Positional Versatility and the Zobrist Fallacy

Sometimes we’re taught to value the wrong things. Usually this happens because, at some point prior, our elders didn’t know any better. An idea gets ingrained into our culture and passed down from generation to generation without ever really being questioned. Certain contrarians and rabble rousers try to shake things up, but they’re almost always shouted down.

There is this thing—some fact or idea—that we know to be true, and it leads to all sorts of other conclusions about related matters. This is why RBI and wins remain so popular in baseball. There was a time when they were the best stats we had, and changing your values when new information comes around is a challenge for many people. We sometimes call this inertial reasoning.

But this isn’t about RBI or wins. I’ll spare you that diatribe. This is about something else entirely. It’s about the way our conception of what a player ought to be leads us to look down upon one of the most unique and impressive players in baseball.

This is a story about Ben Zobrist and what it means to be a great player.

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The well-educated but unobsessed baseball fan likely knows two things about Zobrist. First, he plays a lot of different positions for the Rays. Second, people like me won’t shut up about how Zobrist is so underrated.

That’s the book on Zobrist. He’s a super-utility guy whom a small army of baseball nerds seem to think is the second coming of Stan Musial. You might even been aware of the fact that Wins Above Replacement (WAR) seems to adore Zobrist. Lots of WAR skeptics like to point to that and use it as an example of WAR’s imperfections, its flaws.

WAR doesn’t work because it says Ben Zobrist is about as good as Miguel Cabrera and Robinson Cano. That’s the message. This is something that just cannot be so. WAR is new. It requires a mix of math and subjectivity, and you can’t calculate it with two swipes on a keyboard. So when it tells you something you don’t believe, you dismiss it. Mock it. Forget it.

This formula says Ben Zobrist is one of the five best players in baseball. What a joke.

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Let’s start at the end, though. WAR loves Zobrist. From 2009 to 2012, Zobrist ranked second to Cabrera with 24.3 WAR to Cabrera’s 24.9. From 2009 to 2013, Zobrist trailed only Cabrera and teammate Evan Longoria. He became a full-time player in 2009 and since then, WAR says he’s been the second-most valuable position player in the entire sport.

Zobrist has a .270 batting average during that time and fewer than 100 home runs. He’s nowhere near Cabrera’s equal at the plate, but his baserunning and defense are superior. That’s typically the case with WAR. Most basic analysis is about hitting and gives lip service to the rest of the game. We went over this again and against both times we fought over Mike Trout and Cabrera.

But it’s more than that for Zobrist, because he doesn’t have a loud defensive game. He’s not making amazing plays in center or making throws like Andrelton Simmons. Zobrist plays a bunch of positions and plays them well. No one really argues that he’s a poor defender, but he’s not considered outstanding, either.

It’s not so much that defense outweighs hitting in this example. It’s that there’s a perception that a guy who plays all over the diamond cannot possibly be good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the game’s premier slugger.

Even the skeptic can watch Ozzie Smith play defense and realize that it’s possible for him to make up for his weaker bat. But the skeptic can’t see a guy who doesn’t even have a permanent position as being capable of providing that type of value.

Don’t blame the skeptic here. He’s a product of his culture and of the language he was taught.

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One certainly could make the case that Zobrist is underrated simply because he’s a well-rounded player without one defining tool. That’s probably true to some extent, but I’d contend that Zobrist is primarily underrated relative to other such players because of his most impressive skill.

Ben Zobrist can play average or better defense at every position—with the possible exception of catcher—and Joe Maddon makes the most of that wonderful skill. During his career, Zobrist has played more than 4,000 innings at second base, more than 1,700 frames at shortstop, over 2,000 innings in right field, and about 500 innings apiece among left field, center field, first base, and third base.

Zobrist isn’t underrated because he’s a good-at-everything, great-at-nothing player. Zobrist is underrated because pretty much every player in baseball who is asked to play four or five positions during the course of a season qualifies as a backup.

Just look at this list of players who played 50 or more innings at three different positions in 2013:

Players Who Played 3+ Positions, 2013 (Min. 50 Innings)

Player	WAR	Played LF/CF/RF Only
Ben Zobrist	5.4
Chris Denorfia	3.9	X
Bryce Harper	3.8	X
Andre Ethier	2.9	X
Allen Craig	2.5
Mark Trumbo	2.5
Martin Prado	2.4
Josh Hamilton	2.0	X
Brandon Moss	1.9
Daniel Nava	1.8
Nick Punto	1.8
Curtis Granderson	1.4	X
Kelly Johnson	1.2
Rajai Davis	1.2	X
Michael Saunders	1.2	X
Ichiro Suzuki	1.1	X
Shane Robinson	0.9	X
Jordan Schafer	0.9	X
Charlie Blackmon	0.8	X
Eric Young	0.7	X
Ed Lucas	0.7
Jeff Bianchi	0.7
Emilio Bonifacio	0.6
Dustin Ackley	0.6
Joaquin Arias	0.6
Willie Bloomquist	0.5
Chris Young	0.5	X
Justin Turner	0.5
Jeff Baker	0.4
Clete Thomas	0.4	X
Ramiro Pena	0.4
Kyle Blanks	0.3
Mike Aviles	0.3
Ramon Santiago	0.2
Freddy Galvis	0.1
Wilkin Ramirez	0.1	X
Darin Ruf	0.1
Mark DeRosa	0.1
Don Kelly	0.0
Logan Forsythe	0.0
Alex Presley	-0.1	X
Trevor Crowe	-0.1	X
Logan Schafer	-0.1	X
Collin Cowgill	-0.2	X
Sam Fuld	-0.3	X
Daniel Descalso	-0.3
Chris Coghlan	-0.5	X
Roger Bernadina	-0.6	X
Alexi Amarista	-0.8
Skip Schumaker	-1.0
Jerry Hairston	-1.3
Michael Morse	-1.5
Jeff Keppinger	-1.5
Maicer Izturis	-2.2

It’s Zobrist and mostly a bunch of guys you might find on the waiver wire. There are a few other good players in there, but almost every player who is asked to move around the diamond is something less than a solid regular, and this list counts left field and right field as different positions.

Of the 54 players on this list, 22 of them only played the three different outfield spots, and you have to get down to Martin Prado at 2.4 WAR before you find a player whom you might consider a “utility” guy. The average WAR of the group, including Zobrist, is 0.7.

The fact that Zobrist moves around must mean he isn’t good enough to hold down one position, right?

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This belief is what I call the “Zobrist Fallacy.” It’s perfectly understandable, as an automatic response, to see a player rotating around the field during the course of the season and assume he’s the team’s 10th man. He’s the best substitute, so he plays whatever position is open due to injuries or days off. This is how players like Don Kelly make their living.

Our conception of a utility player is someone who is good enough defensively to handle multiple positions but not good enough offensively to start at any of them. They’re useful because you can usually avoid carrying extra bench players for emergencies and can replace them with guys who are valuable pinch hitters or platoon bats.

Plenty of major leaguers fit this description. They’re guys you like having around, and their role calls on them to play a variety of positions over the course of a season. They’re baseball duct tape. But we get lost with players like Zobrist because he is capable of that kind of versatility while also featuring a well-above-average bat. He breaks the mold a little.

In baseball, defensive flexibility is something you learn when your bat won’t keep you in the lineup. It’s a matter of survival for many players rather than true cause and effect. Guys who can play multiple positions aren’t inherently bad, but most of them learn to play multiple positions because it’s the only way they can be good enough.

Which bring us to Zobrist. Zobrist’s bat is good enough to start anywhere. His 126 wRC+ since 2009 would be well above average anywhere on the diamond. The baseball instruction manual tells us to put players at the best defensive position they can handle if their bats are good enough to be in the lineup at all. If Miguel Cabrera could play shortstop well, he’d be a shortstop.

From a value perspective, this makes sense in the abstract. This isn’t one of those silly baseball traditions that won’t die. You want a player to provide as much value as possible and he will do so by playing his innings at the most difficult possible defensive position. Anyone who doesn’t do that isn’t maximizing his value.

The immediate realization, however, is that teams have to fill out an entire lineup, so a team with Troy Tulowitzki and Andrelton Simmons couldn’t have two players at short. One would move to third or second or center field. You wouldn’t be maximizing Tulowitzki’s value if you put him at third, but he could handle third just fine, and it would help the team overall.

So people don’t knock Zobrist simply because he doesn’t play shortstop when the Rays have a better defensive shortstop on the roster. They knock him because it appears as if the team has a better shortstop, second baseman, and right fielder on the roster, and Zobrist is just finding his way into the lineup by plugging whichever hole is open that day. And that’s simply not true.

Zobrist is one of the Rays’ stars. Maddon builds the lineup around him. Zobrist is a utility player because he’s special, not because he needs to do it to survive. If you take the time to really think about it, you know that Zobrist isn’t the Rays 10th-best player. But the fact that you associate his most recognizable skill with guys who can barely stay above replacement level leads you to psychologically undervalue him when comparing him to the game’s best players.

Only a couple of players have been more productive major league players during the last six seasons, but if you tell people Zobrist is a star and WAR thinks he’s great, there’s pushback.

And that pushback is all in our heads. If you think about it dispassionately, you know that a player with a 126 wRC+ who plays good defense and gets 600 or more plate appearances is crazy valuable whether he plays right field or shortstop. There’s a difference between those two, maybe around a win, but both are All-Star type players or better. But when we see it with our own eyes, it’s tough to break the well-ingrained conditioning. Great players don’t move around the diamond. They just don’t.

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There’s a very human origin and baseball origin to this way of thinking. From a simple perspective, it’s hard to switch between multiple positions and play them well. We’re pretty confident as analysts that a good shortstop could become a good outfielder, but asking a young player to learn both at the major league level and switch between the two at a moment’s notice is hard. The outfield isn’t harder than shortstop, but it’s absolutely a challenge no matter how talented the player may be. It takes time to master a position.

It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to bring a talented hitter up and bounce him around the diamond. It would take his energy away from learning to hit a big-league slider, and it might make him worse at both positions. In other words, the actual development of versatility is challenging. That’s problem one.

Problem two is a product of problem one. In baseball, we develop and scout talent without much concern for need at the major league level. If you have to pick a position for a player, you pick it when he’s first coming up, and you move him off the position when he proves he can’t handle it or the team runs into a road block in the big leagues. Since it’s difficult to play multiple positions, you find positions for your top prospects to succeed, and you develop them there.

Essentially, you scout players based on the most difficult position they can handle. If you’re watching a 20-year-old kid at Double-A with the potential to hit 30 home runs with some decent on-base skill, you care about getting him to the big leagues. If he can play third, he’ll play third. If he can’t play third, he’ll learn left. His bat is getting him to the show, and his glove is just keeping him from slowing that down.

On the other side, if you’re watching a superlative defender, you’re not going to move him off the position and try others, because his presence at that position is why you want hiem at all. Simmons didn’t get to Atlanta because he was setting the world on fire at the plate. He got there because of the runs he can save on defense.

You only shift to honing the utility craft when either of those avenues fail. If you aren’t good enough to hit in the big leagues, you might be good enough to fill a bench role, but that requires that you can cover a few positions. Or if your bat is okay, but your defense isn’t good enough for you to start at a premium defensive position, you might find yourself unable to break in as a starter at an offense-first position.

At the development stage, you become a utility player when becoming a starter fails. In talking with a few people who cover the player development world, that’s the message that comes through. Utility players, or guys who play all over the diamond, do so because they didn’t project as someone who could play every day at the MLB level.

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When I asked our Marc Hulet what he means when he uses the term “utility player” in a scouting report, he said that it means the player’s “offensive skills project as replacement level or worse, but that they’re athletic enough to handle multiple positions.”

Another FanGraphs and Hardball Times contributor, Nathaniel Stoltz, told me that utility players “have interesting skills, and they don’t have a fatal flaw that would leave them totally helpless in the bigs, but they don’t fall neatly into any position on the field in terms of their skill set. One prerequisite for a utility tag, of course, is the player’s ability (or projected ability) to man several positions. In most instances, that includes at least one up-the-middle spot (seems like [four-corner] types are pretty rare nowadays).”

Stoltz went on to say that a utility guy is “either deficient enough on one side of the ball to give you pause running him out there every day, or he’s just fairly bland all-around and, therefore, doesn’t seem like the sort of guy worth going out of your way to write into the lineup card regularly.”

Mark Anderson, who writes for Baseball Prospectus and TigsTown, puts it like this: “Utility players have an MLB tool that holds them at the level, or the collection of their tools warrants more than an org player projection…in Tigers terms, think Ramon Santiago’s peak (glove as the carrying tool) or Shane Halter (never embarrassed himself in any capacity at his peak), respectively.”

Built into all of these characterizations is the idea that utility players are good enough to be useful members of a 25-man roster but not good enough that you would want them to start for your team. This won’t come as a shock to anyone, but seeing their descriptions is important. When you call someone a utility player, or project they have a utility future, you’re acknowledging a lack of potential.

There are many players in professional baseball who fit this description. They’re common, and we’re very aware of their existence. Just go back up and look at that list. We have a good grasp on what it means to be a utility player. Given that there are countless examples, we end up developing a very fixed relationship between players who play multiple positions and players who aren’t great by major league standards. It’s almost a perfect relationship, truth be told.

If you take the time to really sit down and think, you know this isn’t a guarantee. But as your subtle opinions develop and the lack of counterexamples emerge, your brain accepts this conventional wisdom.

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Which brings us back to Zobrist. Over the last six years, he ranks second in WAR, and even if you use WAR as a general guide, he’s easily been one of the ten best position players in the game during that time. He has a well above-average bat. He runs the bases very well. He’s an extremely valuable defender. Zobrist isn’t just a good player who stands above other players who play multiple positions; he stands above just about everyone.

Zobrist is versatile. He’s not a utility player by the common meaning of the word. He has everything you need to be a major league starter at any position and the added ability to handle many positions at a moment’s notice.

Sixty qualified players have posted a 120 wRC+ or better since 2009. Zobrist ranks seventh in BsR (base running runs) among them and first in DEF (fielding and positional runs). Think Chase Utley and Evan Longoria as comparables.

Ben Zobrist Comparables

Name	PA	wRC+	Bsr	Off	Def	WAR
Ben Zobrist	3869	126	16.3	133.7	70.1	34.7
Evan Longoria	3533	131	6.8	135.0	67.4	33.4
Chase Utley	3133	123	26.5	113.0	57.1	27.9

Utley and Longoria are underrated in their own right for providing a lot of value in aspects of the game other than at the plate, but imagine taking one of those players and being able to use him at every position.

Which leads us to one final question: Why is versatility so valuable? If we put Zobrist at shortstop or second base and let him play, he’d still be plenty valuable. Baseball dorks would still consider him one of the best dozen players over the last few seasons. Right? Yes, but it’s more than that.

Zobrist’s versatility makes the Rays better because he gives them the option to run any number of rotating platoons across multiple positions. He’s a switch hitter who can play basically every position. The Rays can gather their best nine hitters for any given matchup, and the fact that they have Zobrist and his versatility allows them to be less concerned about needing the other eight to cover a specific set of positions.

It’s also a huge benefit when dealing with injuries. The Rays almost always can replace an injured player with their next-best player because Zobrist can shift positions to accommodate. He’s the best insurance policy money can buy.

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I’ve always had a fascination with versatility in baseball. When you’re in little league, you’re either the kid who wants to play shortstop or you’re the kid who tells the coach you’ll play anywhere. I was the latter. There aren’t really any other players like Zobrist right now, or at least any players who have done what he does for an extended period of time.

Chone Figgins comes to mind, but he had only two high-quality offensive seasons. In 2013, Prado is about the closest thing we have, and he’s an average major league rather than a down-ballot MVP.

Our conception of utility players leads us to relay a utility tag onto players who play all over the diamond. As a result, we think less of those guys who play multiple positions than we probably should, even if they’re much better than a 25th man. Most of the time, that doesn’t have serious consequences. In Zobrist’s case, though, it leads us to miss a star and question a method of player evaluation (WAR), because it doesn’t feel like Zobrist should be so well regarded.

Versatility should be celebrated. It’s a valuable skill we don’t properly appreciate because the number of players who use versatility to move from good to great is tiny compared to the number of players who use it to move from career minor leaguer to bench player.

Looking down on versatile players is like looking down on buffets just because buffets typically don’t offer high-quality food. But buffets could offer high quality good. Some rare ones do. That’s Ben Zobrist. He has all of the skills you need to succeed at any major league position and the ability to play almost any of them.

Zobrist isn’t the reason WAR is flawed; he’s the reason it’s important. If not for the existence WAR, even more people would undervalue one of the best players of the last several years. Zobrist would be a great player if he were anchored to second base, but the fact that he’s not makes him even more valuable to the Rays despite the fact that though our brains have been programmed to think otherwise.