Is Andrew Vaughn Too Short to Be a Viable First Baseman?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

It's not easy to be a 5-foot-10 big-league first baseman. Anywhere on a baseball diamond, there are ways to make up for a lack of size or speed in certain ways, but the dimensions of the field and the timing of the game remain constant, and that creates real constraints for players based on their physical gifts and skills. Andrew Vaughn has spent time at third base for the Brewers recently and played a couple of games at second base for the White Sox earlier in his career. He's had slightly longer tours in each outfield corner. Because he's thickly built, slow and has a relatively weak arm, though, he's mostly been a first baseman, and he'll never fit neatly anywhere else. Unfortunately, the latest Statcast data on receiving throws at first base reveal why he's not a good fit at first, either.

Of the 42 first basemen who have had 100 or more chances receiving throws this season, Vaughn ranks fourth-worst in Outs Above Average based on that skill, with -3. The three players who have racked up more negative value have all had more than double his number of opportunities. Pound for pound, he might be the worst receiver of infield throws in the game. Let's dig into the how and why of that.

Baseball Savant breaks down Receiving OAA based on the type of play the first baseman in question is trying to make, as well as reporting a total. Included categories are:

• On Target: Throws that pass within a 2.5-foot of first base while also between 1 and 7 feet high
• Bounce: Throws that bounce at least 15 feet from the base en route to the first baseman
• Scoops: Throws that bounce between 5 and 15 feet from the base
• Low: Throws that arrive less than 1 foot above the ground
• High: Throws that arrive more than 7 feet above the ground
• Wide: Throws that arrive more than 2.5 feet wide of the base

There's some slight overlap in these categories, because some scoops and bounces also go into the low or wide bin, but you get the idea. Breaking it down this way lets us study which players struggle with which types of throws. 

For Vaughn, unfortunately, the most glaring problems don't come on the balls farthest off the mark. There are some problems in that area, and we'll get to them in a bit, but the worst news is that only Phillies first baseman (now right fielder) Bryce Harper is the only player with a worse OAA on On Target throws this year. Vaughn has cost the Brewers 2.6 expected outs on plays that didn't feature an errant or challenging throw at all. Here's an example.

Again, height is a negotiable constraint on the way a player handles first base, but it's not a fully escapable one. On this play, the speed of Eli White and the length of the throw Joey Ortiz had to make made it vital that Vaughn intercept the ball as soon as possible. He didn't get there soon enough. The sheer length of his stretch is limited by his height and the length of his arms and legs, but there's another factor, too. Watch his anchor foot, on the side of the base, and the way his body is oriented as a result. A taller (and/or left-handed) first baseman could have received this throw differently, as well as being able to stretch farther. Knowing the limitations of his stretch, when taking such a long throw from that across-the-diamond angle, Vaughn has to cheat toward the center of the bag so he can adjust and slide back to play throws just like this one. Other first basemen could have come more to the front corner of the bag and cut the throw off a foot sooner in flight; that would have made the difference here. Statcast estimates an expected out rate of almost 78% on that play, so Vaughn is docked by the metric for not being better positioned and better able to reach for the ball.

Here's an even more straightforward case of a good throw going to waste because of Vaughn's positioning on the base. Yes, it would help if he were taller, but he also has to get to the front part of the base here. If he does, he's a crucial few inches closer to the incoming throw and makes the catch in time.

Even when he gets to the right part of the base and stretches almost heroically, though, sometimes the dimensions are just against him. Here, Luis Rengifo makes as strong a throw as he can under the circumstances, but Vaughn's height leaves too much time and space. Fernando Tatis Jr. outruns the throw and catch.

Often, in baseball, there's something you could have done better, even if making a given play would have been viciously difficult and no one would think of giving you an error. With Vaughn, we can sometimes see cases in which he simply couldn't do anything more—but someone else, with just a bit more leg length and wingspan to work with, could have converted the out. Here's another such case.

Though initially called an out, this one was overturned on review. That's how close plays like these often are, and why it matters more in this replay-review era than it might have 20 years ago. Watch the play a couple of times, and you can even imagine how one of the game's taller first basemen and better receivers would have made the play: a different angle, a longer reach, a quicker catch and an out that held up to slow-motion scrutiny.

It's when his infielders are accurate that Vaughn's shortcomings (no pun intended) are most glaring, but of course, he's also ill-equipped to rescue a player who makes a high throw.

That goes down as a throwing error, and well it should. If Vaughn is the height of Freddie Freeman or Matt Olson, though, it's an out—a nervous-making one, but an out.

Unfortunately, we also have to talk about how clumsy Vaughn often looks around the base. For a player whose professional experience has come mostly at the cold corner, he plays like it's a new spot for him sometimes. He's slow to reach the base, which is why he's sometimes not set up as well as he should be on it when preparing to catch the ball. It also leads him to get turned around and lose his balance on balls that would be much more catchable if he were bigger, but should be playable even at his size.

That slow decision-making even shows up on balls to his side of the diamond, and contributes to him reaching the base late and being improperly positioned for throws from Brice Turang when the second baseman has to range far toward first to make plays. Again, you can see how a bigger guy could still reach out and make up for his mistake, but the mistake is mostly that he was in such a bad position to begin with.

As you'd guess, Vaughn rates worse than average both on high throws and on wide ones. He's a plus scooper of throws in the dirt and navigator of long bounces, though. He takes proper advantage of his proximity to the ground when one of his teammates puts a throw there. That's not enough to balance out the lack of physical range (in three dimensions) on all other types of throws, but it's nice consolation.

Alas, that's exactly where Jake Bauers struggles. The Brewers' bigger, more athletic, left-handed first baseman would rate as above-average, but for a few poor plays on which he's crouched awkwardly and unnecessarily when trying to pick low throws, with disastrous results.

The net effect of the Brewers' first base receiving has been to give up a few extra infield singles and foist a few unearned throwing errors on the rest of the infield defense this year. It's been ugly. Maybe you noticed this, in the clips above, but the negative impacts of those plays have also disproportionately fallen on the team's two best pitchers. Jacob Misiorowski and Kyle Harrison are two of the top three pitchers in the league this season in terms of OAA lost due to first base receiving, a strange quirk that underscores how good those two have been—but which also makes clear the urgency of fixing this issue (to whatever extent that's possible) come October.

Bauers can operate much better mechanically on low throws and bouncers. Vaughn, however, is a trickier case. He might always be prone to leaking outs based on his size and the limitations of his range around the bag. It's one of the rare immutable realities of baseball, a sport that generally makes room for all body sizes and types. As the Brewers consider how to distribute their playing time at first base down the stretch and which (if either) of Bauers and Vaughn to keep this winter, this might be a tiebreaking consideration worthy of note.

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[wiguy94]

I definitely did get some FOMO during that A's series this year where it felt like Kurtz could get to any ball thrown to him.

[Turning2]

Long story short.... yes, a taller 1B is preferable assuming all other things being equal. Preferable, but not an absolute necessity. Vaughn does pretty much everything you need from a first baseman except hit 20+HRs. If they don't win the WS, it won't be because of Vaughn's height most likely.