Byron Buxton Has Been the AL's Best Defensive Centerfielder In His Age-32 Season

A little over a week ago, North Side Baseball’s Matthew Trueblood wrote a piece illustrating how Pete Crow-Armstrong is the best centerfielder in baseball, and potentially the rangiest centerfielder ever. Advanced metrics support this claim, with Crow-Armstrong sitting atop the position in FanGraphs’s Defensive Runs Above Average (7.2 DEF) and Baseball Savant’s Outs Above Average (7 OAA).

 

 

Arizona Diamondbacks centerfielder Alek Thomas sits in second at both metrics, generating 3.2 DEF and 3 OAA over 183 innings at the position this season. Andy Pages (Los Angeles Dodgers) and Michael Harris II (Atlanta) reside in the third and fourth slots in DEF, generating 2.4 and 2.3, respectively.

 

Interestingly, however, Byron Buxton has generated the fifth-most DEF (1.7) in the third-highest OAA (2) at the position this season, slotting him alongside Thomas, Pages, and Harris II as the second tier of elite defensive centerfielders behind Crow-Armstrong. This may surprise some, as Trueblood also gave an excellent breakdown of how Buxton's defense has started to slide while retaining some key strengths. A look at the numbers suggest he's still playing at a high level, and is arguably still the best centerfielder in the American League. 

 

Thomas, Pages, Harris II, and Buxton are all fast, rangy centerfielders with plus arms and route-taking skills, but they all play for National League clubs. Buxton is tied with Evan Carter, Denzel Clarke, Steven Kwan, and Tristan Peters for first in OAA and tied for first in DEF once again alongside Kwan. Buxton, however, has generated 184 innings at the position compared to Kwan’s 189, meaning he made more of an impact at the position in fewer innings played (albeit only five).

 

Buxton is neck-and-neck with Carter, Clarke, Kwan, and Peters in OAA and Kwan in DEF. Still, if one were to look even further below the hood, they would notice the 32-year-old Twins outfielder is leading the four other plus AL centerfielders in other important metrics. Buxton is the best among the quartet in making plays running in, sporting 1 OAA in those scenarios. Buxton is tied with Clarke and Kwan with 1 OAA on making plays to his right and trailing only Peters, Kwan, and Carter on plays to his left.

 

Again, there is very little wiggle room between Buxton and Kwan; Carter is not far behind them, either. Still, there is one metric Buxton truly separates himself from the pack in: sprint speed. According to Baseball Savant’s sprint speed metric, Buxton is the 12th-fastest player in baseball, and the third-fastest player in the AL behind only Bobby Witt Jr. and Chandler Simpson. That being the case, Buxton is the AL’s quickest centerfielder, sprinting 29.5 feet per second.

 

Peters is close behind him, running 28.6 feet per second. Still, he is far behind Buxton in DEF, sporting only 0.4 over 96 innings at the position. Carter sprints 27.8 per second. Like Peters, he trails Buxton in DEF, netting only 1.5 over 222 2/3 innings in center. Most notably, Kwan is one of the slowest centerfielders in baseball, sprinting 26.7 feet per second (ranking him 34th out of 38 centerfielders).

 

Buxton is not leaps and bounds ahead of fellow AL centerfielders like Crow-Armstrong is compared to the rest of the sport. Heck, he is barely even a top-five centerfielder in the sport, with Thomas, Pages, and Harris II firmly planted ahead of him. Still, given Buxton’s competition in the AL, and him resembling the elite defender who won the Platinum Glove in 2017, the long-time Twin could again be the AL’s best defensive centerfielder, a remarkable feat for a player who recently reached ten years of service time.