s Overall Value
Walls has other tools at the MLB level beyond his shortstop defense. He is also a good baserunner and steals threat, swiping seven bags this season to go along 22 and 16 in each of the last two respectively, and has a good eye at the plate, sporting a career 12.1% walk rate against a Major League average of 8.4%.
The problem, simply, is that he cannot catch up to big league pitches. Be they fastballs on which he is late, or breaking balls he cannot reach, Walls flounders at the plate. Especially with runners in scoring position.
To the Rays and their fans, these limitations can be frustrating. A Walls at-bat is usually an out, even more so than most players, and his career OPS of .574 is far below the MLB average of .710. For a player with little home run power, Walls takes big cuts, and for a switch hitter, he seems to gain no advantage from either side in his splits.
Nevertheless, the Rays continue to play Walls because they believe he earns it back. While they signed Ha-Seong Kim from the San Diego Padres this offseason, they did so knowing he was injured, and would miss most if not all of the first half of the season. They did so because, after three seasons of getting the majority of the playing time at the position even though he was not meant to, they believed that Taylor Walls would hold the fort and improve the team, even if he had a Taylor Walls-like season as a hitter.
Despite the frustrations at the plate, it seems they were right.
By Multiple Metrics, Rays’ Taylor Walls is Baseball’s Best Defender