Bautista at 3B? Puh-leeze..

I saw the "I Love Jack" column the Stats Geek wrote yesterday and I heard the rumblings about Castillo taking grounders at 3B away from the starters today.

Am I supposed to believe any of that means something? I guess a lot of fans do because my in-box is littered with fantasies.

I'm not going to deny Freddy Sanchez will glove about the same amount of balls at 2B as Jose Castillo will - their career range factors at the position are nearly identical. And I won't deny that Sanchez will play a more conservative, mostly error-free second base. He will.

The simple fact of the matter is, Castillo committing 13 more errors at 2B over the year will net the opposition about 6 extra runs. However as I've shown you [link], the fact Sanchez's arm is not respected by NL teams and base runners run like water running downhill on him, that will net opposing teams 3 to 4 times what Castillo's extra errors will.

It's no-brainer who plays 2B. None.. zip. I don't even understand why this is being discussed.

Look at it another way - the Pirates 2B saw 4.3% fewer balls hit in his zone than the average 2B in MLB last year. Our 3B saw 1.7% more. If Jim Tracy puts Sanchez at 2B, he's now gloving 6% fewer balls, his arm is allowing runners to run at will, and he produced 4% less double plays in the pivot than Castillo last year.

Add it up.

Then add in Bautista's shocking career .938 fielding percentage taking all those extra plays at 3B and, well, you have a royal mess.

Who cares if Castillo makes a few extra errors when his cannon arm keeps runners on the bases and not scoring? Who cares if Castillo makes a few more errors if his cannon arm nets us more double plays? Who cares if he hit .253 last year when Bautista hit .235, and only .207 after the break?

It isn't even close folks.

One email I received suggested a Bautista/Castillo home/away platoon with Bautista playing at home. In 266 at bats at PNC Park, Bautista has a .229 batting average. I suggest folks look at Bautista's career .188 batting average with runners in scoring position and the fact the .188 falls to .078 when there are two outs. I suppose nobody is looking as these things.

Bautista playing is a media-drummed up fantasy.

Sure, it's sexy to think about Freddy Sanchez playing 2B with his buddy Jack at SS. That's neat, huh?

Mark this down.. if Bautista plays 3B with Sanchez at 2B in 2006 for more than 70 games, this team will lose closer to 95 than 90.

No matter how much the local media attempts to portray Bautista as the Pirates savior, Jim Tracy isn't going to put the young man in the position to find out. Tracy wants to win - he doesn't want to just give games away.

Castillo at 2B.. always has been, always will be. This isn't even worth discussing anymore.. I'll let the media hype events to sell their papers.

Perhaps what the local media should have done is questioned why Dave Littlefield didn't acquire a replacement 3B that is better than Bautista or a 2B better than Castillo over the winter? I mean, we're sitting here wondering which below-average player should start next year.. a no-bat, no-glove 3B, or a mild-bat, mild-glove 2B?

How ridiculous is that?

For those that requested the break down of the number of ground balls fielded overall by each position last year, it's below along with how much higher or lower that position ranked compared to the league average for the position last year.

Notice a total of 4.5% more grounders fielded by our SS and 3B and 6.3% fewer on the right-side of the infield.

	% +/-	2006
	from MLB	# Fielded
Pos	League Ave	by Pirates
P	1.1	199
C	0.5	28
1B	-2.0	183
2B	-4.3	351
3B	1.7	414
SS	2.8	553
LF	-0.2	128
CF	0.3	142
RF	0.0	107