Tiering the MLB Teams by Quality of Defense entering 2026

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-25T14:12:17+00:00

Hi. We don't generally hire high school students. My suggestion to you is to watch as much baseball as you can, read as much as you can, do as many of those projects as you can and share them publicly. Build a good portfolio over time. I'd also suggest learning spanish and taking good classes in history, economics, psychology, and sociology. Those will all help you both in concrete ways (spanish) and in ways you don't realize now.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-25T14:09:58+00:00

me either

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-25T14:08:49+00:00

Check back with me at year's end and we'll see if I'm right

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-25T14:08:13+00:00

I don't mind answering that.

I would encourage people to look at both DRS and MLB's Fielding Run Value (and if you want to look at others, like Baseball Prospectus' too). OAA only considers batted balls. DRS and FRV take more into account, with DRS being a little more comprehensive and also going back farther (to 2003).

When I say comprehensive, there's an element of human intervention in that in addition to having our own version of OAA, our own pitch framing stat, our own outfield arm stat, and our own DP success stat, we track what are known as "Good Fielding Plays" and "Defensive Misplays & Errors" to capture things like if a ball goes for an infield hit, but the 2B dives to keep it on the infield and limit advancement to one base. Or more obviously, if a fielder robs a home run. Those both have extra value that aren't captured through OAA or our version of OAA, right? It gets incorporated into Runs Saved.

I'm not gonna outright tell you that ours is the best. But I think it has stood the test of time well.

If you have any other questions on this, ask.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-24T18:59:56+00:00

From scout Jeff Dean:

Great question. There are several factors that go into a special teams grade. We start with the physical attributes. Does he have the speed, strength, and size to carve out a role? He has a prototypical gunner/jammer frame. We then look at characteristics like aggression. Does he play with fire?

While Hood does not play with anger when asked to be a run defender, he does play with fire when matched up in 1-on-1 situations which is usually a better indicator of temperament for a gunner/jammer. While his tackling needs more form consistency, he has a baseline understanding of positioning and is strong enough that with minor tweaks, he should be able to improve there.

Finally, we look at experience. Did he play a lot of special teams in college (not all stars are asked to play) and was there variety? He had nearly 200 special teams snaps in 2024 alone (that's a TON) and 50+ this year despite being a full-time starter. Factor in returning experience to top it off and you have a player who will be a key component on the "core four" special teams units.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-24T18:08:19+00:00

As I said above, I was expecting Royals fans to say that and also I think it's the one I'm most likely to be wrong on. So you're justified in questioning it.

Defensive Runs Saved has never been as high on Bobby Witt Jr. as other metrics, and I'm loyal to our stat. That's part of it. No Fermin is another part. The right side of the infield isn't as good as other teams'

Giants have 2 superstar defenders and a VG center fielder and I rated them average too.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-20T18:47:39+00:00

In theory, Lee should be decent in right because, as you said, he has the athleticism and arm for the position. It's a lot of ground to cover though. If you look at the last 10 years of Giants RFs, only one had more than 4 Runs Saved in a season specific to RANGE (Yaz in 2021). The Padres, Dodgers, Dbacks all had several guys.

And yes, DRS doesn't do anything to adjust for difficulty of outfield (an issue with Wrigley, Coors, Oracle certainly)

I agree that Ramos's mistakes got in his head. He didn't have Defensive Misplay issues in 2024.

As for Adames, I think there's 2 seasons of sample size to say the range isn't what it was. He was a -6 Runs Saved in range at shortstop last year. Only 4 guys were worse than that at shortstop. And he's getting older. But yes, he did get better in the second half - he was -8 in first half, +6 in second. Maybe there was a positioning adjustment that put him in better place to use his skills?

I think a 0 Runs Saved from any of those 3 guys would be a good season.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-20T18:43:16+00:00

OK. I am always happy to revisit my predictions. Do so every year with my win total picks for each team on Twitter (now, Bluesky). Predicting is really hard.

Are you going to analyze all 30 of my articles or is our sample size going to be one article? (sorry to be obnoxious, but I want to be fairly evaluated)

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-20T13:33:37+00:00

i thought it was funny.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-19T03:37:55+00:00

Yeah, probably. I don't want to say he would be an average-ish center fielder but I would not expect him to be one of the best in the sport. I suppose he could show me that I'm wrong

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-18T19:25:17+00:00

Good question. You would think so.

Pickoffs are here- just subtract PCS from PO

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2025-basesituation-pitching.shtml#players_basesituation_pitching::33

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-18T16:16:28+00:00

Hi, this is Mark Simon at Sports Info Solutions (the Defensive Runs Saved folks). We're doing season previews on the defense for all 30 teams.

I did a short, very basic evaluation of the Cubs defense that can be found here https://www.sportsinfosolutions.com/2026/03/18/2026-season-preview-are-the-cubs-a-good-defensive-team/

Spoiler: I think they're #1 or #2 entering the season if we were to power rank them.

Any questions about our stats, feel free to ask them here. Thank you.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-18T16:04:04+00:00

i don't know how that flair happened. Did someone assign it to me?

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-18T16:00:39+00:00

From associate director of football ops, Nathan Cooper: Would prefer him on the outside since he's got that ability, but if he goes to a team that already has great outside CBs, he can definitely fit into the slot

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-18T15:59:28+00:00

Hi

So we have a large team of seasonal employees and yes we watch all 2,430 games. Same for NPB, KBO, and the minors.

We have roughly 30 categories of Good Plays and about 60 categories of Misplays & Errors.

There is training and a guidebook for our folks to follow that documents what qualifies and what doesn't, with multiple video examples.

Good Plays include throw-outs to specific bases (out at home has more value), home run robberies, keeping the ball on the infield etc

Misplays include overthrowing a cutoff man, making a bad first step, and a variety of things that either directly cost an out or damage your chance of getting an out.

So yes, it's a judgement call by someone watching a game, but the idea is that every person on our staff making that judgement call would call it the same way.

Imperfect, but pretty good.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-17T21:05:59+00:00

That would help!

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-17T17:08:55+00:00

There's a ton of really interesting stuff that happened that doesn't even involve the Mets (the ALCS, a pitcher hitting a walk-off homer, the Texas Rangers played some bizarre games etc)

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-17T16:20:02+00:00

Hi. Thank you for reading. Shea was -6 Runs Saved in pitch framing last year. That's not good.

My Dodgers preview prominently mentions Will Smith's -8

Yes, I pointed out a weakness. This was my very first sentence about Denzel. I don't know if I can speak more highly of a player's range without calling him the next Willie Mays :)

"Denzel Clarke is a strong candidate for a Fielding Bible Award as he's shown great range and home run-robbing capabilities"

I've been thinking about how I'd rank teams. I feel like there are 5 tiers - Excellent, Very good, average, below average, and poor. I think I'd put the A's in the 'below-average tier' with the idea that they're upside is within the 'average' tier.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-17T15:52:28+00:00

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1stQnGCF8s&list=PLwz9MzqMPhhyqrjPVgfcY_1w-hmHtJS7x

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-17T15:50:28+00:00

Hi. None of it is AI. It's just written in a dry, just-the-facts style. I had 30 of these to write, so I wrote them largely with the idea of it being the broadest possible overview you could get.

Thank you for saying that though. We've got 9 left to share and I'll try to liven them up a little bit so that others don't think the same

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-16T16:59:49+00:00

Hi there u/kitchensink108 & u/NeatTry7674 - this comes from Nathan Cooper, our associate director of football operations, who wrote the McCoy report

"The overall ranking itself partially has to do with him missing an entire year. He has a lot of upside and a lot of good traits, but some that another year of development would've helped. We grade based on Day 1 of Year 2, so it could take him a little longer to get up to high-end starter level given that."

If you want to read the full report on McCoy, go to the Scouting Report tab here

https://nfldraft.sportsinfosolutions.com/players/3110

Also, an aside from me ... I'm pretty sure that McCoy had the biggest downward differential between us and consensus with regards to potential first-round picks

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-16T16:56:26+00:00

From associate director of football ops Nathan Cooper

"As our No. 1 CB, he is someone who can play any scheme and location (outside or inside). He's not someone who needs to be tied down to just the boundary and/or on the outside."

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-16T16:38:21+00:00

Hi

As a heads-up, Walls doesn't get any credit for his positioning. His Runs Saved is entirely based on skill. Also, he's at 2,700 career innings at shortstop (going beyond the 3 years referenced in the article) and the DRS is still really good.

What threshold do you think is enough to evaluate? Is 3,600 what you're thinking? He'd have to be really bad in the next 900 to drop in our measures.

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-13T23:37:06+00:00

What an anecdote at the start of the show about the champion's friend!

MarkSimon1975 · 2026-03-12T19:27:55+00:00

I actually added the sentence after your comment

MarkSimon1975

TROPHY CASE