Joey Ortiz Has Played Great Defense for Brewers, But Has He Been Part of Willy Adames's Problem?

Until this season, Willy Adames was one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball. Specifically, in fact, he was exceptionally good at making the play on balls hit to his right. In 2022, he was 12 plays better than an average shortstop on such batted balls, according to Sports Info Solutions. Last season, he was 7 plays above average. Across the two campaigns, he was only rated as 4 plays better than average on balls hit more or less right at him or to his left, so that play in the hole--the one taking a shortstop toward third base and away from his eventual target at first--was a crucial part of Adames's game.

Thus, it's there that his decline in 2024 has been most glaring. He's made too many routine errors, including on throws that didn't even require him to be off-balance, and he's been below-average on straight-on balls and those to his left, too, but the fall from where he was to a whopping -4 rating on balls to his right jumps out most.

Could it be that Joey Ortiz is to blame?

Ok, that's a bit hyperbolic. Ortiz has been a terrific defender at the hot corner as a rookie, in addition to providing solid production wherever Pat Murphy has placed him in the batting order. He's helped close up the left side of the infield, in his own way. He just might be making his teammate a little bit worse, in the process.

The Brewers have the league's fourth-highest Out Rate on ground balls toward the hole between short and third this season. They were second in that category last year, but their raw rate has actually increased slightly this year, from 79.4% in 2023 to 80.3%. Having Ortiz replace the amalgamation of Brian Anderson, Andruw Monasterio, and Josh Donaldson has only improved the infield defense for Milwaukee. To wit, they're also fourth in Out Rate on grounders to the third baseman, or down the line, up from 11th last year, and the raw improvement is considerably larger there.

Yet, Adames's defense in that hole has suffered. Why? The answers lie in positioning choices made at the macro level, but also in idiosyncratic, stylistic aspects of defense.

Back in May, I wrote about the Brewers' peculiar weakness as an infield defensive unit: they weren't turning many double plays. Part of the problem I identified, albeit a small part, was that Adames was making too many plays going to his right, effectively calling off third basemen (this was before Ortiz firmly established himself as the regular at that position) and taking grounders on which he then had to get his body turned and make a throw to second base. By the time that happened, the team couldn't complete those twin killings.

Later that month, I wrote about Adames's overall defensive style. That piece focused in, especially, on the way Adames likes to range in pursuit of shallow fly balls, longish foul pop-ups, and potential relay throw opportunities, but it was a continuation of a theme from the aforementioned piece. Adames likes to spread. He likes to involve himself and take up space. Here's a paragraph from that piece.

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I mentioned that, in American football and in basketball, it's easy to direct the action toward one's best players, and that it's much more difficult to do so in baseball. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum lies international football, or soccer, and it's there that the best comparison for Adames's style might rest. He's reminiscent of a great central midfielder, like the Croatian Luka Modrić. He understands his responsibilities and has to let the game flow around him, but he's special because of his ability to roam widely and involve himself organically--to make more plays within the run of things than others do, without forcing things.

Maybe, though, there's a little more merit in a comparison to American football, now. When you watch Adames and Ortiz play side-by-side, it's hard not to think of the way certain receivers play off one another on the same side of the field. Adames is not a slot receiver. He's big, and he likes to play big. He prefers to cover a maximal amount of space, as unencumbered as is possible. Ortiz is like an overqualified slot man, who could play on the outside in an offense blessed with less depth. (Next year, he'll probably play more shortstop, in Adames's likely absence, for this team.) While that's helpful to the team in a vacuum, it can make some teammates a bit more hesitant--a bit uncomfortable.

There's nothing but positive value for the Brewers in the fact that Ortiz can do this.

And the value of this is, if anything, even more obvious.

However, having a third baseman capable of all this prompts a team to slightly but meaningfully change the way they align their entire infield. Here, side by side, are the positioning charts for the Brewers infield against right-handed batters with no shade on, for 2023 and 2024.

The hot corner defenders for the Crew this season (mostly Ortiz) have played deeper, but also been positioned more variably. They come in more often. They slide toward the hole more often. Ortiz is a better, more mobile athlete than Monasterio, Anderson, Donaldson, or Mike Brosseau (who played third a good bit for them in 2022), and he has a considerably stronger arm than Luis Urías. The only third baseman from the previous two seasons who was a fair comp for Ortiz as a defender was Jace Peterson. The team is using him more flexibly, even while playing him at the same position. They had Monasterio, especially, guarding the lines carefully last season. It gave Adames lots of room to make plays a bit to his right.

With the infield shaded to the left side against righty batters, the changes are even more stark. Recognizing his diminished range, the Brewers have Adames cheating more toward the hole than ever--but they're letting Ortiz set up in a much wider variety of spots than they allowed last year's third basemen to.

As a result, Adames is often playing in tighter spaces, especially on plays to his right. It's still good for the team when Ortiz makes a play like this one. His movement is toward the eventual target; the third baseman should take what they can on balls like these.

In previous years, though, Adames would have taken this ball. Here's him doing just that, calling off Ortiz, even early this year.

Now, he's learned just how good a fielder he has to his right, and the team has adjusted their positioning and clarified their priority levels on certain grounders. On plays in the hole that Ortiz can't reach, though, that's made Adames a bit less aggressive. He takes slightly deeper angles than he did last year, and sometimes, that means having no real chance to convert an out, even after making a play cleanly.

That might occasionally cost the team an out, but obviously, Ortiz gains them more of them with his great plays. The net effect is a positive one, considering only the balls hit to that specific spot. However, there's also a broader effect to consider--although an impossible one to quantify. Adames is no longer the guy the Brewers want trying to reach everything on the left side of the infield. He's not as comfortable, because some of the space he's used to calling his own--the space in which he likes to work, with explosiveness and smooth athleticism, occasionally even if it means imperfect route efficiency when flagging down a two-hopper--has been taken up by a teammate. He lives for the openness of the field, and some of that has been taken away from him.

Were Adames under contract for the next half-decade, it would be crucial for the Brewers to get more creative in their defensive positioning, or else consider swapping Adames and Ortiz on the left side. They use aggressive defensive shading less often than all but one other team in baseball, and less than 10 percent of the time overall, but they're 15th in shading against right-handed batters; they could shade less. They could also set Adames up more toward the middle of the diamond, knowing it might mean one or two more plays on which he has to make the play going to his backhand side and get off a strong throw, but that it also might make him more comfortable and effective on those plays, and that his range up the middle would certainly improve in the process. Meanwhile, Ortiz could keep the 5-6 hole more or less closed.

Since Adames's days with the team are numbered, though, only subtle versions of this are necessary or advisable. It could still behoove the team to encourage more communication about ground ball priority between their left side defenders, and a nudge of just a step or two apart could make both of them incrementally more effective, overall. For the most part, though, they need to leave this alone, and hope that Ortiz's encroachment on Adames's former range continues to net them outs, by allowing them to convert more outs than they lose to Adames's discomfort with his changing role in their defense.