When The Numbers Lie: Breaking Down Why A “Bad” Play Is Actually Awesome

Is Brice Turang losing a step on defense? How one piece of film shows that numbers like OAA and DRS aren’t the whole story.

Recently, some concern has been raised about Brice Turang’s defense, which seems odd since he is the 2024 Platinum Glove winner and also has a Gold Glove at second base. However, could the numbers be missing some of the story?

Let’s look at one play in particular cited in the discussion, which took place on June 23 against the Pirates at American Family Field. Here’s how the play was described in that article:

Quote

On a tough ground ball that Turang ultimately failed to field before Spencer Horwitz made it to the bag, he was still able to make an out at third base with some quick thinking and a strong throw.

Even before we go into detail, this is a play that I’d use to make the case for Turang getting another Gold Glove and Platinum Glove. For starters, let’s take what Turang did at face value: He gunned down the lead baserunner, Nick Gonzales, who was going for third base. That’s a huge play in and of itself.

It’s far easier to score a run with a runner on third base – it’s just 90 feet away. Any base hit will plate the runner, as opposed to the runner being on second – see how Blake Perkins’ throw nailing a runner trying to score from second on a single ended game one of the Mets series by. If there are less than two outs, the hitter just needs to make good contact to have a decent shot at an RBI.

By snuffing out the runner at third, Turang took that ease of scoring away from the Pirates. That is before we even get into the actual specifics around the play – to wit, the situation the Brewers were in when Turang threw out the runner at third.

Because the stats don’t happen in a vacuum, and context matters, in a May 2023 article, I mentioned some comments then-manager Craig Counsell made during a forum after the 2016 season: He said that while Orlando Arcia would go 0-for-4, he was still helping the Brewers win in ways that didn’t show up in the box score.

Craig Counsell’s words are illustrated in this play from June 23. The box score and the stats are actually misleading. Spencer Horowitz got a hit, but it was entirely meaningless. The recap from Baseball Reference reveals that the play took place with two outs in the top of the seventh inning with the Brewers down 5-4.

In other words, Turang’s heads-up play on the Horowitz grounder didn’t just make it harder for the Pirates to score; it ended the top of the seventh inning. It kept the game as a one-run game, something the Crew has been able to come back from on multiple occasions over this season (they’ve come back from even bigger deficits, as they showed Sunday). But there’s even more context to consider with Turang’s play.

That play came on Aaron Ashby’s 23rd pitch of the seventh inning – Horowitz and the three previous Pirates hitters had worked the count against the Brewers’ lefty and put together a string of at-bats. That’s a lot of pitches to secure three outs.

Now, Ashby would go three innings that day, throwing 52 pitches, but could he have done so if Turang hadn’t nailed the runner at third? Odds are, probably not. If Ashby ends up going only two innings, and another reliever gets called in for the ninth inning, that affects the team for the next game, as the reliever may need rest. In the next two games against the Pirates on June 24 and June 25, both of which the Crew won, the team used four relievers each game, three of whom, Grant Anderson, Rob Zastryzny, and Abner Uribe, made back-to-back appearances.

Ultimately, the Brewers lost the June 23 game, 5-4. But Turang’s heads-up play in the top of the seventh kept it close – a one-run game – and it arguably allowed Aaron Ashby to give the rest of the bullpen (aside from Nick Mears) a day off, allowing Murphy to use Anderson, Zastryzny, and Uribe in the next two games.

In this case, the stats and the basic box score didn’t just fail to tell the story; in a sense, they told you the wrong story about Brice Turang’s defensive skill.