This has been a very interesting season already. Things have gone badly, specifically the pitching, but the “important” parts of the team have mostly been on track. Jordan Walker appears to have broken out, JJ Wetherholt is as advertised if not frankly better with his defensive results, and the late inning combo of Riley O’Brien and JoJo Romero are looking mighty appealing to opposing teams if the Cardinals decide to deal them.
On the bad side, I’ll single out Matthew Liberatore as one of the important parts decidedly not going well. He’s been my biggest disappointment. It’s only four starts, but he’s not missing any bats. Michael McGreevy is pretty much going as planned. Dustin May still has ugly stats, but now has two consecutive good starts and his stats will be better when his BABIP against isn’t over .400. I don’t really think Kyle Leahy or Andre Pallante are in the long term plans so their struggles aren’t problematic for the future to me.
On the hitting side, I’d pretty much limit it to Nolan Gorman, who makes it hard to believe in his bat. He’s not the only one struggling, but the others either seeem unlucky (Masyn Winn) or they just don’t have a ticking clock (Nathan Church). This is Gorman’s final shot on the Cardinals. And like last year, the problem isn’t that he is striking out – that comes with the territory – it’s that his power is gone. He needs elite power. He hasn’t had it since 2023. That’s why it’s hard to believe in his bat.
However, the early returns on his defense are very promising, to the point where a Ryan McMahon type – closer to an average hitter and with worse defense than McMahon – is more a possibility than I would have assumed. I don’t think it’s likely, but if Gorman can be an above average defender at 3B – it changes what his bat needs to be. Which is very important, because it’s looking increasingly less likely that Gorman will be much more than an average hitter.
He wouldn’t be playing 3B, but an interesting thought experiment is if Brendan Donovan was in the lineup instead of Gorman. The 2026 team would certainly be better, though it’s unfair to judge it that way, because we’re not going to see the benefits immediately. However, it might surprise some of you – imagine in this hypothetical that Donovan literally plays 3B – that, by the small sample defense that we have, it would be a HUGE downgrade in defense.
Yeah that’s right. Donovan has been used exclusively as a third baseman for the Seattle Mariners and he’s been awful defensively. Coming into the season, he played almost as much RF as he had played 3B and if you don’t remember him playing RF, he played one inning combined his last two seasons in St. Louis. So as a result, Donovan has been -4 OAA at 3B. Gorman has been +2. It is April 15. That is a crazy huge disparity 20 games into the season.
But it bring up a concept that I’ve thought about before. Donovan isn’t actually that good of a defender, but he looks like he is. I tried to figure out why. And I think I did. Donovan is a high effort defender, he goes all out to make the plays he can make. Mentally, I think we give him credit for plays he doesn’t make because he almost made them. A diving stop, but the runner’s safe. He also doesn’t have a ton of range, so he’ll make diving plays that some other fielders don’t have to dive for.
Which gave me the idea for this post. I’m workshopping this idea, so it might not even fit like I’m hoping it does. But it’s more of a descriptor of a defender. Essentially, I came up with three categories to help describe what type of defender a player is. The first category is effort, which is less meant as a judgment call on how hard a player is trying and more “how it looks.” Nationals budding star James Wood is a low effort defender, not because I think he isn’t trying hard to catch it, but because he looks like he’s barely trying. He just has resting bored face. Nick Castellanos is low effort because he isn’t trying hard defensively. He basically admitted as much.
The second category is smoothness. Sometimes this goes hand-in-hand with effort. A smooth player may not look like they’re trying very hard. You can probably reinterpret this as how easy do they make defense look. Even if we know we would never be able to make that play, that doesn’t mean the player doesn’t make it look easy. Masyn Winn makes defense look easy. Brendan Donovan does not make defense look easy. Masyn Winn is smooth. Donovan is clumsy.
The third category is more objective, or at least should be, which is simply how good they actually are. Pretty straightforward. Use the best defensive data you have at the time and determine if they are a good or bad defender or in between. That’s the other thing. It’s a sliding scale. Most players are in the middle. Most players aren’t really clumsy or smooth, and most players aren’t high effort or low effort.
Here’s the part I’m really workshopping. Coming up with names for each of these types. I think just naming it after the prototypical example is kind of boring, but I’m not clever enough to come up with a nice punchy name for all of these. So you’ll get my best effort.
The Clumsy Giraffe
The high effort, clumsy, bad defender
Gold Standard: Jose Martinez
Did Jose Martinez motivate the name? Absolutely. But also I feel like being a tall and awkward dude is kind of a prerequisite for being in this category. Before this season, Jordan Walker fit. Just tall guys who don’t quite know how to move in their own body. I’m struggling to think of a small guy where this fits. But these are also obviously bad defenders, and teams put up with them because they have power or power potential and well small guys don’t tend to have power.
Bo Knows
The high effort, smooth, bad defender
The Gold Standard: Bo Jackson
Bo Jackson is a little bit before my time, but I’ve seen some clips and I certainly am not capable of coming up with a better example. A smooth and high effort defender was a tough combo for me to think of. But Bo Jackson rated as a bad fielder, admittedly from defensive stats that are not perfect. But in the equivalent of four seasons of defensive innings in the outfield, spread between all three positions, Jackson averaged -5 DRS per season. His numbers in CF and RF do drag down the numbers, so I am being unfair here.
The Perpetual Jersey Stain
The high effort, bad defender
The Gold Standard: Aaron Miles
The beautiful thing about finding the perfect example of the type of defender I’m trying to describe is that I almost don’t need to say any more. These are typically middle infield types, bench players, who are always called gritty and somehow begin the game with dirt all over their uniforms. Managers used to love them. Another word used for this player was utility, which before Ben Zobrist, was basically code for bad at all the positions, but he can sure stand there.
Labored Adequacy
The high effort, clumsy average defender
The Gold Standard: Brendan Donovan
I don’t know that Donovan is the gold standard, but he motivated this post so I’m going to give it to him. These tend to be the defenders most overrated by a broadcast team or even fans, mostly because we don’t tend to notice they have less range than their counterparts, though they might provide a decent amount of defensive highlights. If you can remember seeing a lot of highlights from a defender but notice their numbers end up average-ish, they might belong here.
The Don Knotts
The high effort, clumsy good defender
Gold Standard: Jordan Walker
Yes, this is wishful thinking. I can’t call Walker a good defender yet. But if he becomes a good defender, he will definitely be the gold standard. Walker strikes me as a guy who is always going to be clumsy and it does not seem like outfield defense comes naturally to him, but with his arm and speed, he can overcome those two things to be a good defender. It’s not like corner outfielder sets an impossible standard. Why Don Knotts? I mean…. high effort, very clumsy comic actor, perhaps the best version of that has ever existed. This is my favorite name.
Half-shirt, full extension
The high effort, smooth good defender
The Gold Standard: Jim Edmonds
I know Edmonds is accussed of slowing down to make diving plays, but I would argue even if that were true, the appearance of high effort is there. And his numbers ended up good in the end, so I do not care. I can’t take credit for the name. It was on an old VEB T-shirt for a Cardinals Care fundraiser.
A First baseman’s glove
The high effort, smooth okay defender
The Gold Standard: Late Cardinals era Paul Goldschmidt
There’s not a specific example except broadly speaking, I would describe it as once elite defenders who still look smooth, but their advanced stats declined. I don’t really think Paul Goldschmidt looked any different at the end and yet he sandwiched a +3 season with a -5 and 0 oAA seasons.
Just Put Me at DH
Low effort, bad defender
The Gold Standard: Adam Dunn
Dunn played in the National League for the first 10 years of his career, and while it didn’t start off egregiously bad, wow did his defense get to some remarkable lows. It was honestly so bad that it’s impossible to imagine he really tried that hard at defense. He knew as long as he could hit 40+ home runs, which he did five straight years, teams would accept his bad defense. He played his last four years in the AL, which was also when he stopped being a great hitter.
Get me off this position
Low effort, clumsy, bad defender
The Gold Standard: Oneil Cruz
He wasn’t a particularly good defender at SS, but this description fits him of CF. Actually his numbers aren’t as bad as you’d think but wow are the lowlight clips really bad. It actually depends on what you use because DRS really didn’t like Cruz last year. Doesn’t like him this year either, but for now OAA has joined the club.
Get me off this team
Low effort, smooth, bad defender
Gold Standard: Gary Sheffield
Gary Sheffield has admittedly to playing worse while on the Brewers on purpose so he could be traded. But honestly, he has some truly impressively bad defensive season littered throughout his career. He just might be the worst defensive outfielder of all time. If that sounds hyperbolic, his fielding runs above average was -205.4 on Fangraphs for his career. That is not position-adjusted. At an average of 1,100 innings played per season, that means Sheffield averaged being a -12 runs below average defender for his career career. I don’t know if he’s actually smooth, but I wanted to get his name on here.
The Hot Corner
Low effort, smooth, good defender
Gold Standard: Manny Machado
I named it the hot corner, because I kind of think this is the only position where you can look like you’re not trying, but still be smooth. He’s here basically because of those plays he makes where he’s in foul territory, and basically chucks it as quick as he can, but it’s somehow right on the money. But just in general, there’s something about third baseman just casually making a great play. Outfielders have to sprint for their great plays and middle infielders have to cover more ground.
Like Clockwork
Low effort, good defender
Gold Standard: Paul DeJong
He’s here for two reasons and neither reason is because I think DeJong didn’t try. He very clearly did because he went from a 3B to a good defender at SS. But he’s here because he has permanent “I didn’t get enough sleep last night” face and because he wasn’t a big highlight reel defender. He made his ground making the plays he needed to make.
Okay, this article took me a lot longer than I thought it was, because it was harder to come up with names than I expected, so I’ll crowdsource the rest of this concept. If you have a player that comes to mind for either a category I’ve already listed, or a category I didn’t get to, I feel like it’d produce some good results. As you can see, average effort categories are missing. But that leaves a lot of room to play with since…. you don’t have to speculate on effort. (Or have a good reason they look like they are low effort). And if you have a fun name for that category, definitely will get better names than I would get.
