Article: How Bad Is Too Bad at Defense?

[Adam Morgan]

Recent history tells us that it's possible to overcome lackluster defense, but it's not easy.

As the 2024 season winds down, there's a common refrain on national broadcasts, visiting broadcasts, and even NESN's broadcasts: the Red Sox have not been a good defensive team this season. With Boston's playoff hopes still (barely) alive in the last week of the season, it makes you wonder: How bad is too bad at defense?

Depending on your metric of choice, the defense of the 2024 Red Sox can grade out very differently. Starting with the most old-school defensive stat of them all, Boston's 112 errors lead all of baseball, and not in a good way. The team's .981 fielding percentage puts it in a three-way tie for last with the Marlins and Nationals (though if you go out to the fifth decimal place, you'll see that Miami's .98058 fielding percentage is ever so slightly worse than Boston's .98064). This nets out to 0.71 errors per game. If you want to break it down even further, the Red Sox lead baseball in fielding errors, and are tied for seventh in throwing errors. It's not just that throws are sailing on the Red Sox; they are having trouble with the fundamentals, as they showed in one particularly ugly play on Tuesday night in Toronto.

However, trouble with the fundamentals doesn't always translate into bad performance. You'd much rather have an error-prone player with great range than a smooth player with poor range. The first player will get to far more balls than the second, more than offsetting those errors. Surprisingly, Sports Info Solutions credits the Red Sox with 41 Defensive Runs Saved. That's seventh-most in baseball, ahead of playoff-bound teams like the Yankees, Orioles, and Astros, to name a few. However, the other advanced metrics — Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), Statcast's Fielding Runs Value (FRV),  Baseball Prospectus's Defensive Runs Prevented (DRP), and  FanGraphs' Defensive Runs Above Average (DRAA) —  are unanimous in their view that the Red Sox rank toward the bottom of the league.

	FP	DRS	FRV	UZR	DRP	DRAA
Measure	.981	41	-20	-9.7	-13.1	-9.9
MLB Rank	29	7	24	25	24	22

In 2015, the Royals led baseball in Defensive Runs Above Average and won the World Series. The Cubs did the same in 2016. In 2017, the Minnesota Twins had the best DRAA, and, well... they got bounced in the first round by the Yankees. So the trend doesn't always hold up, but consider this: Since the beginning of the Statcast era in 2015 (and excluding the short 2020 season), only one team with a DRAA that ranked worse than fifth has ever won the World Series: the 2018 Boston Red Sox, who ranked seventh. Generally speaking, teams with better defense seem to make the playoffs more often and they seem to do better in the playoffs when they do.

If you look at any list of the worst defensive teams to make the playoffs (once again excluding 2020), you have to start with the 2023 Miami Marlins. They were generally considered the worst all-around team to make the playoffs that year, so it should comes as no surprise that their -29.9 DRAA ranked 29th in the league, ahead of only — you guessed it — the Red Sox. The Marlins were swept in the first round by the Phillies.

Four Yankees teams make the list as well: their 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2021 iterations. The 2021 Yankees put up -29.5 DRAA. They were the second-worst defensive team in the AL, and they committed the third-most errors, with 98. They were powered by 30-homer seasons from Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge and 23 homers from Gary Sánchez, before being unceremoniously bounced by the Red Sox in the Wild Card game

The worst defensive team to make the World Series in recent memory was, of course, the 2022 Phillies. The team boasted former and future DHs like Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, and Rhys Hoskins, all of them taking turns playing the field. Their offense was built on power. Eight different Phillies hit double-digit homers, led by Schwarber with 46, Hoskins with 30, and J.T. Realmuto with 22. Bryce Harper was limited to 99 games in the regular season but came back to put on an impressive power display, propelling them to the World Series with six postseason homers.

What does all this mean for the Red Sox? Defense is just one facet of the game, so it can be survived as long as you've got the pitching and offense to make up for it. Over the course of his career, FanGraphs rates Rafael Devers as a net negative on defense, costing the Red Sox 7.4 total runs. However, his 118.7 runs on offense not only make up for that, but make him one of the best position players in the game. Devers made 12 errors this season, but his 28 home runs nonetheless helped make him a four-win player. On the other hand, Ceddanne Rafaela's 15 homers and 79 wRC+ cost the Red Sox dearly, and while he was worth 5 DRAA when he played in the outfield, he cost the Sox the exact same amount when he was playing out of position as an infielder. If he could have spent the whole season in the outfield, he might have accrued enough value there to offset his weak bat.

Defensive liabilities Dominic Smith (7 errors) and Pablo Reyes (4 errors) are not finishing the season with the Red Sox. In recent weeks, Connor Wong has been playing in the field more, giving Danny Jansen a chance to showcase his superior framing skills behind the plate. These moves indicate that the Red Sox understand their defense is a major liability. However, unless the team can put together an offense to rival the Phillies or Yankees squads of recent vintage, it will need to improve on defense. That means getting more from the players currently on the roster as well as looking for defensive upgrades in trades and free agency.

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[mvp 78]

The only Sox team to win a WS without a top 10 defense is the '04 team and that team had great starting pitching, great offense and the relievers became shutdown relievers in the postseason. 

The problem with bad defense is that it gets magnified in the postseason (hello Will Middlebrooks). 

The following lineup would be a good enough defense IMO:

C:Wong/Teel

1B:Casas

2B/SS:Mayer/Story/Campbell/Romy

3B:Raffy

OF:Duran/Rafaela/Abreu/Anthony

DH:Masa