February 9, 2016

Washing Away the Errors

FanGraphs looks at the difference Ron Washington‘s tutoring made in Marcus Semien‘s defense. Semien’s errors went down, but:

The numbers are almost comically similar before and after working with Wash on defense, and it’s easy to see what happened during their time together: Semien couldn’t hit a thing. He was the second-best offensive shortstop in the majors by wRC+ from Opening Day to mid-May; then, from May 22nd to August 24th, he was Jean Segura. After August 24th, he went back to posting a similar wRC+ to Ryan Braun.

The author blames the difficulty of learning shortstop on the offensive fall-off, but I wonder if Washington wasn’t whispering about being more aggressive at the plate as well.

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