The Defensive Perception

Delmon’s MTHDMAN is 1.34 this season, with a RAEKWON of 3.45. We need to get that RAEKWON down Del!

So you’re saying that Delmon Young isn’t a Ninja Turtle, he shouldn’t fear the OOZ?

CALM DOWN EVERYBODY.

That’s what I was trying to say in another post. He’s made some mistakes. And the Dome can be brutal on left fielders because the lights are so low. If memory serves, most of his mistakes are at home.

But taken for all and all, he’s been a vast improvement out there over the collection of characters we’ve trotted out. I mean RonDL had no business in the outfield. And as fast as both Ford and Tyner were, they took more Z routes on balls than Delmon does.

One thing I know, Delmon has the best arm of any left fielder we’ve ever had.

...is that a lot of teams in the AL haven’t had a “regular” left fielder. Kansas City, Detroit, Cleveland, Texas, Toronto, the Yanks, the Angels…they’ve all had to deal with injuries or platoons or, in Detroit’s case, filling in a hole left by a guy who was cut. We’ve been that team the last few years. Delmon struggles but we know how the Twins like their consistency, so they’ll keep trotting him out there…at least he has talent and time to grow into himself.

1) He is recording all those outs out of zone with freakin’ Carlos Gomez, who seems determined to catch everything hit anywhere, in centerfield.

2) As Twins fans, we have very high standards for defense because we are used to seeing a lot of it done well. Delmon Young might not have met our standards yet, but if you look around the league the average left fielder is not better in the field, and the average left fielder definitely does not have as much youth/upside.

now for a look at Delmon’s offensive numbers I direct you to:

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/5/29/541422/delmon-young-is-becoming-m

RZR as a measurement of an outfield’s defense is like determining an elephant’s weight by placing one of its feet on a bathroom scale.

It does not tell me:

1) When the outfielder went after a foul ball but failed to catch a very playable ball, as Delmon Young has done at least three times this year. Zone rating gives you credit for the catch, not for the failure.

2) When an outfielder misses the cutoff man.

3) When the outfielder throws to the wrong base.

4) When the outfielder fails to back up the other outfielder.

5) When the outfielder fails to back up a base on a throw.

6) When the outfielder backs up another outfielder, yet lets it roll to the fence, as Delmon Young did tonight.

7) When an alert infielder turns a throw from the outfielder, perhaps to the wrong place, into an assist for the outfielder by paying attention to the developning play and zipping the ball to the right base on an anxious base-runner.

8) If an outfielder goes back and to his left well, perhaps extraordinarily well, but does not go to his right and in well. Or vice-versa.

9) If the outfielder struggles with a ball bouncing around the fence, but the official scorer is not going to give him an error, yet the bumbling lets the runner take another base without drawing a throw.

10) If the outfielder can play a carom off the wall well enough to hold the runner to a lesser base.

Delmon’s outfield play is embedded in all of the above. He looks like a guy who didn’t think much about defense, and if he was coached on it, didn’t much care. In addition, he often has his glove in poor position, and he s a catch … throw guy, not a catch-and-throw guy. Example of the latter was Cuddyer gunning down Jeter at second in the Monday game of the Yankee series. All one motion. Catch-and-throw. Delmon catches, sets up (often with poor footwork and poor shoulder direction) and then throws. The throw is often either off the mark or high of its intended target.

He’s got assists, you say? Runners tend to keep running on you until you can show you can stop them. Then they still might run on you, but not as often, and more tentatively.

Delmon needs a lot of three-double games to make up for his outfield work.

As for comparison to others, not relevant. If you are a bit better than a carload of mediocre people, you’re nothing special.

of us saw Delmon enough last year to make a solid judgment on how he handled balls for the Rays. (Unless you did. Did you?)

Enough, and in the minors, to say he has not made suitable progress given his time on a pro ball field. If he were a college kid – and the coaching for college kids usually ranges from OK to not so hot, it would be one thing. And maybe if he had played in the Twins’ organization we’d see something different. His current shaky play COULD be attributed to his minor league coaching and his coachability, and CAN be attributed to his movements, which you will note often resemble those of a teen’s body that grew too fast for coordination to keep up with him.

Presumably, all these can be overcome. But he is frequently painful to watch, and pitchers certainly cringe when the ball goes his way.

He also needs to learn to play within his limitations and grow with that, rather than think he’s still in the SALLY league making up for defensive lapses with his bat.

Still, since Gardy has been telling people he’s “only 22,” everyone has picked up on it. And it’s good to see people are listening to Gardy, even if he is just speaking for the sake of the media and fans.

-didn’t look so bad to me at 22. He looked pretty good at 21. Same with Jose Reyes.

Complete? No. But even at 21, Luis Rivas was less maddening than Delmon.

The only consolation is to try to keep in mind that since TK, you picked it or you sat. So people who have followed the Twins for 20 years are not used to this.

As an aside that is so far afield it probably should be its own thread, when Walter Alston managed the Dodgers for 20-plus years, a big deal was made of his longevity. Enhancing the story was he reputedly never had anything but a one-year contract, so his unusual managerial longevity coupled with the lack of long-term contract made a nice little story, at least until you heard it 127 times. Which leads to the unusual stability of the Twins. Going on 50 years, two owners. More than 20 years now, two managers. Certainly, some people quibble that makes the Twins too inbred, but it’s been a good organization, mostly entertaining teams, and they have done a great job marketing a “low revenue” operation to fans who have had to enter the awful Metrodome on sunny summer afternoons.

To bring that tangent back full circle, I do wonder where Delmon would be had he come up through an organization that asks a guy to flash a little leather.