The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Sports Columns

Related Photos

  • thoma, ed.jpg

    thoma, ed.jpg

August 12, 2012

Thoma: Twins’ Dozier should not be shoved aside

By Edward Thoma Free Press Staff Writer

— Ron Gardenhire has hinted several times that the Twins hierarchy gives repeated thought to sending rookie shortstop Brian Dozier back to the minors.

Dozier may be the worst regular shortstop in the American League this year. Still, I’m not at all sure that shipping him back to Triple A would improve him or the major league team.

Let’s start with my first assertion. I spent some time Saturday extracting five analytical statistics for each of the 14 regular shortstops in the American league this season. (In Tampa Bay’s case, identifying the regular shortstop is a challenge; I went with Elliot Johnson, who has the most playing time there.)

Dozier was 13th in wins above replacement; 14th in win shares; 13th in OPS+; 10th in plus-minus; and ninth in runs saved. (For the uninitiated, the first two are complex stats that attempt to evaluate everything a player does; OPS+ compares the player’s offense to league average; and the latter two evaluate defense.)

By and large, the shortstops who have been worse defenders by the defensive metrics involved have been better hitters; those who hit about as poorly as Dozier has, have been superior glovemen.

I am not inclined to put a great deal of weight on any one of the metrics; they all have some flaws, and four of them are built around certain assumptions of how to measure defensive value that may not hold up. They are not necessarily consistent with each other.

But when all of them put a player at the top or the bottom, there’s something there. And Dozier is bottom third in all of them.

OK, we’ve established that Brian Dozier is not a particularly good shortstop in 2012.

There are two questions: Can the Twins do better at the position? And, what is the best way to hasten Dozier’s development into an asset at the position?

The primary in-house alternatives to Dozier are: Jamey Carroll, 38, who opened the season there and has logged the bulk of the second base time since Dozier was called up; and Pedro Florimon, the Triple A shortstop, regarded as a good fielder but weak hitter.

Putting Carroll at short reopens second base, probably for Alexi Casilla (and probably not for Tsuyoshi Nishioka, not after last week’s debacle).

Been there, done that. Dozier has not hit well, but he has hit better than Casilla, and there’s no reason to believe Florimon can hit as well as either.

The key to Dozier’s improvement is playing time, and he’s certainly getting that in the majors. He’s not going to play more by going back to Rochester.

And, at least by the defensive metrics cited above, he is improving with the glove. At the All-Star break, he was -10 in plus-minus (meaning he had made 10 fewer plays than the average major league shortstop) and -6 in runs saves (meaning he had allowed six more runs than the average shortstop).

As of Saturday morning, those figures had improved to -4 and -1 respectively — a bit below average, but not as atrocious as a month ago.

Dozier isn’t good, but he’s getting better, and he’s already better than the alternatives.



Edward Thoma (344-6377; ethoma@mankatofreepress.com) is a Free Press staff writer. He maintains his Baseball Outsider blog. Follow him on Twitter @bboutsider.

Text Only | Photo Reprints
Sports Columns