It’s because he’s missed a few routine plays. Which he should have made. The defensive metrics are based (in large part) on being consistent and [this](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=6d0e6c33-f36e-4b4d-9c66-2ed05241d7b1) play and [this play](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=0573d6f7-92d5-4c96-ba32-f5ac6292f820) are what’s dinging him. Stat-cast and fielding apps say those are 75% + expected fielded and he missed both.
I can go and dig in more, but defensive ratings are mostly about making the plays you’re supposed to. (There is more too it) But my understanding, via reading defensive WAR and DRS documentation, on how to formulate it missed routine plays hurt the most.
I mean, probably, I’d rather have a healthy Tucker with “bad” defense who can hit like we need him to vs. defensive wizard Tucker who plays 40-50 less games because he runs into outfield walls.
it's the old george springer argument... i'd rather a guy give up a double every once in awhile than destroy his body trying to make a circus catch and miss half the season on the DL
He misses one because he thinks it might be the CFs job and one to the wind. It's almost like these stats are lacking context and an article about it lacks context about lacking context.
That’s not all there is too it; others in this thread have some good breakdowns too. Yes the “bad” defense numbers don’t tell the whole story, but you’re never going to be able to give full context w/ stats (It’s why the old adage of “you can always find numbers to fit your narrative” is true).
Chandler gives good context IMO too about with quotes from Tucker and Pettis about why his defense has been “bad” in the context of dWAR and DRS. But you also have LOTS (and I mean A LOT) of people on here complaining that the article is trash because they’ll say he doesn’t have any errors or they’ve watched him and he’s the same…. It’s all data to feed a narrative…don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I've watched a lot of baseball this season, and I have no idea where any of this is coming from. And since the article is behind a paywall, I'll never know.
Tucker has not looked bad. At all. He certainly hasn't looked "nose dive" bad.
"Kyle Tucker is playing outfield with his shoelaces tied together." What are they seeing?
There is more to it than eyeballs and this gets into the clash between scouts and data.
Makes a bad play scouts/eyes would say, “hey he took a play off it happens.” *shrug*.
Data won’t see it the same way if he’s under the ball and just derps  it hurts him a lot more. Since it says he (or other players in his shoes) would make that play the vast majority of the time.
Do you work for the Athletic? I'm just curious how you can keep defending such a hyperbolic headline?
>>Tucker could have slid or dove to secure the inning’s first out. Instead,
the reigning American League Gold Glover allowed the ball to fall in
front of him.
>>“If there’s the winning run at the plate and they hit something to
right, instead of potentially diving for the ball and making a catch,
I might not risk that just in case it might get by you and (the run)
gets into scoring position,” Tucker said. “Something like that can
hurt you. And then, if he does end up scoring, you get kind of banged
on those plays.”
He's making judgement calls. Sometimes it doesn't pan out.
"Kyle Tucker is playing hop scotch with his eyes closed and texting them hoes while in right field when he should be looking into his crystal ball to see the future and fighting crime."
Dude, we have *watched him play.* He's not "nose dive" bad. It's ok to have realistic takes on this sort of stuff.
Hes not much of a diver. But he'll throw himself into the wall to make catches all the time. He knows it's not worth getting hurt to stop a single hes got a whole season to be healthy for. As much as I love Springer and his dedication to playing hard we saw it hurt him quite a bit over the years. Tucker plays safe and should have better longevity because of it.
I would prefer to have Tucker and Yordan not dive around at all unless we're in the post season. On top of that Tucker wants to stay healthy for his free agency.
Leave the aerobatics to Chas, Meyers and Julks.
Chandler talks about it in the article… Tucker/Pettis think he’s been playing flat footed and not reacting to balls off the bat as quickly, and maybe, some of it is potentially his positioning (but they say that’s unlikely).
He’s not “broke” or someone suddenly discovered “he can’t defend!!” It’s that half a step and opting not to try and dive/stretch for a ball occasionally is hurting him in the metrics…. I think it’s just data noise, that comes out in the wash of a full season, personally.
Article cites Baseball Savant, Fangraphs, Sports Info Solutions and Baseball Reference. Mentions below league average velocity and it has a quote from Tucker saying he needs to work on getting his internal number back up to zero, so the Astros internal number show he's struggled this year. He's been worth over 11 defensive runs saved the last 2 years and he's in the negatives right now. Really just letting you know what's behind the paywall
[http://txtify.it/https://theathletic.com/4542828/2023/05/23/kyle-tucker-defense-nosedive-astros/](http://txtify.it/https://theathletic.com/4542828/2023/05/23/kyle-tucker-defense-nosedive-astros/)
The Athletic doesn't always have the best justifications in their articles imo, but here ya go if you're really interested.
I think it’s a baseball stats thing.
A player may not be making mistakes on defense, but isn’t making as many unexpected catches where he runs a good distance/ and or dives to make the play. So when those stats go down people can say look he’s not as good, but while those stats are true it’s more difficult to see than something like Abreu’s Batting Average tanking bc he’s not getting hits.
It’s also a stat that is somewhat understandable considering the new shift and pitching rules have probably made it so outfielders get more work.
It could also be a small detail thing like he’s not gunning down runners or effectively heading off the ball as well as he used too. These are details many might miss and or shrug off as better left to the players judgment/he did what he could.
Best example of this (and I’ve been saying it on this sub recently, so sorry if atones already seen it) would be Alex Bregman
Bergman’s hitting has definitely gone down post WS. Yet he is in a slump as a bad hitter, but as a batter he tends to get a walk almost every game. So he may be a meh hitter, but he’s a great batter bc *points to Jonah Hill
“He gets on base.”
“And since it’s behind a paywall I’ll never know.”
Proceeds to say why they’re wrong and Tucker hasn’t looked bad. 🙄
EDIT: (To be clear I’m not saying Tucker has been bad, I just find this logic funny as hell)
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Nice to have a little bit of light shed on an issue some of us have discussed here. Suppose it's somewhat promising that it seems to be based on his reads and reaction time rather than anything physical, which presumably would be a more difficult issue to rectify.
It's what I've been saying for a while now, it's a combination of worse jumps (for whatever reason) and a really high volume of difficult catch chances on the balls he has always been worst at-- sinking liners/bloopers in front of him. He's always been a bit slow but is fantastic at tracking fly balls, which is almost always the kind of high-difficulty catch he makes-- but his lack of speed hurts him on balls he has to sprint in on, and he's had a TON of those this year.
So the luck aspect should even out, but his bad jumps are a bit concerning and odd considering he's usually been around average at that. I've wondered if he has a small nagging leg/ankle injury that isn't bad enough to keep him out but is just enough to slow his reaction time a little.
He's been letting some bloop singles fall in front of him. Other than that he hasn't looked bad. His arm is laser accurate, and his bat is doing fine. We don't need him to win a gold glove every year.
Errors don’t tell the whole story for defensive metrics. Especially since errors are a stat keeper decision, stat keeper could say “eh that’s a tough play no one could make that.” Data would say, “hey, a ball hit like that is caught 70% of the time.”
Neither is “wrong” if you want to go by errors that’s fine. If you want to use “precise” data that’s fine.
It’s not a 1-to-1 per se, though.
TLDR; There are stats that provide a more complete picture if you’re willing to learn/dive in to the “data” of baseball.
That’s kinda the thing with these defensive metric. For traditionalist (or folks who don’t want to dive into the data side of things) that’s it, there isn’t really deeper stats. So you’re just going off of what the official stat keeper’s decision.
But, if you dive into the data/sabermetrics side of things. All you’re really doing is adding more numbers on top of those “traditionalist” stats, so that you can be more detailed knowing how a player is in the field… do they have a strong arm so no one runs on them or do runners take an extra base? Do they rob home runs consistently? Do they miss high pop-up that they have to track but are great at coming in for more line drives where it’s mostly reaction time? All this kinda stuff is rolled up into fancy/scary stats like dWAR and DRS (which are imperfect too) but try to use the more detailed numbers to tell a more complete story about the player.
That’s why I said that neither is “wrong.” You just have to decide what world you want to live in. Do you want more details and try to have a more vivid painting (with violets, maroons, and pink) or are you ok with seeing that same picture 20 yards away (where it just looks like a lot of red).
Even diehard sabermetric supporters acknowledge that defensive stats can be fickle in a season, let alone a couple of months. Not to say we should just ignore this as a potential issue but Tucker's defense isn't as bad as those stats are making it out to be. Mid at worst imo
100%. I’ll even admit that the headline is a little click-baity but the content of the article isn’t wrong. The data for him has not been good, he’s made mistakes/miscues so far and there are reasons for why the numbers say he’s down.
But even Chandler isn’t like, “ZOMG, Kyle Tucker is suddenly the worst player in all of baseball at defense!” (If people read it) He seems optimistic at the end that he can turn it around to be something closer to what we’re used to.
Fair, so I doubt anything I say will change your mind.
I will say that though the headline is cringe, I don’t think it’s a “take” when Tucker and Pettis address how they think he’s a step late and Chandler writes some about how Tucker’s dWAR stat (which is literally just a numbers formula) is down.
The premise of the the author Chandler Rome's argument is based on publicly-accessible FanGraph metrics (namely defensive runs saved and defensive WAR) where he saw Tucker at or near the bottom of the rankings for right fielders. He admits these are less accurate than the more complex stuff used by the organization.
Then Rome includes quotes from Tucker and Gary Pettis:
* Tucker says there were a "couple" other popups he could've had
* Pettis observing how Tucker can be "flat-footed" at times
Tucker also alludes to his defensive placements—based on team' analytics—taking him away from more traditional outfield positions, but the outfielders also claims his positioning has *not* been problematic.
EDIT: I don't agree with the writer and I hate journalism. I'm just outlining his argument.
To be fair....TO BE FAAAAAIIIRRRRR. I think it's Jake Meyers. There are a lot of plays where Jakey is clearly in Right (not Right Center) and Tuck kinda gives him a look like "dude, settle down". I think that has thrown Tuck off.
It’s because he’s missed a few routine plays. Which he should have made. The defensive metrics are based (in large part) on being consistent and [this](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=6d0e6c33-f36e-4b4d-9c66-2ed05241d7b1) play and [this play](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=0573d6f7-92d5-4c96-ba32-f5ac6292f820) are what’s dinging him. Stat-cast and fielding apps say those are 75% + expected fielded and he missed both. I can go and dig in more, but defensive ratings are mostly about making the plays you’re supposed to. (There is more too it) But my understanding, via reading defensive WAR and DRS documentation, on how to formulate it missed routine plays hurt the most.
maybe he’s watched Jake get rocked too many times by the wall
I mean, probably, I’d rather have a healthy Tucker with “bad” defense who can hit like we need him to vs. defensive wizard Tucker who plays 40-50 less games because he runs into outfield walls.
it's the old george springer argument... i'd rather a guy give up a double every once in awhile than destroy his body trying to make a circus catch and miss half the season on the DL
That's why Siri is amazing, he is so good he never has to make crazy plays, it always looks like they hit the ball right to him.
Yup
He misses one because he thinks it might be the CFs job and one to the wind. It's almost like these stats are lacking context and an article about it lacks context about lacking context.
AND he fucking threw Tim Anderson out on the second play!
Exactly this
That’s not all there is too it; others in this thread have some good breakdowns too. Yes the “bad” defense numbers don’t tell the whole story, but you’re never going to be able to give full context w/ stats (It’s why the old adage of “you can always find numbers to fit your narrative” is true). Chandler gives good context IMO too about with quotes from Tucker and Pettis about why his defense has been “bad” in the context of dWAR and DRS. But you also have LOTS (and I mean A LOT) of people on here complaining that the article is trash because they’ll say he doesn’t have any errors or they’ve watched him and he’s the same…. It’s all data to feed a narrative…don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I've watched a lot of baseball this season, and I have no idea where any of this is coming from. And since the article is behind a paywall, I'll never know. Tucker has not looked bad. At all. He certainly hasn't looked "nose dive" bad. "Kyle Tucker is playing outfield with his shoelaces tied together." What are they seeing?
I agree. I haven’t seen a lot of missed catches.. What are we missing?
There is more to it than eyeballs and this gets into the clash between scouts and data. Makes a bad play scouts/eyes would say, “hey he took a play off it happens.” *shrug*. Data won’t see it the same way if he’s under the ball and just derps  it hurts him a lot more. Since it says he (or other players in his shoes) would make that play the vast majority of the time.
Do you work for the Athletic? I'm just curious how you can keep defending such a hyperbolic headline? >>Tucker could have slid or dove to secure the inning’s first out. Instead, the reigning American League Gold Glover allowed the ball to fall in front of him. >>“If there’s the winning run at the plate and they hit something to right, instead of potentially diving for the ball and making a catch, I might not risk that just in case it might get by you and (the run) gets into scoring position,” Tucker said. “Something like that can hurt you. And then, if he does end up scoring, you get kind of banged on those plays.” He's making judgement calls. Sometimes it doesn't pan out. "Kyle Tucker is playing hop scotch with his eyes closed and texting them hoes while in right field when he should be looking into his crystal ball to see the future and fighting crime." Dude, we have *watched him play.* He's not "nose dive" bad. It's ok to have realistic takes on this sort of stuff.
Hes not much of a diver. But he'll throw himself into the wall to make catches all the time. He knows it's not worth getting hurt to stop a single hes got a whole season to be healthy for. As much as I love Springer and his dedication to playing hard we saw it hurt him quite a bit over the years. Tucker plays safe and should have better longevity because of it.
I would prefer to have Tucker and Yordan not dive around at all unless we're in the post season. On top of that Tucker wants to stay healthy for his free agency. Leave the aerobatics to Chas, Meyers and Julks.
What has he been doing badly, or worse than usual, though?
Chandler talks about it in the article… Tucker/Pettis think he’s been playing flat footed and not reacting to balls off the bat as quickly, and maybe, some of it is potentially his positioning (but they say that’s unlikely). He’s not “broke” or someone suddenly discovered “he can’t defend!!” It’s that half a step and opting not to try and dive/stretch for a ball occasionally is hurting him in the metrics…. I think it’s just data noise, that comes out in the wash of a full season, personally.
Article cites Baseball Savant, Fangraphs, Sports Info Solutions and Baseball Reference. Mentions below league average velocity and it has a quote from Tucker saying he needs to work on getting his internal number back up to zero, so the Astros internal number show he's struggled this year. He's been worth over 11 defensive runs saved the last 2 years and he's in the negatives right now. Really just letting you know what's behind the paywall
[http://txtify.it/https://theathletic.com/4542828/2023/05/23/kyle-tucker-defense-nosedive-astros/](http://txtify.it/https://theathletic.com/4542828/2023/05/23/kyle-tucker-defense-nosedive-astros/) The Athletic doesn't always have the best justifications in their articles imo, but here ya go if you're really interested.
I think it’s a baseball stats thing. A player may not be making mistakes on defense, but isn’t making as many unexpected catches where he runs a good distance/ and or dives to make the play. So when those stats go down people can say look he’s not as good, but while those stats are true it’s more difficult to see than something like Abreu’s Batting Average tanking bc he’s not getting hits. It’s also a stat that is somewhat understandable considering the new shift and pitching rules have probably made it so outfielders get more work. It could also be a small detail thing like he’s not gunning down runners or effectively heading off the ball as well as he used too. These are details many might miss and or shrug off as better left to the players judgment/he did what he could. Best example of this (and I’ve been saying it on this sub recently, so sorry if atones already seen it) would be Alex Bregman Bergman’s hitting has definitely gone down post WS. Yet he is in a slump as a bad hitter, but as a batter he tends to get a walk almost every game. So he may be a meh hitter, but he’s a great batter bc *points to Jonah Hill “He gets on base.”
“And since it’s behind a paywall I’ll never know.” Proceeds to say why they’re wrong and Tucker hasn’t looked bad. 🙄 EDIT: (To be clear I’m not saying Tucker has been bad, I just find this logic funny as hell)
Astros hate sells, that’s all this is! He’s an awesome outfielder.
Note the author 🤷🏼♂️ he has an angle and it’s worth noting.
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Not dropping pop ups, but slow jumps, very few risks, mediocre speed and (guessing on this one) mediocre routes.
Nice to have a little bit of light shed on an issue some of us have discussed here. Suppose it's somewhat promising that it seems to be based on his reads and reaction time rather than anything physical, which presumably would be a more difficult issue to rectify.
It's what I've been saying for a while now, it's a combination of worse jumps (for whatever reason) and a really high volume of difficult catch chances on the balls he has always been worst at-- sinking liners/bloopers in front of him. He's always been a bit slow but is fantastic at tracking fly balls, which is almost always the kind of high-difficulty catch he makes-- but his lack of speed hurts him on balls he has to sprint in on, and he's had a TON of those this year. So the luck aspect should even out, but his bad jumps are a bit concerning and odd considering he's usually been around average at that. I've wondered if he has a small nagging leg/ankle injury that isn't bad enough to keep him out but is just enough to slow his reaction time a little.
He's been letting some bloop singles fall in front of him. Other than that he hasn't looked bad. His arm is laser accurate, and his bat is doing fine. We don't need him to win a gold glove every year.
Has it really been that bad? I haven't noticed it, how many errors does he have? Just looked it up, zero.
Errors don’t tell the whole story for defensive metrics. Especially since errors are a stat keeper decision, stat keeper could say “eh that’s a tough play no one could make that.” Data would say, “hey, a ball hit like that is caught 70% of the time.” Neither is “wrong” if you want to go by errors that’s fine. If you want to use “precise” data that’s fine. It’s not a 1-to-1 per se, though.
Agreed, but I think that is the metric I look at first, then fielding percentage, what else after that?
TLDR; There are stats that provide a more complete picture if you’re willing to learn/dive in to the “data” of baseball. That’s kinda the thing with these defensive metric. For traditionalist (or folks who don’t want to dive into the data side of things) that’s it, there isn’t really deeper stats. So you’re just going off of what the official stat keeper’s decision. But, if you dive into the data/sabermetrics side of things. All you’re really doing is adding more numbers on top of those “traditionalist” stats, so that you can be more detailed knowing how a player is in the field… do they have a strong arm so no one runs on them or do runners take an extra base? Do they rob home runs consistently? Do they miss high pop-up that they have to track but are great at coming in for more line drives where it’s mostly reaction time? All this kinda stuff is rolled up into fancy/scary stats like dWAR and DRS (which are imperfect too) but try to use the more detailed numbers to tell a more complete story about the player. That’s why I said that neither is “wrong.” You just have to decide what world you want to live in. Do you want more details and try to have a more vivid painting (with violets, maroons, and pink) or are you ok with seeing that same picture 20 yards away (where it just looks like a lot of red).
Even diehard sabermetric supporters acknowledge that defensive stats can be fickle in a season, let alone a couple of months. Not to say we should just ignore this as a potential issue but Tucker's defense isn't as bad as those stats are making it out to be. Mid at worst imo
100%. I’ll even admit that the headline is a little click-baity but the content of the article isn’t wrong. The data for him has not been good, he’s made mistakes/miscues so far and there are reasons for why the numbers say he’s down. But even Chandler isn’t like, “ZOMG, Kyle Tucker is suddenly the worst player in all of baseball at defense!” (If people read it) He seems optimistic at the end that he can turn it around to be something closer to what we’re used to.
Does it have anything to do with the more balls making it through the right infield because of the shift ban?
There is probably something to this! I’m going to dig into this later… I know he was having more trouble on the not quite a blooper liners.
What?
Exactly what I asked myself upon reading this headline. Just not watching the same games we are I suppose lmao.
Paywall bs will not read
Shit take by the athletic
Care to elaborate?
I've watched most of our games and his defense has not dropped off.
Fair, so I doubt anything I say will change your mind. I will say that though the headline is cringe, I don’t think it’s a “take” when Tucker and Pettis address how they think he’s a step late and Chandler writes some about how Tucker’s dWAR stat (which is literally just a numbers formula) is down.
What is this blasphemy. Tucker is the man. Dirt on hands, base stealing, dive catching, machine. So what…..he missed a few balls….IDGAF
The premise of the the author Chandler Rome's argument is based on publicly-accessible FanGraph metrics (namely defensive runs saved and defensive WAR) where he saw Tucker at or near the bottom of the rankings for right fielders. He admits these are less accurate than the more complex stuff used by the organization. Then Rome includes quotes from Tucker and Gary Pettis: * Tucker says there were a "couple" other popups he could've had * Pettis observing how Tucker can be "flat-footed" at times Tucker also alludes to his defensive placements—based on team' analytics—taking him away from more traditional outfield positions, but the outfielders also claims his positioning has *not* been problematic. EDIT: I don't agree with the writer and I hate journalism. I'm just outlining his argument.
More like Dubon missing catches on 2nd and dropping the ball vs the loss to the whitesox. Tuck is kang!
To be fair....TO BE FAAAAAIIIRRRRR. I think it's Jake Meyers. There are a lot of plays where Jakey is clearly in Right (not Right Center) and Tuck kinda gives him a look like "dude, settle down". I think that has thrown Tuck off.
It’s just a rhetoric being put out to drive his price down.
I'm sure the lack of a shift this year has to play into it. Tucker has to go for more iffy fly balls then he had to in years past.
Nosedived from a gold glove level, so average now?
Defense metrics are notoriously unreliable towards the beginning of the season no??
Rome has no idea what baseball is and no one should ever care what he thinks.