The Orioles' Shortstop Problem

The Baltimore Orioles had myriad problems during the 2008 season—pitching, fielding, and injuries just to name a few—and one area that has consistently stymied fans in recent history is the shortstop position.

Between 1983 and 1996, Cal Ripken, Jr. made 2,193 appearances at shortstop, winning two Gold Gloves and making the All-Star Game every year during that span. After Ripken moved to third base in 1997, the O's still maintained relative consistency at the position with Mike Bordick, one season of Deivi Cruz, and then Miguel Tejada.

Ever since Tejada was traded to the Astros in a blockbuster deal, things have gone downhill. No shortstop in an Orioles uniform in 2008 logged more than Juan Castro's 390 innings, over which he managed a distinctly mediocre line of .205/.256/.285.

So it's no small wonder that journalists, fans, and team personnel have all identified shortstop as a major issue for this offseason. First, let's take a look at how the Orioles' revolving door at shortstop affected their 2008 season.

Fielding metrics are inherently unreliable, but one intriguing set that has recently come to my attention is Probabilistic Measure of Range (PMR). David Pinto at Baseball Musings has compiled the data for this season at every position, including shortstop. Dan Turkenkopf at Behind the Box Score has been kind enough to translate the data into runs against average.

Here, we can see that Orioles shortstops fielded approximately one run worse than the league average—that's pretty inconsequential in the big picture.

For the hitting statistics, we can use the ever-reliable Fangraphs—in particular, WPA/LI is a reasonable statistic to look at runs against average. It accumulates throughout the course of the season, so we can add all of the players' values to get an idea of how they fared as a group.

Juan Castro accumulated a WPA/LI of -1.53 with the vast majority of his innings at shortstop—we'll give him an even -1.50. Freddie Bynum contributed a score of -1.22 and Alex Cintron had a score of -.89. Brandon Fahey's score of -.91 has to be adjusted because he played about one-sixth of his innings at second base—his score goes to -.75. Add in Luis Hernandez's -.63 and Eider Torres's -.12 and we end up with a value of about -5.1.

That means that in total, the Orioles shortstops combined were more than five wins worse than a league average hitter. We have to be a bit careful here because shortstops generally hit worse than league average to begin with.

To give you an idea of how bad Baltimore's shortstops really were, Tony Pena, Jr., the epitome of an awful baseball player, would have had to get 500 at bats to equal the futility of our shortstops put together. His WPA/LI was -2.34 in 225 at bats.

So, essentially, O's shortstops were league average fielders but among the bottom of the barrel in hitting. What can the team do about it in the offseason?

Many journalists say their first choice is currently Cesar Izturis, a fielding specialist formerly of the St. Louis Cardinals.

As a regular shortstop, he would save the team about 10 runs, or about one win, over the course of a season in fielding, but his poor bat would take away another one or two wins, compared to the league average.

So assuming every other player performs at the same level they did last season, the O's gain four wins if they sign Cesar Izturis and play him every day. He earned $2.85 million this season and as a 28-year-old former All-Star, I doubt his contract demands would go down at all. A figure of two years for around $3 million to $3.5 million each seems in the right ballpark.

"But wait," Orioles fans are saying, "Cesar Izturis is a terrible baseball player! We want change! We want to see good baseball! We want someone like...Khalil Greene."

Greene, of course, was traded early on to the Cardinals as a replacement for Izturis. Well, Greene was a decent fielder in 2006 and 2007 (using Bill James' Fielding Bible, his +/- rating was in the range of +10), but last season his value regressed tremendously in both departments, probably due to his injury problems.

Using PMR, he gave up a full two wins as a fielder, and his WPA/LI was -1.56 in less than 400 at-bats, which extrapolates to around -2 over a full season. If we assume last season was a fluke (which in all likelihood it was), we can average it out with a few previous seasons to reach a more reasonable value of perhaps -0.5 wins as a hitter, and maybe he is slightly better than league average at shortstop.

I'll give him back +0.5 wins as a fielder. So he averages out to a "value" of zero wins, with Izturis at -1. (Remember that WPA/LI measures hitting versus league average for all players, while fielding is measured only against other shortstops. So these values are entirely arbitrary as absolutes, but relative to each other they match up fine.)

But is it really worth the risk? His contract is one year for $6.5 million. The O's would be paying a premium of $3 million to gain about one win at best (compared to Izturis), and they might even lose a few wins if he doesn't improve from his disastrous 2008 season.

The fact that his contract lasts for only one year is a lose-lose situation. If he performs well (i.e. to the level of his contract), he will want a lot of money to extend his contract, and there will be other teams interested—Baltimore will probably lose him.

If he performs poorly, there will be no point in keeping him, and the team will have wasted a lot of money. This is the kind of deal that a club makes if it thinks it's close to making the playoffs, and a difference of one or two wins is a big deal (i.e. Phillies/Mets).

For those teams, the risk is worth the potential reward. But for the Orioles?

Sure, I would be happier to see our team finish 72-90 than 71-91, but it makes exactly zero difference in the end. It's not like there are any surefire options at shortstop to slot in for the 2010 season either, unless someone like Blake Davis has a monster season out of nowhere. I would stick with Izturis.