Trevor Plouffe's Glovely Season At Third

Perhaps Plouffe has to be my new favorite player (don't currently have one) to replace Cuddyer. 

His defense was very good last year as well.  Maybe it went unnoticed for whatever reason by some, but I was praising Plouffe huge strides on defense last season and this offseason as well.

I like this part, '“At shortstop, where I played primarily, you gotta to go get the ball,” Plouffe explained. “At third base, if you are cutting your angles off that way, your range is going to be cut down dramatically. It was learning how to go laterally to the balls and learning the timing and a lot of things that go into it. I know it is fielding the ball and throwing over to first but that’s not how it is. There are a lot of different nuances you have to pick up and that took a little bit of time for me to figure out.”

I still contend that it took the organization way too long to figure out he couldn't play SS at the MLB level.  If they had figured that out much earlier, they could have transitioned him to 3B earlier in his pro career and he could have been an above average fielding 3B sooner. 

Switching positions, especially between infield and outfield, and especially at the highest level of the game-  can be a very tricky adjustment.    I salute Plouffe for putting in the time and work he has to improve so much.    Hopefully this will play out and this level can be maintained for a long time.

The Twins have had some very, very good defensive infielders at the corner positions over the years.    Guys like Hrbek and Mientkiewicz were very naturally gifted fielders.  Let's hope Plouffe joins guys like Gaetti, Koskie, and Morneau as guys who through hard work turned their labels as defensive liabilities into above-average defenders.

It's going to be interesting if/when we call up Sano. Where will Sano play? There currently is no reason to move Plouffe off 3B. And we already have Mauer and Vargas for 1B.

Not a bad problem to have.

I would say it was improved -- fewer errors, looked more comfortable. Making a higher percentage of plays this season combined with a few standout ones has definitely made him look even better this year.

UZR had him as the 4th best defensive 3B last year for qualified 3Bs (24 qualified), 5th in Range (RZR) and 10th in DRS. Either way, in the top 10 which is pretty impressive for a guy who was/is still learning the position.

His D has clearly moved into the average to above average range. The mistakes still stick out a little more with him because of his history; when a guy has struggled defensively you tend to notice when they tank one and think "here we go again".

He's hitting well and not hurting the team defensively, which is a pretty big asset at 3B. If he continues to improve his D, he's going to make it harder for Sano to push him out of the way at 3B, and that's a good thing.

He's a borderline all-star right now, which isn't something I would have thought I would ever say about Plouffe 2-3 years ago. 2012 he was solid at the plate and the Butcher of Cairo in the field. 2013 he was starting to show basic competence in the field, but the hitting fell off. Last year he started to put it all together and he's continued to grow this year. It's really nice to see.

Plouffe is reminding me a lot of Corey Koskie, another guy who struggled in the field, but stuck with it, put in the work and made himself a terrific all-around 3B.

I was listening to Tom Barnard the other day. He said he hated Plouffe and he mentioned Plouffe's lousy defense. Tom can be funny, he also often can sound like a complete idiot and this was one of those times.

His eye test is telling him one thing, while other people's eye tests are telling them a different thing. Who is to say which one is right and wrong? I could come out and say Arcia is an above average defensive player based on my eye test, use nothing to back it up, and it'd be a completely valid. Who is to say I'm wrong?

I, personally, disagree with Tom in regards to Plouffe and think Plouffe's defense has improved a lot over the last couple years to the point where he's a top 10 defensive 3B.

The 50 people who say Plouffe has become a pretty good defender to every one Tom Barnard.

Well, I haven't seen that polling data , not that I disagree that's how it would turn out :-)

I think he's as wrong as can be, but when eye test is used as a valid tool for judging defense with nothing to back it up, this is what happens.  And he can counter with popular opinion isn't always right, your eyes aren't better than mine, I'm better at evaluation than the 50 of you, etc. 

I, personally, believe not everything is a matter of opinion, some things are just plain true or not true. But eye tests are opinions, and when that's all that used without being supported other-wise (for whatever reason one might have for not trying to support their opinion), there is no right or wrong. 

 He has indirectly told you that he is not worth listening to anymore.

Yes, hey may have told you that.  And I may agree with you, but that's not to say there aren't a huge number more who may agree with the politician and see his point of view as valid.

We see this all over the world with 1000s of examples. You have people who believe that there is no God and even more who do believe in some form of a deity. And while I believe one side has a huge amount of data to support their view, it doesn't matter to those who disagree

Now, I know, that's a faith issue, but it is also an opinion issue.

Common sense and not being legally blind would tell you that you're wrong.

That could apply to a lot of different debates on a plethora of topics, some discussed on these threads.  Yet the debates rage on.

I meant to respond to this earlier. I can't lay too much fault on the Twins for keeping Plouffe at short. He's relatively athletic and his bat didn't project to anything but shortstop until he went bonkers as a 25 year old in AAA.

 

Maybe the Twins should have played him more at third in hopes he'd become a utility guy but I can't fault them for not making a wholesale change to third when the guy's yearly OPS hovered around .720-.730 in the minors. That simply isn't a bat that will carry at third in Major League Baseball.

 

It's easy to forget now but Plouffe was basically written off as a bust just a few years ago. It's a good reminder that not all baseball players develop at the same pace. Trevor seems to be a hard worker, a smart guy, and a good listener because he has completely turned his career around one small step at a time over the past four seasons.

We will agree to disagree.  

Can you even imagine trying to explain advanced stats to Tom Bernard? 

 

The thing about the eye test is that while some people watch a high percentage of games and formulate an opinion based on those events, there are numerous people who cite an eye test based on things they watched from several years ago combined with whatever reputation the player developed over that time. 

 

 

 

/BallNerdOut

There are many issues with the eye test.  

-Fan bias.

-Game sample size. Meaning how many games does the average fan watch? How many of them watch games when one of their teams isn't playing? How often do they do that?

-The idea that most fans don't watch each game with the sole purpose of evaluating the defensive abilities of each player on the field to compare to the other players in the game at the same position.

-no standard evaluation system.

-different standards altogether. (example range more important or errors more important?)

-not comparing a player's defensive abilities to other players across the league but rather to players on their own team from the recent past. (like two Detroit reporters did when they voted in MVP ballot a few years back.

And the list goes on.

To show how this relates to the topic of the thread, this guy, with whatever agenda he has against Plouffe, is using an eye test (or so he says) to make his evaluation.

And when that's all one has to do, sometimes wacky opinions come out.

I can't remember the last time I saw a player get just a little bit better every year I watched him play the way Trevor has over the past four seasons.

 

It's fascinating how Plouffe has so sneakily gone from "bad" to "meh" to "good" to "this guy is possible an All-Star" right under our noses.

Would you say Dozier is doing the same thing?

Absolutely. The career trajectories of those two players are interesting, doubly so that they doing it at the same time on the same team.

 

Though Dozier is slightly different in that he had a definable "light switch" moment when Bruno changed his swing.

Maybe it was Bruno, but I was speaking more to the defense.  He was a guy who they wanted to play shortstop who didn't seem to be able to handle it and he went to another position and has gotten better and better.

Yeah, in that regard, they're extremely similar.

 

It's an interesting development because even some of the front office's staunchest defenders had to question their player development system a few years ago when things got really bad. Now that some unlikely players have emerged as very good players, it appears that maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed, we just needed to give the organization more time to get everyone pointed in the same direction.

 

Another good reminder that baseball moves at a glacial pace compared to other sports.

I was always high on Dozier and disliked the Plouffe drafting right away.  He has turned out good, and I'm happy about that and am a backer of his, but for a first round pick, he took a long time.  Again, I think this would have come sooner if the evalaution of his abilities was better in the farm system.