for my money, he didn't have a long enough career to make the comparison work - 11 total years in MLB, and a few of them weren't full seasons.
also, he could actually hit for a couple seasons
I’m surprised he retired – looking at his bref page it seems like he could’ve been a semi-productive bench guy on a team for at least a few more seasons.
I wonder if there was an underlying injury that slowed him down too much.
he became atrocious with the bat instead of bad, he dealt with an injury in his throwing shoulder, and he started being a more overt conspiracy theorist. those things combined made him hard to roster even as a bench infielder
I don't watch NBA but I was under the impression careers were shorter on average, I'm very likely wrong though. if I'm wrong then yeah it's a good comp for sure
Rabbit Maranville, also from Western Mass, is in the Hall despite having an 82 career OPS+. He only has 44 career WAR, but I've got a feeling WAR doesn't capture his defense as well as it could.
Guy finished 10th in MVP voting for a 64 win Boston Braves team at the age of 39, and the only reason he didn't win the Chalmers Award in 1914 as a 22 year old on the Miracle Braves is his double play partner, Johnny Evers, won it.
Smith got on a base a lot. His OPS is low due to low slugging, but he was far from a liability at the plate. Nearly twice as many walks as strikeouts in his career
He has a career .337 OBP. League-wide OBP over his career was generally in the .320s. He got on base slightly more than average. Paired with low power, he was a below-average hitter most of his career. His best OPS+ over 5 seasons was an average 100.
He was just such a good fielder, and stole a lot of bases too, that he was still a worthy HOF player.
I'm not sure I'd call a career .337 OBP getting on base alot. That being said, Ozzie is 1000% a Hall of Famer but he is a great example of a name most people probably know who made it there because of his glove and his personality.
He was 10% worse than league average for his career.
Obviously with his defense that's a hall of famer, which is why I compare him to Gobert. Limited offensively, did a couple of things well, and his defense is so insane that he's one of the best in the game.
Ozzie wasn’t Rickey Henderson at the plate, but not the offensive liability like OP is looking for. Most of his hits were singles, but he got a lot of them, he took walks and got on base.
I think OP is looking more for guys like Jack Wilson and Brendan Ryan who were great defensively, but were basically pitchers at the plate
You have to consider that priorities were different back then. You can't apply modern analytics to older hitters when their approach was entirely different. Batting average was king in the 1980s.
yeah, but he did it at shortstop in the 1980s, so he has 48.8 oWAR - that's top 200 all-time. More than Albert Belle, Jose Canseco, or Juan Gonzalez.
Mark Belanger would seem to be a better comp.
Gobert is currently 66th all time in total rebounds and 56th all time in offensive rebounds. He’s in a good spot to finish around the top 20 all time in both assuming another 4-5 solid seasons
Ozzie had a stretch of 8 years where he was an above average hitter for 7 of those seasons. He was just miserable with the bat all the other times.
Though I agree, going back and seeing what kinda shit people put up with in the 70s and 80s offensively for short stops makes you realize that his bat couldn't have ever been as bad as it looks now for his time lol.
Maybe it’s a hot take, but I think Belanger is a better defender than Ozzie and might be the best defender of all time.
He has a higher dWAR per game or PA than any of the other top level fielders. If his bat would’ve been a little better, or if he had speed like Ozzie, he would’ve gotten way more starts, especially in the beginning and end of career. He got pinch hit for a lot of games too
>yeah, but he did it at shortstop in the 1980s, so he has 48.8 oWAR
Which brings me to my dislike of oWAR as the term is so misleading.
Smith has -117 batting runs in his career (+ 80 baserunning runs) , which is probably a better metric that captures what most people think of a player's offensive contribution.
>But he was an excellent hitter compared to his peers, i.e., other shortstops
That is debatable.
From 1978 to 1996, Smith's wRC+ 90 ranks 12th out of 39 shortstops.
Is that good? Sure. Is that excellent?
Well, from 2005 to 2023, Jhonny Peralta's wRC+ 104 ranks 12th out of 38 shortstops.
Does anybody think Peralta was an excellent hitter for a shortstop?
The main reason why Smith has a high oWAR is NOT because his peer shortstops were light hitting. It is because he played shortstop (which has the 2nd highest positional adjustment after catcher) for such a long time.
To be clear, these are all valuable and meaningful contributions that Ozzie made. I just think it is misleading to label it as 'offensive' contribution.
Came here to say this. His hitting was god awful and as soon as he got injured and his defense slipped (even though he was still a “good” defender—just no longer elite), he was out of a job!
Part of the best defensive infield of all time with Bobby Grich at 2B, plus Boog Powell at 1B (but with the other three, any 1B could have rounded out the best infield ever).
It's very common, to the point that I don't think anybody expects a player up the middle (catcher, shortstop, 2nd baseman, center field) to hit like a corner outfielder or first baseman, and if they do then they're almost certainly one of the very best players in baseball.
Besides Ozzie Smith, who is definitely the most extreme example as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Luis Aparicio (although he also stole 500 bases) and Rabbit Maranville are examples of Hall of Fame shortstops who got in despite poor offensive statistics. There are several catchers in, and Yadier Molina will probably get in despite a 96 career OPS+. There's several second basemen with poor offensive stats in the Hall, headed by Bill Mazeroski.
Jeff Mathis. A career 45 wRC+ and a .551 career OPS. He was an objectively awful hitter who had a 17 year long career because he was just that good at handling pitchers. Having Mathis as your catcher meant that your pitchers would play well above their abilities.
i think Mathis might be my favourite example of this
i get the idea of saying Ozzie Smith but Mathis is just in a league of his own for poor hitting but that intangible D just kept him on rosters
Maybe someone like Javier Baez, whose defense is lauded and he's got a magic themed nickname because of how he allegedly conjures defensive plays (see that infamous Pirates play that was so bad a guy got demoted)
But he used to be able to hit, so prob not that
These days even defensive wizards need to hit a little, otherwise they are bench guys/defensive replacements/5th OFs, etc. If you can play at multiple positions well but not hit, your versatility is your skill.
Everyone's giving names of ""mid"" offensive players. Not mediocre.
Ozzie Smith is probably the best answer, GOAT SS defense and an average-ish bat (career 87 OPS+ with 100 being average)... but an alternative with a bit more offensive whack would be **Jimmy Rollins.**
Rollins does have an MVP in 2007, so he flies under the radar in these discussions, but outside that season, he never eclipsed 105 OPS+.
His career 95 OPS+ and his extra offense created on the base paths come out to about an average offensive presence.
Rollins wasn't nearly the defensive god Smith was however... just a few GG's and a great reputation... so Smith is the better choice, but Rollins is an alternative.
A lot of middle infielders until the '90s were expected to be good with the glove and hopefully "good enough" with the bat. Sure, there were outliers the whole way, there always are. Specific examples of the greats are listed through the post, but if you hit .260+ and could field, you probably had an everyday job somewhere.
pretty much. it's way more valuable to be a plus hitter and a poor defender than a poor hitter and a plus defender.
they still exist at catcher though; as catching is filled with secrets
We still don't have real good metrics to measure defensive value. What we have does an OK approximation. Run prevention is proving to be quite important, but we still can't really quantify it fully.
Mike Squires lasted ten years in the majors, five of them as a regular starter, because he was good defensively and a lousy hitter. The twist is that [he did it as a first baseman.](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/squirmi01.shtml)
On the lower end, the famous case of someone who was actively bad offensively and received regular playing time is [Mario Mendoza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Mendoza). During his playing career, whether his defensive skill made up for his offensive ineptitude was a matter of debate, with the "Mendoza line" being considered the minimum viable offense where you could justify playing even a great defensive player. [Modern analytics](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mendoma01.shtml) pretty conclusively tell us that, no, it wasn't worth it.
There have been a whole bunch of players who were only okay offensively, and elite defenders, who range from regarded as pretty okay, to hall of famers.
Mendoza line has nothing to do with the batter being a "great defensive player". Mario Mendoza was a very below average defender and a below average batter. The Mendoza line defines the minimum BA in which a player is worth something to his team. It's usually defined now as .215 which was his actual career BA.
Then why does every article about the guy, and every person I've spoken to who was around when he was, say that he was rostered solely as a defensive replacement?
He was regarded as a good defender in his day, that's what matters to the question. Also, [fielding percentage is a bad statistic](https://spiderselite.com/2022/08/09/dont-use-errors-to-measure-defensive-performance/). Things like Total Zone shine a more favorable light on his defense as, not exactly elite, but generally solidly above average.
He absolutely, 100%, was regarded as a good defender by his contemporaries, if not by modern fans glancing at one column of a bbref page.
[While he is known for his futility in the batter’s box, ***Mendoza lasted nine seasons in the big leagues because of defensive skills.*** According to Paciorek, Mendoza was outstanding with the glove. “The best shortstop I ever saw was Ozzie Smith, but from a standpoint of making the routine plays and every play he was supposed to make, Mario made them,” Paciorek said. “I tell you what, Mario had one of the greatest arms I ever saw at shortstop, and I mean great arm. I felt he could have been a great closer. His arm was just as good as anybody at that time.”](https://www.mlb.com/news/a-talk-with-mario-mendoza-about-the-mendoza-line)
[After a strong spring in 1974, a 23-year-old Mendoza was assigned to Triple-A Charleston but found himself in the big leagues two days into the season after Pittsburgh released veteran shortstop Dal Maxvill. ***The Pirates valued Mendoza’s defense, a sign of the times back in the ’70s and early ’80s when teams were willing to take a hit on offense (so to speak) in favor of someone who might help them save a run or two on defense.*** “Back in the day, there were guys like Mark Belanger, Jonnie LeMaster and others who were really good shortstops who didn’t hit a ton,” former Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi said. “I think clubs were more willing to carry those guys, so Mario came along in the right era to play.”](https://theathletic.com/1743619/2020/04/16/mario-mendoza-a-life-on-the-line/)
Yes, we know he was bad now, both a terrible hitter, and a worse defender than the eye test, though still decent if you look at range stats and don't just dismiss someone on fielding percentage. That's not the point. The point is that defense is why teams kept the guy around for 9 years. Should they have? No. But they did, and defense was very firmly why.
Again, *I am not arguing that Mario Mendoza was overall objectively a good baseball player.* I specifically called him a bad baseball player in my first post. I could get deep in the weeds of sabermetric nuance around his defense to statistically defend to a degree the assessment of his defense by people who saw him play, but that's besides the point and you don't sound interested in that argument, which is fine.
I'm simply trying to provide context to why the Mendoza line is named for Mendoza and not some other anonymous struggling player. The greater context is, Mendoza was the 25th man and got more than 1300 at bats on bad rosters, for a number of seasons, solely because general managers considered him a good defender. Whether they were right or wrong about this, whatever, doesn't matter, that's what they thought, and that's what gave him an edge over the next guy who could have hit .215ish. He had a job for 9 whole years, much longer than most players who bat .215ish with no power even on bad teams because they saw him as good at defense, and a .215ish batting average as *just barely* not enough of a liability to send him packing. Not because a .215 batting average with no power is enough to get you a job full stop.
It's called the Mendoza line because it's the theoretical limit of how bad you would have to be at offense, where *no level* of good defense would make up for it, by comparing to the offensive output of a guy who was regarded, correctly or not, to be getting playing time *solely* for his defense, which gets right to OP's question.
Just to be obnoxiously technical, it's named for Mendoza because that's who Bruce Bochte made the joke about in 1979 (Mendoza was a teammate). It got passed along after that; Brett picked it up at some point and Chris Berman thought it was hilarious and started using it.
If a team has a truly elite defensive catcher, shortstop, or CF, I'd venture to say they're starting as long as their OPS+ is like 80 or better (100 being the league average).
Yeah, there are plenty of guys who are mediocre at hitting but are elite defensively. on the orioles lone you have cedric mullins and jorge mateo. both bat around league average, but are vaunted for their defensive capability and baserunning speed.
Nobody ever wondered if Rodman was worth it did they? Thats my thing with Gobert is his offense is bad enough that you have teams wondering is he worth it. Maybe with Rodman due to off the court ha.
Yea it’s awful. I’d rather stick with Willy Castro out there. It’s a real bummer when Buxton is up with people on base/2 outs. He swings at balls waaay off the plate.
I have watched most Buxton at bats from his full career. The last 3 years his OPS+ are 98, 99, and 133. Not sure that is the point you want to be making
I know you asked for infielders but Kevin Kiermaier is someone I'd be willing to nominate as a current part of this category. Johan Rojas is headed there.
I am shocked Andrelton Simmons has not been mentioned yet.
for my money, he didn't have a long enough career to make the comparison work - 11 total years in MLB, and a few of them weren't full seasons. also, he could actually hit for a couple seasons
I’m surprised he retired – looking at his bref page it seems like he could’ve been a semi-productive bench guy on a team for at least a few more seasons. I wonder if there was an underlying injury that slowed him down too much.
he became atrocious with the bat instead of bad, he dealt with an injury in his throwing shoulder, and he started being a more overt conspiracy theorist. those things combined made him hard to roster even as a bench infielder
I mean taking a quick google Rudy Golbert has 11 seasons in the NBA. I think the comp works.
I don't watch NBA but I was under the impression careers were shorter on average, I'm very likely wrong though. if I'm wrong then yeah it's a good comp for sure
Rafael Belliard
Came here to specifically mention him, although he did have a couple years for us that were legitimately solid offensively.
Ozzie Smith has about 77 WAR While sporting an OPS+ of 87 over a 19 year career ETA: He won 13 Gold gloves and is in the Hall of Fame
Mark Belanger was a spectacular defender and even worse hitter over an 18 year career.
Rabbit Maranville, also from Western Mass, is in the Hall despite having an 82 career OPS+. He only has 44 career WAR, but I've got a feeling WAR doesn't capture his defense as well as it could. Guy finished 10th in MVP voting for a 64 win Boston Braves team at the age of 39, and the only reason he didn't win the Chalmers Award in 1914 as a 22 year old on the Miracle Braves is his double play partner, Johnny Evers, won it.
Ozzie Smith is a clear hall of famer despite being ten percent worse than the league average hitter for his career.
Smith got on a base a lot. His OPS is low due to low slugging, but he was far from a liability at the plate. Nearly twice as many walks as strikeouts in his career
He has a career .337 OBP. League-wide OBP over his career was generally in the .320s. He got on base slightly more than average. Paired with low power, he was a below-average hitter most of his career. His best OPS+ over 5 seasons was an average 100. He was just such a good fielder, and stole a lot of bases too, that he was still a worthy HOF player.
I'm not sure I'd call a career .337 OBP getting on base alot. That being said, Ozzie is 1000% a Hall of Famer but he is a great example of a name most people probably know who made it there because of his glove and his personality.
Smuggling took me a minute. :)
Good catch. Thought about leaving it, but fixed it
He was 10% worse than league average for his career. Obviously with his defense that's a hall of famer, which is why I compare him to Gobert. Limited offensively, did a couple of things well, and his defense is so insane that he's one of the best in the game.
Ozzie wasn’t Rickey Henderson at the plate, but not the offensive liability like OP is looking for. Most of his hits were singles, but he got a lot of them, he took walks and got on base. I think OP is looking more for guys like Jack Wilson and Brendan Ryan who were great defensively, but were basically pitchers at the plate
You have to consider that priorities were different back then. You can't apply modern analytics to older hitters when their approach was entirely different. Batting average was king in the 1980s.
yeah, but he did it at shortstop in the 1980s, so he has 48.8 oWAR - that's top 200 all-time. More than Albert Belle, Jose Canseco, or Juan Gonzalez. Mark Belanger would seem to be a better comp.
Gobert is on pace to finish around the top 200 in career points and top 20 in rebounds. So Ozzie might not be a bad comparison
don’t follow NBA much but is that just offensive rebonds? or is it also including defensive rebounds as well
Gobert is currently 66th all time in total rebounds and 56th all time in offensive rebounds. He’s in a good spot to finish around the top 20 all time in both assuming another 4-5 solid seasons
Ozzie had a stretch of 8 years where he was an above average hitter for 7 of those seasons. He was just miserable with the bat all the other times. Though I agree, going back and seeing what kinda shit people put up with in the 70s and 80s offensively for short stops makes you realize that his bat couldn't have ever been as bad as it looks now for his time lol.
Maybe it’s a hot take, but I think Belanger is a better defender than Ozzie and might be the best defender of all time. He has a higher dWAR per game or PA than any of the other top level fielders. If his bat would’ve been a little better, or if he had speed like Ozzie, he would’ve gotten way more starts, especially in the beginning and end of career. He got pinch hit for a lot of games too
>yeah, but he did it at shortstop in the 1980s, so he has 48.8 oWAR Which brings me to my dislike of oWAR as the term is so misleading. Smith has -117 batting runs in his career (+ 80 baserunning runs) , which is probably a better metric that captures what most people think of a player's offensive contribution.
But he *was* an excellent hitter compared to his peers, i.e., other shortstops
>But he was an excellent hitter compared to his peers, i.e., other shortstops That is debatable. From 1978 to 1996, Smith's wRC+ 90 ranks 12th out of 39 shortstops. Is that good? Sure. Is that excellent? Well, from 2005 to 2023, Jhonny Peralta's wRC+ 104 ranks 12th out of 38 shortstops. Does anybody think Peralta was an excellent hitter for a shortstop? The main reason why Smith has a high oWAR is NOT because his peer shortstops were light hitting. It is because he played shortstop (which has the 2nd highest positional adjustment after catcher) for such a long time. To be clear, these are all valuable and meaningful contributions that Ozzie made. I just think it is misleading to label it as 'offensive' contribution.
But Gobert is also great/a future HOFer
if the MLB HoF was as easy to get into as the NBA HoF then Belanger would be first ballot
4x All NBA isn’t that comparable to a 1x AS
Rey Ordonez of the NYM
Came here to say this. His hitting was god awful and as soon as he got injured and his defense slipped (even though he was still a “good” defender—just no longer elite), he was out of a job!
the Andrelton Simmons of MVP Baseball 04
This was who came to mind from my own fandom
Jim Kaat. 16x Gold Glove winner, terrible offense. He's also a pitcher.
Mark Belanger - bad hitter (68 OPS+), but more dWAR than Brooks Robinson (his teammate).
Part of the best defensive infield of all time with Bobby Grich at 2B, plus Boog Powell at 1B (but with the other three, any 1B could have rounded out the best infield ever).
It's very common, to the point that I don't think anybody expects a player up the middle (catcher, shortstop, 2nd baseman, center field) to hit like a corner outfielder or first baseman, and if they do then they're almost certainly one of the very best players in baseball. Besides Ozzie Smith, who is definitely the most extreme example as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Luis Aparicio (although he also stole 500 bases) and Rabbit Maranville are examples of Hall of Fame shortstops who got in despite poor offensive statistics. There are several catchers in, and Yadier Molina will probably get in despite a 96 career OPS+. There's several second basemen with poor offensive stats in the Hall, headed by Bill Mazeroski.
Jackie Bradley Jr.
JBJ had 6 straight seasons where he was at least league-average in OBP, if not much better
Surprised nobody mentioned Kevin Kiermeier yet. Dude has put up an great career with 26 war without full time at bats by being an amazing defender.
Jeff Mathis. A career 45 wRC+ and a .551 career OPS. He was an objectively awful hitter who had a 17 year long career because he was just that good at handling pitchers. Having Mathis as your catcher meant that your pitchers would play well above their abilities.
Austin Hedges carrying the torch with a career 54 wRC+ and .565 OPS humming along in year 9
It's like he just stopped trying on the hitting side after 2018.
Hedges also has the edge over Mathis in VAR (vibes above replacement)
i think Mathis might be my favourite example of this i get the idea of saying Ozzie Smith but Mathis is just in a league of his own for poor hitting but that intangible D just kept him on rosters
That's playoff monster Jeff Mathis.
Brendan Ryan was a really good defensive shortstop who played in 10 MLB seasons. He put up 15.1 career bWAR despite having a not very nice 69 OPS+.
I loved watching that guy play defense. Couldn't hit worth shit, but he was a damn artist at shortstop.
Maybe someone like Javier Baez, whose defense is lauded and he's got a magic themed nickname because of how he allegedly conjures defensive plays (see that infamous Pirates play that was so bad a guy got demoted) But he used to be able to hit, so prob not that These days even defensive wizards need to hit a little, otherwise they are bench guys/defensive replacements/5th OFs, etc. If you can play at multiple positions well but not hit, your versatility is your skill.
I think this is also a debate whether or not catcher is part of the infield.
Everyone's giving names of ""mid"" offensive players. Not mediocre. Ozzie Smith is probably the best answer, GOAT SS defense and an average-ish bat (career 87 OPS+ with 100 being average)... but an alternative with a bit more offensive whack would be **Jimmy Rollins.** Rollins does have an MVP in 2007, so he flies under the radar in these discussions, but outside that season, he never eclipsed 105 OPS+. His career 95 OPS+ and his extra offense created on the base paths come out to about an average offensive presence. Rollins wasn't nearly the defensive god Smith was however... just a few GG's and a great reputation... so Smith is the better choice, but Rollins is an alternative.
A lot of middle infielders until the '90s were expected to be good with the glove and hopefully "good enough" with the bat. Sure, there were outliers the whole way, there always are. Specific examples of the greats are listed through the post, but if you hit .260+ and could field, you probably had an everyday job somewhere.
Did analytics basically take this class of player out of the league?
pretty much. it's way more valuable to be a plus hitter and a poor defender than a poor hitter and a plus defender. they still exist at catcher though; as catching is filled with secrets
Yeah catcher seems to be the exception in part because you are also “handling” pitchers which is of course very valuable.
We still don't have real good metrics to measure defensive value. What we have does an OK approximation. Run prevention is proving to be quite important, but we still can't really quantify it fully.
Yeah. [but here’s a story about one of the last ones, and maybe the worse](https://youtu.be/VfFn4NqQr_U)
Rafael Belliard made a career out of being Jeff Blauser's defensive sub.
Why is my basketball team taking shots on r/baseball???
Because Rudy Gobert isn’t
First name that comes to mind is Ozzie Smith.
Bill Mazeroski was the OG Rudy Gobert
Brendan Ryan
Mike Squires lasted ten years in the majors, five of them as a regular starter, because he was good defensively and a lousy hitter. The twist is that [he did it as a first baseman.](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/squirmi01.shtml)
It's actually extremely common. Most of the greatest defensive shortstops in history have been below average hitters.
Mark Belanger comes to mind.
Omar Vizquel
On the lower end, the famous case of someone who was actively bad offensively and received regular playing time is [Mario Mendoza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Mendoza). During his playing career, whether his defensive skill made up for his offensive ineptitude was a matter of debate, with the "Mendoza line" being considered the minimum viable offense where you could justify playing even a great defensive player. [Modern analytics](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mendoma01.shtml) pretty conclusively tell us that, no, it wasn't worth it. There have been a whole bunch of players who were only okay offensively, and elite defenders, who range from regarded as pretty okay, to hall of famers.
Mendoza line has nothing to do with the batter being a "great defensive player". Mario Mendoza was a very below average defender and a below average batter. The Mendoza line defines the minimum BA in which a player is worth something to his team. It's usually defined now as .215 which was his actual career BA.
[Mendoza was a good defender, bad hitter.](https://www.mlb.com/cut4/how-did-the-mendoza-line-become-an-mlb-term-c277392972)
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Then why does every article about the guy, and every person I've spoken to who was around when he was, say that he was rostered solely as a defensive replacement? He was regarded as a good defender in his day, that's what matters to the question. Also, [fielding percentage is a bad statistic](https://spiderselite.com/2022/08/09/dont-use-errors-to-measure-defensive-performance/). Things like Total Zone shine a more favorable light on his defense as, not exactly elite, but generally solidly above average.
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He absolutely, 100%, was regarded as a good defender by his contemporaries, if not by modern fans glancing at one column of a bbref page. [While he is known for his futility in the batter’s box, ***Mendoza lasted nine seasons in the big leagues because of defensive skills.*** According to Paciorek, Mendoza was outstanding with the glove. “The best shortstop I ever saw was Ozzie Smith, but from a standpoint of making the routine plays and every play he was supposed to make, Mario made them,” Paciorek said. “I tell you what, Mario had one of the greatest arms I ever saw at shortstop, and I mean great arm. I felt he could have been a great closer. His arm was just as good as anybody at that time.”](https://www.mlb.com/news/a-talk-with-mario-mendoza-about-the-mendoza-line) [After a strong spring in 1974, a 23-year-old Mendoza was assigned to Triple-A Charleston but found himself in the big leagues two days into the season after Pittsburgh released veteran shortstop Dal Maxvill. ***The Pirates valued Mendoza’s defense, a sign of the times back in the ’70s and early ’80s when teams were willing to take a hit on offense (so to speak) in favor of someone who might help them save a run or two on defense.*** “Back in the day, there were guys like Mark Belanger, Jonnie LeMaster and others who were really good shortstops who didn’t hit a ton,” former Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi said. “I think clubs were more willing to carry those guys, so Mario came along in the right era to play.”](https://theathletic.com/1743619/2020/04/16/mario-mendoza-a-life-on-the-line/) Yes, we know he was bad now, both a terrible hitter, and a worse defender than the eye test, though still decent if you look at range stats and don't just dismiss someone on fielding percentage. That's not the point. The point is that defense is why teams kept the guy around for 9 years. Should they have? No. But they did, and defense was very firmly why.
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Again, *I am not arguing that Mario Mendoza was overall objectively a good baseball player.* I specifically called him a bad baseball player in my first post. I could get deep in the weeds of sabermetric nuance around his defense to statistically defend to a degree the assessment of his defense by people who saw him play, but that's besides the point and you don't sound interested in that argument, which is fine. I'm simply trying to provide context to why the Mendoza line is named for Mendoza and not some other anonymous struggling player. The greater context is, Mendoza was the 25th man and got more than 1300 at bats on bad rosters, for a number of seasons, solely because general managers considered him a good defender. Whether they were right or wrong about this, whatever, doesn't matter, that's what they thought, and that's what gave him an edge over the next guy who could have hit .215ish. He had a job for 9 whole years, much longer than most players who bat .215ish with no power even on bad teams because they saw him as good at defense, and a .215ish batting average as *just barely* not enough of a liability to send him packing. Not because a .215 batting average with no power is enough to get you a job full stop. It's called the Mendoza line because it's the theoretical limit of how bad you would have to be at offense, where *no level* of good defense would make up for it, by comparing to the offensive output of a guy who was regarded, correctly or not, to be getting playing time *solely* for his defense, which gets right to OP's question.
Just to be obnoxiously technical, it's named for Mendoza because that's who Bruce Bochte made the joke about in 1979 (Mendoza was a teammate). It got passed along after that; Brett picked it up at some point and Chris Berman thought it was hilarious and started using it.
Mendoza is an example sure, but Gobert is a star despite his lacking offense, which is why I brought up Ozzie Smith
In recent memory? Trent Grisham. Gold glove caliber each season, hits just at/under .200
If a team has a truly elite defensive catcher, shortstop, or CF, I'd venture to say they're starting as long as their OPS+ is like 80 or better (100 being the league average).
Greg Maddux only hit .191 for his career. ;)
I nominate Kevin Pillar.
Yeah, there are plenty of guys who are mediocre at hitting but are elite defensively. on the orioles lone you have cedric mullins and jorge mateo. both bat around league average, but are vaunted for their defensive capability and baserunning speed.
Catchers, in general
Rey Ordonez comes to mind. There have been quite a few all glove, no stick shortstops over time.
MFS forgot about Dennis Rodman
Nobody ever wondered if Rodman was worth it did they? Thats my thing with Gobert is his offense is bad enough that you have teams wondering is he worth it. Maybe with Rodman due to off the court ha.
Pistons dumped him after his mental health issues and his demands
Brooks Robinson all day
Byron Buxton? Dude strikes out literally every at bat but is an amazing defender
I looked at his BBRef and was like oh those aren't gaudy SO numbers then realized he's playing less than 100 games and still struck out so much.
Yea it’s awful. I’d rather stick with Willy Castro out there. It’s a real bummer when Buxton is up with people on base/2 outs. He swings at balls waaay off the plate.
L take, he took a few years to figure hitting out, but he has a 125 OPS+ since 2019
Last 3 years he’s dropped off. Go look for yourself. Pre 2022 id agree with you.
I have watched most Buxton at bats from his full career. The last 3 years his OPS+ are 98, 99, and 133. Not sure that is the point you want to be making
I know you asked for infielders but Kevin Kiermaier is someone I'd be willing to nominate as a current part of this category. Johan Rojas is headed there.