Green: A case of shortstop envy

After the Red Sox struggled against the Angels earlier this month, I was dismayed at the prospect of this four-games-in-three-days mini-marathon. Boston retains the best winning percentage in the majors (surprisingly), but Anaheim is a close second.

During the previous series, I suffered a serious bout of shortstop-envy. Every five minutes, it seemed, there was former Sox shortstop Orlando Cabrera doing something to contribute. And there was Julio Lugo, not. This was my gut feeling — but was it accurate? I went back to the numbers.

Cabrera was 3-for-14 with two doubles. Lugo was 3-for-12, all singles. Cabrera had two RBIs and a run scored. Lugo had one RBI, one run scored and one stolen base. Strangely comparable. I dug deeper.

I found, in many ways, the two are eerily similar. Cabrera has seven homers. Lugo has six. Cabrera is 32 years old. Lugo is 31. Cabrera’s total contract is for four years and $32 million. Lugo’s deal is four years and $36 million. Both are career .272 hitters. Yet as of this writing, Orlando is hitting a respectable .308 with 12 stolen bases and 67 RBIs. Julio is hitting a dismal .235, despite a hot July and August, with 27 stolen bases and 55 RBIs. So, Cabrera is having a good year; Lugo is having a bad one. Was that really the only difference?

This was clearly a case for fancier statistics. I looked at VORP, “value over replacement player,” a measure of how many runs a player has contributed beyond what we’d expect from an average player. A player with a VORP of 0 would be average. Orlando’s VORP is 26.7. Lugo has a VORP of -1. But I still wasn’t satisfied. This could mostly be explained by the 73-point difference in their batting averages. I turned to Win Shares, a metric that calculates every way in which a player contributes to a team win, offensively and defensively — even taking into account their home ballpark. According to this metric, the only shortstop in the league better than Cabrera is Derek Jeter. There are 10 shortstops better than Lugo.

The difference-maker is defense. If both men hit to their .272 career averages, Cabrera would still be the better shortstop. He has eight errors this season and has participated in 80 double plays. Lugo has 14 errors (and owes the official scorers some nice scotch) with 55 double plays. Cabrera, a former Gold Glover, averages an error at shortstop once every 88 innings. Lugo makes an error at short every 54 innings. I knew there was a gap. I didn’t realize it was a chasm.

Somehow, solving this mystery didn’t cheer me. At the end of the day, Orlando Cabrera is still playing for Anaheim, and for less money than Boston is paying Julio Lugo. That’s not a mystery so much as a farce.

Sarah Green is a freelance writer who can be reached at sgreen@gmail.com.