Juan Lagares was and is a better defensive player than Brandon Nimmo. And even though he’s no longer on the team, the specter of Lagares and his defensive play still hangs over us, both the fans and – it seems to me – the actual decision makers of the club.
No one is suggesting that the Mets get a good-field, no-hit player to replace J.D. Davis at third base. The upgrades at third seemed to focus on Kris Bryant and Matt Chapman, two guys with six-plus fWAR seasons under their belts. Meanwhile, the collection of center fielders, both acquired and rumored, were, with the exception of George Springer, nowhere near that territory. Why is that? Because the narrative persists of what a rotten defensive player Nimmo is, one that’s being made subconsciously by many as a direct comparison to the memories of Lagares.
Lagares was a legitimately great defensive player when he first came up to the majors, whether you went by the eye test or if you looked at his advanced defensive metrics. He earned that Gold Glove Award back in 2014. But defense peaks earlier than offense and in 2019, the last year where Lagares saw significant time in the field, he finished with a (-3) DRS and a (-2.9) UZR in 703.2 innings in center field.
Still, the perception exists that Lagares is a great defensive player. My opinion is that it still exists in no small part due to the over-the-top ravings of Gary Cohen, who never missed a chance to praise Lagares on any ball he moved more than five steps to catch. How many times did we hear Cohen gush, “Where fly balls go to die!” whenever Lagares made a running catch?
The trouble with the eye test in general, and applying it to Lagares, in particular, is that while all of us can probably recall five terrific plays that Lagares made in the past several years – we don’t have that same recall with other players and we don’t necessarily recall the plays that weren’t made. But that’s where the advanced numbers come in.
Before we get to the advanced numbers, let’s spend a minute talking about the basic numbers. In an article at The Athletic, a reader made the declaration that Lagares would make a catch every other day that Nimmo wouldn’t. And because of that, Lagares should have 81 hits added to his ledger. That’s a fairly common thought, that a good defensive player should have additional plays made credited to his account. It’s not a bad idea. The problem comes with how many extra plays you feel your defensive stalwart makes.
A catch is about as basic as you can get. And if Lagares runs into the gap, or towards the infield or towards the fence, and catches a ball that Nimmo wouldn’t – we should absolutely credit him for the out made. A catch of a fly ball results in a putout. So, let’s examine the putouts that Lagares and Nimmo made in center field while their time overlapped.
If we use the time period of 2017-2020, we get a decent enough of a sample, one where the difference in playing time isn’t too great. Nimmo came up in 2016 but in that season, he only played nine innings in center and caught the only ball that came his way. Meanwhile Lagares played 325.2 innings in CF in ’16. Since Lagares already holds a lead in innings in the 2017-20 period, adding 2016 would only increase the gap. Therefore, we’re not going to include it. Here are the relevant numbers for the two players in our 2017-2020 sample, with only their time in CF included:
JL – 1,401.2 innings, 368 putouts
BN – 1,018.2 innings, 267 putouts
Nimmo played 72.7% of the innings that Lagares did in CF in this time frame. And he made … 72.6% of the putouts that Lagares made. If we put it in terms of a nine-inning game, Lagares played 155.7 games in this span while it was 113.2 games for Nimmo. Lagares caught 2.36351 balls per nine innings while Nimmo caught 2.35865 per nine innings. At their per/9 rate over 162 games, Lagares would catch 383 balls and Nimmo would catch 382.
Now, this is just one way to look at the data. But it’s next to impossible to look at this and say that Lagares would catch one additional ball than Nimmo for every other game.
We started off by saying that Lagares was a better defensive player than Nimmo. But how does that statement jive with the real numbers that were just displayed? The most obvious one is that Lagares has a better arm than Nimmo. For me, the highlight of Lagares’ play in center field was how he would aggressively charge a ball and throw on the run. Andruw Jones is generally considered the best defensive center fielder of the last 50 years. Jones didn’t charge the ball and throw on the run any better than Lagares.
The less obvious reason is that not all chances are equally difficult. We can’t look at the raw putout numbers and see how many plays were cans of corn and how many plays were ones caught on a dead sprint. It’s possible that Nimmo happened to be in the game when a bunch of easier chances happened.
Fortunately, we have Inside Edge numbers on FanGraphs that essentially does this. Inside Edge puts balls into six different “buckets” and assigns a probability to each. Those break down as follows:
Routine: 90-100%
Likely: 60-90%
Even: 40-60%
Unlikely: 10-40%
Remote: 1-10%
Impossible: 0%
For whatever reason, Inside Edge does not have stats for 2020 available at FG. So, let’s use 2019 for Lagares and see how many balls were hit into each of these “buckets.”
Routine: 158; Likely: 10; Even: 3; Unlikely: 2; Remote: 7; Impossible: 25.
That’s 205 balls hit his way and 158 of them were routine. That’s 77% of the balls hit to him that you would expect anyone to make. Combine that with the 25 impossible balls, which is 12%. That’s 89% of the balls hit to Lagares in CF in 2019 that would essentially be caught or not regardless of who was playing the position. So, in 2019, there were 22 balls that were legitimate chances for a good center fielder to make a difference. Lagares caught 11 of them.
Now let’s do the same thing for Nimmo in CF in 2019. Routine: 73; Likely 1; Even: 2; Unlikely: 3; Remote: 4: Impossible: 16.
That’s 74% of the balls hit to him that you would expect anyone to make. Combine that with the 16 impossible balls, which is 16%. That’s 90% of the balls hit to Nimmo in CF in 2019 that you would expect the same results, regardless of who was playing the position. There were 10 balls that were legitimate chances for a good – or in this case, one assumed to be bad – fielder to make a difference. Nimmo caught four of them.
Now let’s do this for the entire 2017-19 period when both were in center field. There’s going to be a wider innings disparity, as Nimmo played a lot more than Lagares did last year. But we can’t use what we don’t have.
| Season | Pos | Inn | Impossible (0%) | Remote (1-10%) | Unlikely (10-40%) | Even (40-60%) | Likely (60-90%) | Routine (90-100%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lagares | ||||||||
| 2017 | CF | 566.2 | 0.0% (0-24) | 0.0% (0-5) | 33.3% (1-3) | 60.0% (3-5) | 90.9% (10-11) | 100.0% (147-147) |
| 2018 | CF | 128.1 | 0.0% (0-5) | 0.0% (0-1) | 100.0% (1-1) | 0.0% (0-2) | 50.0% (1-2) | 100.0% (32-32) |
| 2019 | CF | 703.2 | 0.0% (0-25) | 0.0% (0-7) | 0.0% (0-2) | 100.0% (3-3) | 80.0% (8-10) | 98.7% (156-158) |
| Total | CF | 1,398.20 | 0.0% (0-54) | 0.0% (0-13) | 16.7% (1-6) | 60.0% (6-10) | 82.6% (19-23) | 99.4% (335-337) |
| Nimmo | ||||||||
| 2017 | CF | 75.1 | 0.0% (0-4) | 0.0% (0-1) | 0.0% (0-1) | 0.0% (0-0) | 100.0% (1-1) | 100.0% (17-17) |
| 2018 | CF | 350.1 | 0.0% (0-16) | 0.0% (0-5) | 66.7% (4-6) | 100.0% (1-1) | 100.0% (1-1) | 100.0% (84-84) |
| 2019 | CF | 284.2 | 0.0% (0-16) | 0.0% (0-4) | 33.3% (1-3) | 100.0% (2-2) | 100.0% (1-1) | 98.6% (72-73) |
| Total | CF | 710.1 | 0.0% (0-36) | 0.0% (0-10) | 50.0% (5-10) | 100.0% (3-3) | 100.0% (3-3) | 99.4% (173-174) |
If it was worthwhile to go ballistic about a putout by the center fielder, there was exactly one time in the 2017-19 period where Lagares caught a ball that deserved that type of praise. Nimmo made five plays in that same 0-40% area, despite playing just over half the innings that Lagares did.
Did Lagares have tougher plays to make? Of the 443 balls hit to Lagares, 391 were either “Impossible” or “Routine” – that works out to 88.2%. For Nimmo, the numbers were 210 of 236 or 89%. No one should hang their hat on having 8/10 of 1% of an advantage. In between the easiest and most difficult plays, Lagares caught 26-52 balls for 50% while Nimmo grabbed 11-26 for 42.3%. While Lagares seems to have an edge here, it’s really because he had so many easier plays to make. Lagares had 20 additional “Likely” balls hit to him. If Nimmo caught those at 60% – the bottom of the range and much worse than there’s any reason to expect him to be at that “bucket” – he would have caught 12 of 20. That would make him 23-46, or the same 50% that Lagares was at.
One other thing we should introduce here is reliability. In the 2017-20 period, Lagares had six errors while Nimmo had three, with two of those coming in 2020.
In the 2017-19 period, there was just about no reason to prefer Lagares to catch a fly ball in center field over Nimmo. In fact, if you had to pick one in that regard, you would actually pick Nimmo. That’s absolutely shocking.
But there are two additional things to keep in mind. First, Nimmo had a poor defensive year in 2020 and that can’t be dismissed. Second, Lagares’ arm is just so much better. The “arm” component of DRS (rARM) has Lagares at +13 runs from 2017-20. In the same period, Nimmo has a (-4) rARM.
Anecdotally, it seemed that Nimmo’s defensive play last year improved once he played deeper in the outfield. It’s something to watch early in 2021, to see if he’s playing relatively shallow or not. If this positioning tweak gets him back to being the fielder that he was in center from 2017-19, then the biggest benefit to playing someone else in center will come from them having a strong arm. Let’s check in on the outfielders the Mets imported in the offseason, to see how they do in the “arm” component of DRS while playing CF:
Albert Almora – 2,612.1 lifetime innings in CF, with a (-2) rARM
Kevin Pillar – 6,529.2 lifetime innings in CF, with a 0 rARM
Essentially, both players have a league-average arm. Let’s state for the record that it’s better to be average than below average. But at the same time, let’s not kid ourselves over how much better overall they’ll be than Nimmo. And with Pillar, in his last three years and 2,545.1 innings in center, his rARM checks in at (-3).
The average fan views Nimmo as a rotten defensive player. He certainly was not good in 2020 and it’s among the possibilities that this was the beginning of the end for him as a serviceable center fielder. However, it’s also among the possibilities that 2020 was a small-sample fluke and he’ll go back to being a reliable fly catcher.
The most likely place that Nimmo is going to hurt the team defensively is with a below-average arm, meaning that runners will take the extra base on him and be able to tag up from third more often. This is real and this is significant. But if in the late innings of a close game a runner is on base and another batter gets a hit – maybe CF defense isn’t the biggest problem you have.
I’ve never thought Nimmo defended CF as poorly as is widely believed. Now, you’ve provided the numbers to support that. Mets should be happy to have Nimmo’s about average D and career 130 OPS+ against the 83 OPS+ of Lagares. Signing Nimmo now long-term before he gets too expensive is a great idea, even if that means passing on Conforto. While I’m a big fan of Conforto and believe he has a higher ceiling than Nimmo, I find Nimmo is more consistent and that’s what wins pennants.
Exactly!
Great analysis by Brian!
The media make a big deal about the several times that Nimmo turned the wrong way initially on a ball hit at him, but he makes most of the plays out there in CF. And with the corrections and practice he’s now working on, he should improve.
The offense is excellent. He should definitely be extended soon!
Thanks to you and the others for the kind words!
I’m a big Nimmo proponent but his arm makes it tough to consider him average defensively. The key is he’s got to do a better job getting to and fielding balls than he did in 2020. If he does that, he’s playable in CF.
Man, Brian… this is unbelievable. Not only an extraordinary analysis, but it confirms so much of my intuition about these comparisons. I truly hope that Nimmo, Luis Rojas, and the Mets’ brass read this.
I wondered if we overpay for players based more on reputation and PR than on actual value on the field. In other words, are the tiny fringe percentages that wind up mattering worth all the money? Not to me.
I’m more comfortable with Nimmo playing deeper, gradually improving, than having no money left to strengthen the team in other ways. Let’s see how Stringer does compared to Nimmo offensively this year… again… negligible?
Great work.
Im no fan of Nimmo in CF. Never have been, and unless he’s a different person, never will be. He is miles away from winning a GG at any position, let alone CF. I appreciate and applaud the deep dive for comparing data. There is much to be determined about defensive metrics and their validity along with the capacity to compare things.
Lagares was awesome going back, covering ground, and making a catch. One thing about that is that by playing shallower, runners cant lead off as much, and ultimately have less capacity to take additional bases. The further an outfield creeps back, the longer the leads, and the easier it is to score. Couple that with a less strong and accurate arm, and that leads to more potential to add bases, and runs.
Nimmo will never be a defensive whiz. There’s no crime in that. Hopefully his bat can carry the defense. One always knows how fast the ball finds you in a critical situation right when you need to make a big play. I dont want Nimmo in CF when that bell rings for an Endy Chavez grab.
Brian, you cannot convince somebody against their will, no matter how clear your data. Generalizations are highly subjective. If someone wants to argue that Nimmo’s positioning results in more extra bases and runs allowed, then they ought to figure out how to prove that statistically. As for me, I love Nimmo and hope he stays a Met for his entire career. May it be a long one. Thanks for your penetrating analysis.
This is incredible analysis. You should be leading the Mets analytics departments. Yes, Lagares won a gold glove (7 years ago), but he swung a wiffle ball bat.
Brian,
Awesome, and all the numbers basically drive to the same conclusion that Alderson and co did. Nimmo is an everyday player and an asset to the team, primarily because of his offense. In a perfect world, he plays left. But the world is imperfect, so with no DH he plays CF and leadoff. Going into his age 28 season, with his track record of coachability and hard work, both he and more importantly, the team, deserve that. Very few players are GG players, that is not a fair standard. Almost no one was early Juan Lagares, including older Juan Lagares. And, overpaying for Springer or JBJ was not wise, and despite heat to do so, the Mets didn’t do it. Age 32 Springer, who has played 2/3 of his games in RF and never more than 84 in CF in one season, is a corner OF on his new contract. JBJ is a glove first career 94 OPS+ guy who will play this season as a 31 year old. I’ll take Nimmo/Pillar/Almora, thank you. And with this analysis, we have even more data to support it.
Your article proves that Nimmo was just as good or slightly better than Lagares at catching the ball but throwing the ball makes Lagares the better defensive player and should have been Nimmo defensive replacement. In 2021 Pillar should be the defensive replacement for because of the arn and the fact that Nimmo is better in leftfield than Smith. Maybe LF defense will be the biggest problem and a Pillar defensive replacement will be the solution.
Pillar is a good 4th outfielder for is team and Nimmo is a starting leadoff hitter and outfielder for this team.
Nice perspective. We always compare CF fielding to Lagares and this sheds a different light on fan favorite Nimmo. Don’t you love when he runs to first on a walk? I think Nimmo’s bat will keep him in the lineup. Loved Juan but he couldn’t stay healthy and then he couldn’t consistently hit.
Brian’s analysis is very impressive, but somehow Nimmo graded out as the worst CF in MLB for 2020 from the 22 qualifiers – according to FanGraphs – and that couldn’t have been an accident. Overall, his 1.5 fWAR was 8th in MLB and that speaks to his strength offensively, 5th in MLB. But let’s compare Nimmo to some other present day CFers to see just how much better they really are. So, the CFers that were just above Nimmo (-4.0 dWAR) in defensive ranking, ranked 16-21 with dWAR of (-2.2) to (-3.9):
16. George Springer (-2.2) $150 MM? LOL! Troy Tulowitski II
17. Mike Trout (-2.4) The bat is pretty good.
18. Victor Robles (-2.9) Isn’t he supposed to be a whiz in center?
19. Randal Grichuk (-3.1) At least Toronto upgraded defensively.
20. Aaron Hicks (-3.3) Hicks had a bad year, but he is known for defense.
21. A J Pollack (-3.9) Wasn’t he the one Mets fans wanted two off seasons ago?
As I wrote in the CFers article in December, Nimmo wasn’t the catastrophe writers make him out to be. However, CF is not his best position and until the Mets get a better overall player, he is the man for the job.
Great analysis. Love Nimmo. The 4th outfielder nonsense can be put to bed I think.
Fantastic work, Brian. This is why Mets360 is my fave NYM site.
I thought I’d follow up on this thread after watching a game last week where exactly the thing I predicted would happen did happen. Pop fly to shallow center field…enough height on the ball to have McNeil from 2B have a chance to get running into proper center field. Nimmo charging in from his set up not far from the warning track. Result: near head on collision (avoided mercifully), McNeil had the better option to catch the ball with heroics running out, but missed it. This would have been a can of corn for a center fielder, say Lagares. End result, 2 runs score. Will this show up on Nimmo as a black mark? Nope. But it should. Expect to see plenty of this kind of scenario with Nimmo playing in a different zip code.
Nimmo won’t get an error.
However, if a ball is hit into his zone that he doesn’t convert into an out – it will absolutely be counted in advanced numbers like DRS and UZR.
This most definitely was ‘his zone”. He won’t get an error. But this scored two runs because he is not a center fielder. It will never show up in his metrics, but it will show up in the score board.
For the love of God, it will show up on his metrics if you look beyond errors.
The more he has to run, the more his odds decrease to make a play. No one will say, ya know that guy had no chance at a 90% unlikely so no big deal. The main thing is that fly ball was a can of corn for any credible center fielder and should have been an out. No matter what you say about Nimmo being dinged it will *never* show up as more than a 2 RBI single for the batter when it should have been an out. I would charge Nimmo with an error as he was playing the position errantly.
I get that this is the trade off by playing him in CF. I’m just saying to those commenters above that somehow think there won’t be consequences defensively because he is not a good center fielder need to rethink. The other outcome of my concern is that his arm is lousy. It can’t be more than a 40. So when people are scampering around the bases on a ball to wall in the gap, we can expect the batting team to get more bases and more runs. That will be a fact.