Several days ago, there was an interesting article written by Anthony Castrovince at MLB.com entitled “Bucs defined by advanced defensive analysis“. The article detailed the process of the Pirates organization embracing the idea of shifting players around the diamond into non-traditional defensive alignments. The end result was that the Pirates finished eighth in all of baseball in defensive efficiency and third in baseball in defensive runs saved according to Baseball Info Solutions. The latter was a marked improvement and many around the team suggest that this was a large reason for the Pirates finishing with more wins than losses for the first time since Bonds and Bonilla were a thing.

It’s interesting to read about the hesitancy various members of the Pirates organization initially expressed towards the unique defensive alignments. Often, as fans, it is easy for us to sit in our comfortable chair, mutter under our breath and take a swig of craft beer when our favorite team doesn’t take on a philosophy that seems pretty obvious and logical to us. But even when players and coaches buy into the idea of something, it’s still hard for them to have the courage to change and execute the new plan. Said second baseman Neil Walker, ‘The biggest challenge was giving in to the numbers. When we did, it paid off in a lot of instances.” It’s something analytically-minded fans need to get more attuned to.

If you are a Phillies fan and you believe in an analytical approach to the game, you naturally wish the Phillies would try to take a similar approach to defense. Get to an extra grounder or soft liner here and there, shave of a couple of runs here and there and over the course of a year, maybe pick up a couple of wins.

But then, you begin to think about what might happen if the Phillies don’t begin to optimize their defensive alignments. Right at the start of spring training, the Phillies signed A.J. Burnett, whose career had a bit of a renaissance in Pittsburgh. One of the reasons for this was increased usage of a sinking fastball, which increased his groundball rate, which played right into the hands –literally– of those optimally-aligned defenders behind him quite often. So. What’s going to happen when Burnett starts inducing those groundballs for the Phillies traditionally-aligned defenders?

There’s no doubt a few more of those grounders are going to sneak through into the outfield. But having said that, another reason for
Burnett’s improvements in Pittsburgh was his ability to miss bats. Burnett struck out 9.85 batters per inning in 2013, which meant for a fair number of batters, the defenders could have just stayed in the dugout.

In the end, this is just another storyline that will be interesting to follow as the 2014 season wears on.