Blogging About Baseball

There were very few things that Seattle Mariner centerfielder Franklin Gutierrez couldn’t catch in 2009; so few things that he earned the nickname “Death To Flying Things.”

A Rawlings Gold Glove award, baseball’s highest accolade for defensive prowess, however, was one of those things Gutierrez just couldn’t snag.

In an announcement made Tuesday, the official 2009 American League Gold Glove outfield consists of the stalwart defensive standards of Ichiro Suzuki and Torii Hunter and first-timer Adam Jones.

Seattle’s Suzuki and Los Angeles’ Hunter both took home the award for their ninth consecutive seasons. Baltimore’s Jones, in just his second full Major League season, earned the Gold Glove despite playing, by all advanced defensive metrics, an average centerfield.

It was an award that Gutierrez, who patrols Jones’ former-centerfield in Seattle’s Safeco Field, should have won.

In 2009, Gutierrez played the best defense of all Major League Baseball players, not just outfielders.

The .985 fielding percentage is not indicative of how amazing Gutierrez was defensively. The almost-antiquated statistic is an effective measure of how well a player performs routine plays, but it doesn’t effectively take into account non-routine plays involving range or arm accuracy or arm strength.

To put the inefficiency of the statistic into perspective, fellow Seattle Mariner Yuniesky Betancourt owned a .968 fielding percentage in 2009. And so did Texas Ranger shortstop Elvis Andrus. Yet, Betancourt is routinely lauded as the “worst defensive shortstop in the history of the world” and Andrus is heralded as anything but.

Ultimate Zone Rating is quickly becoming the standard for measuring defensive efficiency. According to fangraphs.com, the relatively new metric is: “The number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs, and error runs combined.”

UZR exposes players’ defensive shortcomings. Yuniesky Betancourt’s negative-23.9 UZR reveals a molasses-like fielder with little range and the inability to make even routine plays. Andrus’ plus-11.7 shows a rookie with above-average range and defensive ability. Betancourt cost his team runs with his lackluster defense; Andrus saved them.

No player possessed a better UZR in 2009 than Franklin Gutierrez. In fact, it wasn’t even close.

Gutierrez saved his team 29.1 combined runs in 2009. Tampa Bay’s B.J. Upton was the next closest centerfielder with a positive-11.0 mark. Among all fielders, Tampa’s Evan Longoria was Gutierrez’s closest contemporary, but still fell 10 points short, posting a UZR of plus-18.5.

His positive-29.3 range runs saved was also 10 points higher than the next closest everyday fielder.

Gutierrez’s UZR was the best in a season since the inception of the statistic in 2002.

When one takes into consideration his solid offensive season, Gutierrez was worth almost six wins over the course of the Seattle Mariner’s 2009 season. His estimated worth was $26.4 million, but he made just $455,000 this season. He’s arbitration-eligible this year and seems destined for a significant pay raise.

Gutierrez’s omission in the Gold Glove vote is just the most glaring gaffe betrayed on the award since Texas’ Michael Young won against a much more deserving field of shortstops in 2008.

The Gold Glove vote needs to be re-evaluated. Instead of taking into account just errors, fielding percentage and personal preference (it should be noted that coaches can not vote for players on their own team) new and adjusted statistics like UZR and range runs must be included.

How can “Death To Flying Things” not be a Gold Glove winner?

When the St. Louis Cardinals began Spring Training, they did so with Khalil Greene as their projected starting shortstop. The team acquired Greene in an offseason trade with the San Diego Padres. Whether it was poor scouting or lack of disclosure about his condition, it wasn’t long before Greene went into a slump and then onto the disabled list for social anxiety disorder.

Brendan Ryan stepped in and the Cardinals never looked back.

Ryan was drafted by the Cardinals in the seventh round, 215th overall, in 2003. He battled his way through the minors and on June 2, 2007, he made his MLB debut against the Houston Astros. He finished 2007 with a .289 average in 60 games played at 2nd, 3rd, and shortstop. In addition to his versatility, Ryan became known for another skill: pranking.

A rib cage injury sidelined Ryan during Spring Training 2008 and the first month of that season. In 80 games, his average dipped to a paltry .244, but his flexibility in the field was a good fit for Tony LaRussa. His seriousness about the game was the only thing stopping him from being a complete player.

This season, Kyle Loshe and Joel Pinero talked the pitching staff into growing mustaches for team unity. The rest of the team soon joined in. And when everyone started shaving them off, Ryan’s ‘stache was the last one standing. True to form, he started growing it longer towards the end of the season in order to curl up the corners a’la Rollie Fingers.

And this time, his goofy attitude was welcome. He was the starting shortstop. He was making great plays. He was hitting well. He’d found his way.

The 2009 season started with a lot of changes from “The Boog,” a nickname Ryan’s father gave him. He came in more determined and slightly more serious. By June, Ryan was starting every day at shortstop. The position isn’t easy but it’s made even harder when the fans remember seeing one of the greatest of all time there, “The Wizard” Ozzie Smith.

Ozzie’s fielding percentage was .978 career. When Smith was 27, the same age Ryan is now, his fielding percentage was .984. Brendan‘s fielding percentage was also .984 but in 105 games. Only Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies (155 games/.990) and Troy Tulowitzki (151 games/.986) of the Rockies were higher than Ryan’s this season. A full season at the position could see Ryan’s number improve.

Ryan’s batting average improved to .294 in 2009. He had 114 hits, 19 doubles, 7 triples, and 3 homeruns, one of which was his first career grand slam. A newfound discipline at the plate made him a valuable hitter for LaRussa. Ryan could be stuck anywhere in the lineup, and he normally was. Dependability with the bat, and speed on the bags, makes him more valuable to a team that uses flexibility and versatility on a daily basis.

Ryan may take the game more seriously but that hasn’t stopped his joking nature. As teammate Jason LaRue said during a pregame interview, “He’s just looking for attention.” The reason for LaRue’s comment? A pair of scissors sneaking into the frame, pretending to cut LaRue’s long locks. The camera panned out enough to show Brendan smiling widely under that ‘stache.

And it didn’t stop him from playing wiffleball with Joe Mather at Busch either.

Or acting in the St. Louis Cardinals “Play like a Cardinal” commercials.

Even LaRussa got into the pranks. After Ryan had been removed, Tony convinced his shortstop that there was a special rule that a player could reenter the game once on the last day of the season. Ryan, never one to miss an opportunity to play, grabbed his batting helmet. It didn’t take long for him to realize he’d been had.

The 2010 Cardinals will be back with a vengeance. Some players will be gone. New ones will be ready to show devoted fans what they can do. And Brendan Ryan will be there at shortstop making great plays, getting on base, and pranking whomever he can when he’s not in the lineup. The Boog will be there in all his glory. Take it or leave it.

Written by LS Murphy. Mrs. Murphy is an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and is a consistent contributor to Cardinal’s Mix. She can also be followed on Twitter.

For a couple months, this article has been on the back burner, just simmering there, waiting for me to stir it. I’ve never been confident that the subject at hand is plausible, let alone realistic. But with a little more raking, I’ve come to this conclusion: the Pirate’s have a hidden gem, a piece of their futuristic postseason puzzle, in Ross Ohlendorf.

Crazy, I know.

The 6’4″ righty went 11-10 with a 3.92 earned run average in 29 starts and 176.2 innings pitched with the Pirates in 2009. He shared the team lead in wins with lefty Zach Duke and also posted the best ERA and WHIP among the rotation’s starters. And while Ohlendorf never blew the ball by batters, he led Pirate’s starters in K/9 with a 5.55 mark.

For a guy who’d never posted an ERA below 6.00 in the three seasons where he reached double digits in innings pitched, that, folks, is what we call a breakout.

Ohlendorf’s road to Pittsburgh was like so many before him. Once a promising prospect in both the Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Yankee’s organizations, Ohlendorf wore out his welcome in both cities, getting pummeled as a Triple-A starter and posting sub-par numbers as a major league reliever. After being dished to the Yanks as part of the Randy Johnson deal, he was dealt to Pittsburgh in the Xavier Nady/Demaso Marte transaction during the second half of 2008.

As they say, sometimes all you need is a change of scenery. And the move to thankless baseball purgatory has worked well for the 27-year-old Texan.

Ohlendorf has always had the stuff: a 94-97 mile-per-hour fastball with great sink, a mid-80′s slider with good movement, and a fringe change up. In 2007, he added a splitter to his repertoire. During his time with the Diamondbacks, Ohlendorf worked almost exclusively as a starter. He showed dominating ability, but lacked a true changeup, a malady that severely hindered his success. As a reliever with the Yankees, he became more of a power arm that relied on a bowling ball sinker and splitter. Still, inconsistency and control issues earned him a one-way ticket out of town.

Much of Ohlendorf’s success in 2009 can be attributed to a change in his motion. At the urging of Pirate’s pitching coach Joe Kerrigan, who worked with Pedro Martinez during his ridiculous run with the Red Sox in 1999-2000, Ohlendorf started pitching from true overhead after the All-Star break. The move gave him much better control of his changeup and added more sink, at the expense of .5 miles-per-hour of velocity, to his fastball.

And the results don’t lie.

Ohlendorf was shutdown in mid-September after reaching his innings pitched limit. Next year, he should pitch over 200 innings.

The Pirate’s haven’t had a 15-game winner this decade. And while the Pirate’s staff has shown the ability to groom pitchers into one-year studs (Paul Maholm ’08, Tom Gorzelanny ’07, Ian Snell ’06), they’ve yet to sustain a consistent starting rotation, or even a single, stable starting pitcher.

Could Ross Ohlendorf, castoff of the Diamondbacks and Yankees, be that pitcher?