Building a baseball team is complicated. Because everything is interconnected, doing something somewhere can have consequences for other parts of the ball club. One of the easier examples of this is defense, and that’s fortunate because that’s what this article is about. Funny how that worked out!
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Defense is one of those things that gets talked about a lot in other sports, but not so much in baseball, at least on a team level. it’s no less important in baseball than elsewhere, though. A list of the best defensive teams in baseball has a lot in common with a list of the best teams in baseball. This season, the top defensive teams (by FanGraphs Def stat) are the Padres, A’s, Indians, Twins, Cardinals, and Rays. That’s a pretty decent list of the best team in baseball, minus the Dodgers, of course. The Orioles, if you were wondering, are 19th.
The thing about team defense though is you can win without great defense, you just need to be great at other aspects of the game. In 2018 the World Series Champion Red Sox were sixth in team defense, but the team they beat, the Dodgers, were 21st. In 2019, the Dodgers were 18th and the team that beat them, the Nationals, was 15th. The moral is you can win with mediocre, even bad, defense, but you had better be great at just about everything else. Also, notice the teams listed above are big money teams with big money star players. The Orioles aren’t that, at least not currently.
So what can the Orioles take from that? Well, unless they’re going to start playing at the top of the free agent market every November, they’re going to have to improve their defense. The good news there though is that, unlike improving the hitting, a defensive improvement can be accomplished for a comparative pittance. Some of the best defensive players on the Orioles are Jose Iglesias, Pedro Severino, and… Pat Valaika? Iglesias is on a $3 million deal, while Severino and Valaika were claimed off waivers, twice in Valaika’s case. These aren’t expensive or difficult to acquire players. You don’t want to make the entire roster out of Rockies castoffs, but a few here and there can help.
The thing about improving the defense though is that it’s not just about the defense. It’s about the pitching, as well. Remember seventy paragraphs ago when I said one change can have cascading effects on other parts of the ballclub? This is that, and this is also the not-really-a-secret part: improving the team defense makes the pitching better!
Pitching is really expensive to acquire, especially starting pitching. Getting a good starter very often involves a long-term, big money free agent contract, a difficult-to-stomach trading away of valuable players, or the spending of very high draft picks. All those are fine ways to get pitching, but there are only so many times you can go down each road before the damages start to be too great. The Yankees spent over $300 million to bring in Gerrit Cole and that’s been fine for them so far, but that’s a massive commitment a decade into the future that most teams are loath to make. As soon as that contract is signed, it’s almost unmovable. The Red Sox traded three of their best prospects to get Chris Sale, and that worked out fine for a while, but now some of those prospects are contributing to the White Sox while Sale is hurt and on a new, expensive long term contract.
There’s more but you get the point. There is no substitute for a prime Chris Sale or Gerrit Cole at the top of the rotation and the Orioles would certainly love to have one (though not at their current prices) but at this point they can’t afford to acquire one. What they can afford though, going back to the point of this piece and thank you for bearing with me, is Jose Iglesias, is Pedro Severino, is Pat Valaika. Those players make the pitchers the Orioles already have better.
That’s what the Orioles front office needs to focus on bringing in, because they’re not going to sign Trevor Bauer or trade top prospects for Lance Lynn. Instead they need to spend (far less) money and team resources on bringing in (and up) players whose defensive play can make Keegan Akin and Dean Kremer and Alex Cobb better.
This is what the Indians, Rays, and A’s have done. Jordan Luplow may not be able to hit, like, at all, but he’s still a positive contributor to the Indians in an outfield corner because his defense is so good. And when one of the Indians’ cheap starters gives up a rocket in the gap, Luplow is there to run it down and turn a double into an out. Sean Murphy of the A’s actually can hit, but he’s such a good catcher that even if he couldn’t, he’d still find himself in the lineup nearly every day because he adds so much defensively. Why did the Rays trade for Manuel Margot from the Padres this past off-season? If you look at Margot’s defensive numbers you’ll understand. Margot plays every outfield position and does it at an above average rate. The Rays got him for a 29-year-old league average relief pitcher.
These are the trades, the signings, the draft picks that the Orioles need to make. They don’t need to sign Bauer or pay out the nose for Mike Clevenger (though it probably wouldn’t hurt). Instead they can make the guys they already have better by improving the team defense around them.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.