Final week, I wrote about my favourite award non-frontrunners this season, and there was a mini-discussion within the feedback in regards to the sustainability of Trea Turner’s defensive enhancements. As now we have extra years of OAA/FRV, we’re higher capable of research long-term fielding questions with the info, so I needed to do a fast take a look at FRV enhancements/declines and see if these modifications have held. And since there isn’t fairly sufficient to this matter for me to provide this text the full-length remedy — a minimum of not now, whereas I’m attempting to get my playoff predictor utility prepared for 2025 — and too lengthy for a remark 10 folks will discover, this appeared like time for an underutilized InstaGraph©.
I began with each defensive season by which somebody performed 800 innings at a place in consecutive seasons. I handled nook outfield positions as completely different positions right here, simply to maintain this as clear and easy as potential. Statcast protection continues to be a comparatively new factor, so now we have solely 583 two-year runs for particular person gamers. Not sufficient to interrupt it down additional by age or place or element in a significant method, however sufficient to take a look at the bottomline numbers. After we take a look at three-year runs, we drop right down to 277 particular person gamers. Thanks 2020!
Of the gamers who had 800 innings on the similar place in three consecutive seasons, listed below are the 30 largest gainers from the primary 12 months to the second. I used FRV/1200 as a substitute of uncooked FRV.
Almost two-thirds of the largest improvers had destructive FRV numbers the primary season, and averaged a ten.8-run enchancment within the second season. Whereas FRV is clearly a risky quantity, these gamers efficiently retained a big portion of their one-year features within the third season, averaging a 6.4-run enchancment, with solely 5 gamers going again into destructive territory.
Turner’s 2024-2025 enchancment in FRV/1200 is 11.7 runs, which might rank him ninth on this checklist, and the second-largest enchancment amongst shortstops, behind Tim Anderson from 2017-2018. Turner doesn’t function right here as a result of that is particularly for three-year runs, and the 2026 season hasn’t occurred but. His present 12 months 1-to-12 months 2 acquire for 2023-2024 is 4.5 runs — from -8.0 to -3.5 — and subsequently not sufficient to make the highest 30. It’s value noting, although, that ZiPS initiatives him to be value about 4.0 FRV/1200 in 2026, that means he’d keep about half his enchancment from final 12 months to this season.
Now, the decliners:
The story right here is analogous. The 30 largest decliners averaged an 11.7-run slide from 12 months 1 to 12 months 2. All however two of the 30 have been initially in optimistic territory, and solely two gamers (Trevor Story and Evan Longoria) rebounded to optimistic territory in 12 months 3. In comparison with the change of -11.7 runs within the first two seasons, 12 months 3 was nonetheless at -7.9 runs under the primary 12 months. So once more, the largest declines usually nonetheless displayed important deterioration of their defensive performances.
Regardless of my pattern dimension misgivings, I additionally take a look at the stickiness by age or place. Sadly, the outcomes weren’t terribly fascinating; the pattern sizes have been just too small to attract significant conclusions from this a part of the train.
So, what does this imply? Whilst you shouldn’t take the latest FRV of a participant as some magical this-is-their-true-ability quantity, massive modifications in efficiency are very significant going ahead. That’s excellent news for Turner and Phillies followers.